Critical Media Site

Media Awareness website: http://media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/index.cfm

A colleague put me on to this website regarding the media and internet education. It has some excellent resources for teaching critical media literacy in the classroom. I especially liked the game young children could play where they design a cereal box using "5 gimmicks". The game is called "Co-Co's AdverSmarts" and can be found under the Educational Games tab on the left hand side of the page. The game is designed to recognize the marketing techniques used on commercial Web sites that target young children.

A follow up lesson to the game could be to have the children bring in cereal boxes from home and identify the gimmicks used on the boxes. They could then redesign the boxes in ways that promote nutrition instead of gimmicks, which could also be part of a health lesson as well as art and language arts.

Another great feature of the site is found when you click on "For Teachers" at the top of the page. It gives you links to other great resources and you can do a search for lessons by curriculum outcomes for your province.