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.

I can look at the media and see people from my group widely represented as heroes, role models, leaders, news anchors, television hosts, and experts.

Privilege is the relative benefit that a group enjoys as a result of the discrimination or oppression of other groups. When we think about racism and discrimination, we often envision acts of deliberate meanness or quantifiable oppression of a disadvantaged group – hurtful words, tasteless jokes, deliberate exclusion from work or school, acts of violence, and so on – but it can just as easily take the form of privileges given to members of a more advantaged group.

In this lesson students encounter the key concepts of intellectual property, learning the difference between copyright and trademark and coming to understand how these affect how media products are created and sold.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that their gaming experiences may compromise their personal information.

It’s as important for advertisers to reach the right people as it is to make an appealing ad, so they have developed many different ways of targeting ads effectively. Online advertising lets marketers match different ads with individual users. This section looks at how that’s done and how it affects kids’ privacy.

This lesson looks at the increasing prominence of gambling in the media, particularly movies and television.

In this lesson, students discuss television programming aimed at children and how girls and boys are portrayed in it. Students illustrate what they dislike about portrayals of girls or boys and then create their own TV character who will counter the illustrated negative portrayals.

MediaSmarts has partnered with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) to develop the Online Commerce Cyber Security Consumer Tip Sheet – the fourth in a series of tip sheets on cyber security issues.

Spam, online scams and frauds, identity theft and issues related to online purchases are a serious issue in the online world. Navigating the Web while avoiding these threats can be a challenging task.