Videos: Exploring Media Literacy Through Film

Videos give students a chance to explore media literacy through short clips and discussions. Students can watch examples of online content, share their ideas, and talk about how messages are created through sound, images, and text. They also support individual learning needs by allowing students to pause, replay, or review information as needed. This gives students different ways to engage with the content and practice using media literacy skills in situations they may come across online.

RESOURCE 3: VIDEO

Fact vs. Fake: A Quick Lesson in Media Literacy from CBC Kids is a short video that teaches students how to think about whether the information they see online is real or misleading. It uses fun and exaggerated examples, such as giant hamburgers, heroic home runs, and alien invasions, to introduce basic media literacy skills in a way that is easy for students to understand and remember. Since the video is short, teachers can pause it to discuss the examples, replay parts, or use it as an introduction before students explore other resources.

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

This video supports culturally responsive teaching by using fun and familiar examples from the online world that students may already see in their everyday lives. It connects to the idea of critical consciousness by encouraging students to think critically about the world and the information they come across (Ladson‐Billings, 1995). Teachers can also invite students to share examples of real or fake content they have seen in their own communities and online experiences.

CROSS-CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS

Health: Strand D: Healthy Living - Students can use the video’s tips to evaluate health claims, advertisements, and trends they come across online before sharing them with others.
Social Studies: Strand B: People and Environments - Students can explore how videos and images can shape opinions about people, places, and events, and practise checking whether the information is accurate.

MULTILITERACIES FRAMEWORK

Multimodality: The video combines moving images, sound, text, and humour to explain how students can tell fact from fake.
Experiencing: Students connect the video’s examples to content they have seen online or shared with friends and family.
Conceptualizing: Students learn and discuss ideas such as real, fake, reliable, and explain what makes them different.
Applying: Students use the video’s tips to check a new example of online content and explain their decision.

CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY

This video helps students build media literacy skills by teaching them simple ways to check if online content is real or misleading. It gets students to pause and question what they see before believing or sharing it. It also helps them think about who created the content, why it was created, and how it might influence others.

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS

A2.3 - Gather, Evaluate, and Use Information: Students gather, evaluate, and use information by considering its validity, credibility, accuracy, and different perspectives when deciding whether online content is reliable.
A2.4 - Forms, Conventions, and Techniques: Students explore how digital and media texts use techniques such as videos, images, and editing to make content appear believable and influence an audience.