MediaSmarts has a wide variety of resources for both parents and teachers. You can browse the resources by topic or browse through the teacher resources section of the website.
I found three very helpful resources that I am going to be using in my future career.
1. MyWorld
MyWorld is a game for developing digital literacy. It has an interactive desktop that gives challenges to the students. For instance maybe a friend (a character) will email them about internet bullying and the game will give them options to email the teacher (a character), or how to respond the friend's email. When they need to know something they can go to an online library, a fake Google site or consult one of the 4 mentors. The four mentors are experts in specific fields. And the student has to match the mentor (and their advice) to the problem they are experiencing. It helps students with everything from recognizing and reacting well to hate speech to validating internet claims and reading Wikipedia articles discerningly.
It's not something that I think would be useful throughout the course but I could set the students up to play it at either the beginning or end of a unit on digital literacy.
2. Passport To The Internet
PTTI is a lot like MyWorld but there are some interesting things that separate them. They are both concerned with online safety and morality but PTTI also has games that help develop digital skills. There's one really great game where you try to find a website on the search engine using pre-selected phrases. For instance if you use a phrase that isn't in quotation marks only irrelevant websites will come up. Also it's a more creative space-- instead of a desktop you begin the game at internet station, the gateway to the internet.
I would use this program and MyWorld interchangeably.
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3. Web Awareness Workshop Series
There are plenty of resources like this on MediaSmarts. There are self-directed tutorials, power point slides and guides for workshops on cyber-bullying, web discernment, etc. The workshops are a great way to inform your teaching. There's also a lot of information that can go into building lesson plans.
MyWorld and PTTI, seem like some really useful tools. I think that students could engage with the game design, but also practice what they think they know about digital citizenship. I think ways of learning that use real life connections are better. We don't always know how we'll react until we are in certain situations, so these kinds of tools are awesome.
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