The question of whether media education, or digital media literacy, “works” is a bit misplaced. There is no doubt that it works in the same sense that other areas of study “work,” in that students who’ve received media education know more about digital media literacy than those that haven’t – just as students who take history courses know more about history than those that don’t.
What is intellectual property?: A novel? A film script? A joke? A cook book? A character in a TV show? A painting? The lyrics to a song? All of these are intellectual property.
Since sexting – and, in particular, our concerns about it – are regularly portrayed as a largely female phenomenon, it may be surprising that data from MediaSmarts’ study Non-Consensual Sharing of Sexts: Behaviours and Attitudes of Canadian Youth study show boys and girls being about equally likely to send sexts of themselves.[i]
Where all media communicate through rules of notice, interactive media are fundamentally defined by their structural possibilities – what might be called "rules of action " – which significantly influence how users communicate and behave.
Thanks to the networked nature of the internet, in which information is always flowing both ways, there's no shortage of ways for apps, devices and websites to collect information about us.
In Canada, consumers have certain rights to use copyrighted material without permission or license from the owner of the copyright. These rights are defined in the Copyright Act as Fair Dealing exemptions and were redefined in the 2012 changes to the Act. A good knowledge of Fair Dealing can be extremely helpful in understanding what you and your students can do with media in class. It's important to note that the Copyright Act provides very little definition for many of these terms; instead, most of the specifics of Fair Dealing have come from court rulings, and the new exemptions and other changes done in 2012 will likely also be further defined in the same way.
Once you’ve found information online – or someone has shared it with you – how do you know if it’s true, or at least credible? In other words, how do you verify the information? The internet is a unique medium in that it allows anyone – not just experts – to write on any topic and to broadcast it to a wide audience.
Software threats are malicious pieces of computer code and applications that can damage your computer, as well as steal your personal or financial information. For this reason, these dangerous programs are often called malware (short for “malicious software”).