October marks the beginning of Media Literacy week in Canada, but if you know anything about me or my work, you’ll know that I believe every day provides an opportunity for media literacy. So whenever you are reading this is a good time to begin Media Literacy Week!
Global Education Student Chat
The @GlobalEdSschat team engage in live panel discussions around several topics and themes around Media literacy. The students pick a topic that is important to them, brainstorm questions, and then discuss the questions via a live stream on YouTube. After the chat, the videos are archived, so that you may watch these at any time to engage in conversations with your own classes. It’s not often that kids get to see other kids discuss issues that are important to them and this modelling can be very powerful. These are some of the discussions we have had around media:
Media and Teens (2023)
Smart Phones vs Smart People (2023)
Digital Citizenship Day (2022)
Break the Fake in collaboration with Media Smarts (2019)
You’ve Been Faked: Uncovering Truth Online through Digital Citizenship in collaboration with Media Smarts (2018)
Be sure to check out our October 2023 collaboration with Media Smarts by subscribing to GlobalEdSSchat.com and check out the archived posts or see our Wakelet with archived YouTube videos here. If you would like to have your students participate as a guest, contact me!
The Media Triangle
In both my books, Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership and Raising Digital Leaders: Practical Advice for Families Navigating Today’s Technology, I feature the Media Triangle created by Neil Andersen and used with permission ) is an important way to regularly critique and create media and has been something I have been using since I first taught a Media Literacy course decades ago.
The more kids are familiar with the media triangle, the more skeptical they can become of what they are consuming and the better they can understand misinformation.
Ideas and Resources
- Consider having an “In the News Friday” where you feature a news article or a social media post (Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tik Tok are where kids are getting their news) to unpack what’s happening using the Media Triangle. It is helpful for kids to understand that there are value messages in everything they read or see, that all media are constructions, and that media have special interests.
- Rebecca Hewitt shared this resource with questions by Michael Baltrope that can be used to help students understand the components of the Media Triangle.
- Most kids (and adults) trust Amazon Reviews to make purchasing decisions. Review Meta and Fakespot are designed to check if Amazon reviews are fake Why not try it together with your class?
- News Literacy Canada has lots of interactive activities and resources to check out with your class.
- My friend Carissa Imgrund shared this one with me: Doubt It which has a Trust it or Doubt it interactive quiz (specific to Canadian news).
- Doug Peterson shared this Google Arts and Culture experiment, Odd One Out asking kids to determine if an image is AI generated or real.
- This post about a girl who supposedly tweeted from her fridge would make for a great discussion.
- Where Kids get their news and how they feel about it is a Common Sense Media research study worth a read.
I have been collecting resources on this Wakelet. Please add your resources, comments, and/or questions in the comments.
