What Happens on Social Media Stays on Google Forever.

Hello everyone,

Today we will be looking at Media Literacy, one of the four Language strands in the Ontario curriculum. Media Literacy is defined by the curriculum as "the result of study of the art and messaging of various forms of media texts (13)". Now let's define media texts from the curriculum as well- it states "Media texts can be understood to include any work, object, or event that communicates meaning to an audience. Most media texts use words, graphics, sounds, and/or images, in print, oral, visual, or electronic form, to communicate information and ideas to their audience" (13).

I want to discuss with you three topic areas! These areas are the following: Promote Digital Citizenship, Media Literacy in the Classroom, and Evaluating Digital and Media Literacy Resources.

The internet is very hard for some people, young or old, and yet new tools and apps are being created as we speak! A simple idea can be worth billions if done correctly.



We can talk about how wonderful the internet can be - but it is also extremely dangerous as well!

Digital Citizenship: In everyday life, we need to present ourselves in a respectable manner. We need to abide by laws and policies that were placed by our family, schools, and government. The same thing can be said about online, or to be more specific as a Digital Citizen. Digital Citizenship is the idea around proper use of technology. As educators, we need to introduce to our student’s what media is. Here are a few videos that show a brief and simple explanation on what media is:


 

What you can do as a teacher is introduce these videos and then have a discussion about it! Probably after a handful of personal experiences or suggestions, ask the students to create rules for the internet. If you need guidance for this here are a few links around generating online digital citizenship rules:
  1.  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/digital-skills/online-safety?activetab=protect-whats-important%3aprimaryr3
  2. http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/guides/digital-citizenship-guide.pdf  
  3. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-digital-media-citizenship
Note: if you want to see my online report about Digital Citizen it can be found on my Google Site.

 A fun way to promote cybersafety to our students is through a fun interactive game! In tech class I was introduced to some interactive games, the following are:
  1. http://www.carnegiecyberacademy.com/missions.html
  2. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-internet-safety-games-kids-cyber-smart/
  3. https://www.nsteens.org/Videos
Copyright is another aspect for Digital Citizenship. The basic things as educators we can show students is to cite and reference any work they did not create! As they progress through education we need to show students different types of citation and what are credible resources.

Media Literacy in the Classroom:

Why do we need media literacy? Jean Kilbourne best describes why we need it.




We need to show our students how to understand and deconstruct media. Since 2006, Ontario has been showing our students from grade 1-8 how to understand and deconstruct media. The Ontario curriculum has been/trying to extending media literacy to all subject areas. Here are examples showing media literacy being extended to subjects:

Language:
Digital media production- create a video, podcast or blog for a language project

Math:
Using the following articles, discuss the different types of graphs found:

Social Studies:
How is mental health depicted in the everyday news or mainstream media?

Science:
Look at the article:
https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ Is this true or false? Use other reliable resources to back your decision.  
Mediasmarts has a nice resource that shows teachers how to implement digital literacy into your classroom.

Evaluating Digital and Media Literacy Resources: There is a strong theme so far with the last two topics - that is to critically think. Now it is time to critically think about resources.





Ask yourself the following while looking at resources:
  1. What am I looking at?
  2.  Is the resource biased?
  3. Who made this resource?
  4. Is the resource's data up-to-date?
  5. Does the resource cite their resources?
  6. Does the author of the resource have solid credentials?
  7. Does the resource go against other resources you have looked at?
Hottest topic- FAKE NEWS!
Here is a nice poster to show how to detect fake news:

content from upload.wikimedia.org


Like Ms. Koch, allow the students to research a topic; give them guidelines for what they are looking for!  Her pre-lesson is an excellent way to introduce evaluating resources; add any other definitions you feel like discussing (e.g. credibility, digital literacy, media literacy, reference, and etc.). A popular new lesson is fake news lessons! Teachers are making fake news article and websites for students to evaluate! This is personally something I want to do in the future.

Just remember to be safe on-the-line and until next time stay safe and informed,

Mr.Martinez 


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