Fair Dealing for Media Education

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.

Key Concepts for Digital Media Literacy

Media educators base their teaching on key concepts for digital media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. As media education pioneer Len Masterman put it, “You can teach the media most effectively, not through a content-centered approach, but through the application of a conceptual framework which can help pupils to make sense of any media text.”^[1]

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Challenge and Change in Society 12 HSB4U

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Challenge and Change in Society 12 HSB4U

Science 1206

Integrated Skills

Overall Expectations:

GCO 2 (Skills): Students will develop the skills required for scientific and technological inquiry, for solving problems, for communicating scientific ideas and results, for working collaboratively, and for making informed decisions

Specific Expectations:

Initiating and Planning:

• 1.0 identify questions to investigate that arise from practical problems and issue

Performing and Recording:

Constant surveillance: Youth privacy in a digital age

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.

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Health and Physical Education Grade 3

This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Ontario Grade 3 Health and Physical Education curriculum with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.

Digital Media Literacy Framework

Young Canadians need to be able to make good choices about privacy, ethics, safety and verifying information when they’re using digital media, and they need to be prepared to be active and engaged digital citizens. Based on our ground-breaking research on digital literacy education in Canada – and linked to existing curriculum outcomes for each province and territory – MediaSmarts’ model curriculum that provides a framework for integrating digital literacy in Canadian schools. The framework draws on our research to identify nine essential skill topics that students need to know and provides resources in each category and at every grade level.

Outcome Chart - Newfoundland and Labrador - English Language Arts 2201

Outcome Chart - Newfoundland and Labrador - English Language Arts 2201

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Equity Diversity and Social Justice 11 HSE3E

Outcome Chart - Ontario - Equity Diversity and Social Justice 11 HSE3E

Critically Engaging with Media Violence

While parents may find certain representations of violence wholly appropriate for young people, there’s a wide continuum of content that exists online and in the media. Anything from a cartoon cat having an anvil comically dropped on his head to video images of real-life injuries and deaths can be accessed online by children and youth.