How Social Media Helps Teens Cope With Anxiety, Depression, and Self-Harm

By Dr. Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Centre
Content reposted with permission – original article from Cyberbullying.org

It is easy for many adults – whether educators or parents – to focus on the negatives of social media in the lives of teens today. This is understandable, because they are the ones who have to deal with the fallout when adolescents make mistakes online (cyberbullying incidents, sexting cases, electronic dating violence, digital reputation drama, and similar forms of wrongdoing).

Digital Media Literacy Across the Curriculum

There have been four main approaches to integrating digital media literacy into the curriculum.^[1] The first, infusion, makes digital media literacy an integrated part of the inquiry process. The second, integration, makes digital and/or media into its own, separate subject, or gives it a prominent place within an existing subject: media literacy was first brought into the Ontario curriculum in Ontario following this approach in 1989 as one of the four strands of English Language Arts, on a par (at least in theory) with Reading, Writing and Listening.^[2] The third, cross-curricular competencies, identifies digital media literacy competencies as “not something to be added to the literacy curriculum, but a lens for learning that it is an integral part of all classroom practice”^[3]; and the last, dispersion, locates them within various grades and subjects without any overall design.^[4]

Quebec Competencies Chart - Exposing Gender Stereotypes

Quebec Competencies Chart - Exposing Gender Stereotypes

Outcome Chart - Saskatchewan - English Language Arts 2

This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Saskatchewan, Grade 2 English Language Arts curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.

In the elementary curriculum in Saskatchewan, learning objectives for media studies are included as a category within the supporting domain, Oracy and Literacy: Media. Media-related objectives can also be found within Speaking and Listening, Reading and Response to Literature, Writing, Educational Drama, Research and Presentation and Computer Applications.

Kids learn online smarts through new game

Hedy Fry calls CyberSense and Nonsense a "creative approach" to combating online hate

Ottawa, Ontario, April 6, 2000 - The Media Awareness Network (MNet) launched CyberSense and Nonsense today, a new interactive computer game to help "cyberproof" kids.

CyberSense and Nonsense is designed to help children between the ages of nine and eleven learn how to:

Talking to kids about media violence

Talking to kids about violence in the media they consume – television, movies, video games, music and the Internet – can help them put media violence into perspective and perhaps diffuse some of its power. 

e-Parenting Tutorial: Keeping up with your kids' online activities

Ever since Cronus the Titan tried to swallow his son Zeus, parents have feared being supplanted by their children. (It didn't take.) But it's only in the last few generations, as the rate of technological progress has accelerated, that children have grown up in a world significantly different from the one their parents knew, and it's only very recently that parents have seen their surpass them while they were still in the single digits. Thanks to digital media, the world is changing so rapidly today – consider that five years ago there was no Twitter, ten years ago no Facebook and fifteen years ago no Google – that even those of us who spent our childhoods programming our parents' VCRs can feel left behind.

Quebec Competencies Chart - A Day in the Life of the Jos

Author: MediaSmarts
Level: Grades 6-8
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Visual Art, Ethnic and Religious Culture
Game Link: https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/educational-games/day-life-jos

Rethinking copyright in the media age

After the controversy surrounding last year's proposed copyright bill C-61, which eventually died on the order table when Parliament was prorogued, the Federal government has decided to hold consultations across Canada before introducing a new version of the bill. While only time will tell how responsive the government will be to the public's submissions, the series of town halls and round tables is definitely a good start in making the process transparent and taking the views of a wide variety of Canadians into account. Below is an expanded version of MNet's submission to the Round Table held in Gatineau, Quebec on July 29th 2009.