Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Level: Secondary Cycle One and Two
Duration: This lesson takes place over two weeks, with roughly three hours class time mandatory and an additional two to six hours for the optional media production activity.
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Visual Arts, Ethics and Religious Culture, Physical Education and Health
Lesson Link: https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/digital-media-experiences-are-shaped-tools-we-use-disconnection-challenge

Description: In this lesson, students consider the role of technology and media in their lives and then spend a week either tracking or limiting their media use. They then share their experiences and discuss how the ways that digital media tools are made may cause us to use them differently (or simply more often). Finally, students draw on those insights to create a mindful media use plan. In an optional extension activity, they interview other students for a video exploring their experiences and reflections over the course of the project.

Cross-curricular Competencies

• To use information
• To solve problems
• To exercise critical judgement
• To use creativity
• To adopt effective work methods
• To use information and communication technologies (ICT)
• To construct his/her identity
• To cooperate with others
• To communicate appropriately

Broad Areas of Learning

• Media Literacy
• Health and Well-Being
• Environmental Awareness and Consumer Rights and Responsibilities
• Citizenship and Community Life

This lesson satisfies the following Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

English Language Arts

Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

Establishes a repertoire of resources for communicating and learning in specific contexts

• Investigates the affordances of spoken language as a mode of communication
• Examines some of the aesthetic qualities of spoken language
• Extends the range of strategies for collecting the data needed for use in specific genres

Participates in the social practices of the classroom and community in specific contexts

• Investigates the uses of spoken language in the school and community
• Engages in a process of self-evaluation and reflection
• Confers with the teacher in regular and ongoing evaluation conferences

Interacts with peers and teacher in specific contexts

• Collaborates with peers to construct knowledge about how things are done
• Participates in collaborative action research groups using an inquiry process
• Applies procedural and meaningmaking strategies to achieve a purpose
• Contributes to team efforts as an interactive and critical listener

Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts

Integrates reading profile, stance and strategies to make sense of a text in a specific context

• Reads for pleasure and to learn
• Draws on prior experience and the features of a genre to make sense of a text
• Adjusts reading strategies and stance to the context
• Develops research and organizational strategies for working with information

Talks about own response to a text within a classroom community

• Situates meanings within own experiences and the world of the text, in order to transform initial readings into more conscious interpretations
• Considers possible reasons for own responses and the responses of others to clarify and reshape the relationship between self as reader and the text

Interprets the relationship(s) between reader, text and context in light of own response(s)

• Explains the impact of a text on self as reader by returning to its social functions, as well as the way meanings and messages are constructed
• Draws on own reading profile, including knowledge of textual structures and features, to locate textual details that support own interpretations
• Constructs interpretations that embody both own world and the world of the text

Produces texts for personal and social purposes

Constructs a relationship between writer/producer, text and context

• Understands that all texts are constructed in specific contexts for specific audiences and purposes
• Researches as a writer/producer to become more informed, to create authentic contexts and to characterize an audience
• Analyzes the elements of the context and shapes the text accordingly
• Examines the differences between producing texts for public and private spaces.

Adapts a process to produce texts in specific contexts

• Participates both individually and collaboratively in different recursive phases of the production process
• Monitors own learning
• Cultivates a variety of media and writerly practices
• Explores a variety of avenues for wider publication

Visual Arts

Creates media images

Uses ideas to create a media production

• Is open to a stimulus for creation
• Chooses ideas and plans a media creation project

Shares his/her experience of media creation

• Considers his/her creative intention and progress
• Identifies the important elements of his/her experience and its characteristics

Uses transforming gestures and elements of media language

• Experiments with methods of materializing his/her ideas
• Makes use of his/her memory of transforming gestures and knowledge of media language
• Chooses the most meaningful gestures and elements for his/her creative intention
• Develops methods of using these gestures and elements in order to adapt them to the target audience

Structures his/her media production

• Applies the results of his/her experiments
• Shapes the material and language elements and organizes them on the basis of the message to be conveyed
• Validates the media impact of the visual message on a control group
• Reviews his/her choices of material and language
• Makes adjustments
• Refines certain elements, if necessary

Ethics and Religious Culture

Reflects on ethical questions

Analyzes a situation from an ethical point of view

• Describes a situation and puts it into context
• Formulates a related ethical question
• Compares points of view
• Explains tensions or conflicting values
• Compares the situation with similar situations
• Compares his/her analysis of the situation with that of his/her classmates

Examines a variety of cultural, moral, religious, scientific or social references

• Finds the main references present in different points of view
• Looks for the role and the meaning of these references
• Considers other references
• Compares the meaning of the main references in different contexts

Evaluates options or possible actions

• Suggests options or possible actions
• Studies the effects of these options or actions on oneself, others or the situation
• Chooses options or actions that foster community life
• Reflects on the factors that influenced these choices

Engages in dialogue

Organizes his/her thinking

• Identifies the subject of dialogue
• Makes connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge
• Distinguishes between what is essential and what is secondary in the different points of view expressed
• Takes stock of his/her reflections

Develops a substantiated point of view

• Uses his/her resources and looks for information about the subject of dialogue
• Develops further his/her understanding of different points of view
• Imagines various hypotheses
• Fleshes out a point of view
• Anticipates objections and necessary clarifications
• Validates his/her point of view
• Reflects on his/her process

Interacts with others

• Develops an awareness of his/her reaction to the subject of dialogue
• Looks for conditions that foster dialogue
• Expresses his/her point of view and pays attention to others’ views
• Explains different points of view, using relevant and coherent arguments
• Asks for clarification
• Implements means to overcome obstacles to dialogue

Physical Education and Health

Adopts a healthy, active lifestyle

Develops a plan designed to maintain or change some personal lifestyle habits

• Using appropriate tools, prepares a summary of observable facts about own lifestyle habits
• Chooses two lifestyle habits to maintain or change, if appropriate
• Begins a process
• Identifies own tastes and aptitudes
• Plans a strategy with two realistic objectives and anticipates the consequences
• Uses a variety of resources

Evaluates own process and lifestyle habits

• Using appropriate tools, measures whether own fitness level has been maintained or improved
• Judges whether the objective was met, in light of data collected
• Explains the reasons for difficulties and achievements
• Reconsiders choice of strategy and results obtained
• Identifies new learning

Recognizes work accomplished

• Makes a decision based on the evaluation
• Carries out the plan
• Applies own strategy to improve or maintain two lifestyle habits
• Uses the resources required to carry out the plan
• Perseveres in carrying out the plan
• Using appropriate tools, compiles facts about changes to own lifestyle habits