How young people engage with news

While young people use and engage with news differently from older generations, they continue to value concepts such as trustworthiness and fairness.

Pirates and privateers

With the recent spate of marine piracy off the coast of Somalia, culminating in the abduction and rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, it’s a bit disorienting to see the word “piracy” used to refer to, well, pirates. That’s because for the last few decades the word has been much more often applied to those who “pirate” intellectual property such as software, music, and videos. In fact, the use of the word in that context has a surprisingly long history: Daniel Defoe, in 1703, used the term to describe printers who made unauthorized copies of his work.

Managing media in middle childhood (6-9 years old)

Helping Kids Build Safe and Smart Digital Habits

Parents can focus on helping kids this age explore safely by choosing high-quality experiences, setting clear boundaries, and teaching them how to recognize when something feels off.

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.

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Law CLU3M: Understanding Canadian Law

This chart contains media-related learning outcomes from Ontario, Curriculum for Law CLU3M: Understanding Canadian Law, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.

Giving Parents New Tools To Keep Kids Safe Online Focus of New Public Awareness Campaign

Toronto, ON, January 13, 2004—Helping Canadian parents protect their children from potential Internet risks is the focus of a new public awareness campaign called Be Web Aware, launched today by a coalition of leading corporate and non-profit organizations led by Media Awareness Network (MNet) and national partners Microsoft Canada and Bell Canada (a founding sponsor of MNet).

Book review: Packaging Girlhood

An alien anthropologist, studying North American culture, might wonder why it is that despite the increasing economic and political power of women over the last forty years, appearance and behaviour seem to be more gender-typed than ever. A walk through any department store would give this anthropologist a clear notion of gender roles in children and teens: boys are warriors and superheroes, clad in camouflage (the new blue); girls are princesses, dressed always in pink. Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, acts as a guide to parents and teachers who – perhaps remembering a time of boys and girls in t-shirts, jeans or unisex overalls – may be as perplexed by all this as our alien would be.

Religions Education

Many curricular expectations in Newfoundland and Labrador Religious Education courses relate to media and digital literacy. The following excerpts from Ethics and Philosophy 2101 (2010) detail how media and digital literacy have been integrated into the curriculum: