While the training workshops focus on the five key concepts of digital literacy, this implementation guide looks at the specific skill areas that MediaSmarts has identified as being essential for students to learn by the end of their secondary education: ethics and empathy, privacy and security, community engagement, digital health, consumer awareness, finding and verifying and making and remixing. The guide also addresses common challenges to integrating digital literacy into the classroom, such as limitations on available technology and classroom management concerns, and includes links to relevant MediaSmarts’ and other resources, and apps and tools for creating digital media in your classroom.

Digital Literacy Training Program

The Digital Literacy Training Program for Canadian Educators workshop provides an overview of essential digital literacy skills and key concepts of media and digital literacy, familiarizes participants with the digital experiences of Canadian youth, and introduces the resources and tools that are available through MediaSmarts’ USE, UNDERSTAND & CREATE digital literacy framework.

Data Defenders: Understanding data collection online

In this lesson, students explore the concepts relating to data collection that are introduced in the educational game Data Defenders. The lesson will underscore for students the idea that their data is valuable and worthy of careful management by analyzing the platforms, applications and websites they use through the lens of the five privacy tools (which address the five principal ways data is collected online) introduced in Data Defenders. Finally, students consider how to apply these tools to their own online activities.

English

Few issues capture our anxiety about young people and digital media so perfectly as sexting. As with technologies at least as far back as the telegraph, much of this anxiety has focused specifically on girls and women.

Help! Someone shared a photo of me without my consent! – Tip Sheet

  1. You can start by asking the person who shared it to take it down or stop sharing it. Kids report that this works more often than not!
  2. Ask the service or platform where it was shared to take it down. If you’re under 18, they may be required by law to take it down, and most also have a policy of taking down any photos that were shared without the subject’s permission.

A Day in the Life of the Jos is an interactive digital literacy tutorial where students in grades six to eight help the brother and sister team Jo and Josie with situations they encounter online as they go about a typical day in their lives. The modules are represented as five days in the lives of Jo and Josie, covering topics that research has identified as being important for youth of this age.

Where's The Line? Online Safety Lesson Plan for School Resource Officers

This lesson was produced with the support of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Objectives:

  • To further online safety education.
  • To promote safe and responsible online behaviour through:
    • Encouraging youth to make safe and ethical decisions online;
    • Helping youth to identify strategies and supports that are available to assist them with issues they may encounter online.
English

MediaSmarts is partnering with Facebook Canada to help Canadians become better informed readers in the digital age. False online content isn’t a new problem, and it’s not unique to Facebook, but it is up to all of us to fight it. Many of us lack the search, authentication and critical thinking skills we need to find accurate information online and to recognize false or misleading content. That’s why MediaSmarts has partnered with Facebook to help build the authentication skills of all Canadians.

Authentication 101 – tip sheet

Did you know that almost a quarter of adults have shared a false news story, and that we’re least likely to fact-check news and other things that come to us through people we know and trust on social networks (even though for many people these are their most common sources of news)?  

Pages