The podcast industry has seen remarkable growth, with the number of active podcast programs climbing from 550,000 to 750,000 between 2018 and 2019. More than a third of anglophones in Canada listen to podcasts, and just over a quarter of francophones.
This collection of articles on media education around the world will fulfill an important need: informing us of the struggle to critically understand the global implications of media education.
I had a really interesting conversation with my 14-year-old daughter recently. She was wondering why so many adults assume that teenagers are all the same: a bunch of lazy, self-involved jokers who are glued to their devices all day. I didn’t have an answer for her, really, only that people tend to generalize, and that this is Never a Good Thing, no matter who it is we’re talking about.
Despite what many adults believe privacy matters to youth. More and more, though, youth are finding that their actions online are monitored – by parents, teachers, and corporations. A high school principal creates a fake Facebook profile page and adds over 300 of her school’s students as friends; a Texas middle-school plans to introduce ID cards with microchips that its students will be required to carry at all times; an Indiana high school student is expelled after a profane tweet (sent in the middle of the night from the student’s home computer) alerts his school’s monitoring system.
There's an old urban legend called “the water engine,” which tells of the discovery of a way to turn water into fuel. There are variations to the story – sometimes it's tap water, sometimes sea water; in recent versions it's specified the fuel is nonpolluting – but the ending is always the same: the invention is suppressed by the oil companies, either by buying the invention and burying it or by forcing the inventor into ruin and suicide.
It's important to pay close attention to what children see in the news because studies have shown that kids are more afraid of violence in news coverage than in any other media content. By creating a proper perspective and context for news and current events programs, we can help kids develop the critical thinking skills they need to understand news stories and the news industry.
Quebec Competencies Chart - That's Not Cool: Healthy and Respectful Relationships Online
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Nunavut curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Nunavut curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.