This lesson series contains discussion topics and extension activities for teachers to integrate the TVOKids Original series Wacky Media Songs. This lesson focuses on essential skills for managing students’ privacy, reputation and security online such as making good decisions about sharing their own content, understanding data collection techniques, protecting themselves from malware and other software threats, and being aware of their digital footprint.
By Samantha McAleese, research associate at MediaSmarts and
David Fowler, vice-president, marketing and communications at CIRA.
In this lesson, students review what the word “privacy” means in an online context and learn key privacy-related vocabulary. They explore different privacy risks and then learn practical techniques and strategies to manage and protect their privacy. Students then demonstrate their understanding of these strategies by illustrating them. Finally, students revisit material from earlier in the lesson and consider how their actions might put other people’s privacy at risk.
In this lesson, students learn how their personal information is key to how most of the “free” apps and platforms they use make money. They learn practical strategies and tools for managing their privacy and plan how these can be used to limit what audiences have access to their personal information.
In this lesson, students start by considering the permanence of online content. They review privacy strategies and privacy risks and analyze how likely and severe different privacy risks are. They then consider how their actions and decisions can affect others’ privacy and develop a list of “Dos and Don’ts” for managing both their own and others’ privacy.
In this lesson, students learn about algorithms and AI, how they work, how they impact our lives on the internet, and ethical considerations. The lesson begins with a class discussion on algorithms. Students will discuss how AIs reinforce real-world biases, the difficulties in identifying how AIs make decisions, what information algorithms use to make choices, and how that information impacts the types of decisions AIs make. Finally, students will demonstrate their knowledge by researching and designing an infographic on a field that uses algorithms to make decisions. This lesson aims to build critical thinking skills by examining how AI algorithms work, investigating the biases and impacts of AI decision-making, and reflecting on how the implications to their own lives.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that privacy is a fundamental human right and that their personal information is valuable. The lesson focuses on the “economics” of personal information and that most "free" apps and online services make some or all of their revenue by collecting (and in some cases reselling) users' personal information. Students will watch a video that illustrates the idea that they may be paying with their privacy and then discuss some of the ramifications of this. They will learn about tools and techniques for minimizing the personal information they share and create a public service announcement that helps them and their peers "know the deal" about the value of privacy.
In this lesson, students watch a short video that compares getting rid of personal information online to getting toothpaste back into a tube. After a short discussion of how visual analogies like this work, students discuss the meaning of the video (that information online is permanent.) They then read a series of short scenarios that help them identify four further principles of information online: that it can be copied, that it can be seen by unintended audiences, that it can be seen by larger audiences than intended, and that it becomes searchable. Finally, students create a simple animation that illustrates one of these principles.
In this lesson, students draw connections between their existing concepts of privacy and how it applies to the internet and networked devices, then learn essential vocabulary relating to privacy. They then consider some scenarios in which children encounter privacy risks and draw on those to develop a list of “dos” and “don’ts” for using networked devices.
There are four main strategies to help kids become resilient to online risks. We can:
Curate our kids’ media experiences;
Control who can access our kids and their data;
Co-view media with our kids;
and be our kids’ media Coaches.