In this activity, learners will examine mass media critically and become aware of how much advertising is around them. They will realize the impact media has on social equality, what people buy, and on culture.

A well-done set of units that helps teachers teach the importance of media literacy to their students. Click on Secondary School Introduction to see a video of teachers in the classroom instructing students in ways of using and...

Social media can be a place to connect, learn, and, most of all, share. But how much do kids know about what they're sharing - and not just about themselves but each other? Help students think critically about their digital footprints on...

MediaSmarts provides digital and media literacy lessons for students. In this lesson, students will learn to watch and listen to a television with a critical lense

Was it possible to manipulate photographs during the Civil War? Teach your young scholars about critical viewing through this innovative lesson and engage them in discussion, analysis and research to explain their findings.

When using copyrighted materials as part of the creative production process, you can document your own (or your students') fair-use reasoning process using this Google form. It's a tool to strengthen your critical thinking and reasoning...

Lesson plan tackles the turbulent events in Egypt and other Middle East countries by asking students to examine political cartoons and understand how social and traditional media served as a tool for the nonviolent protests. February, 2011

Is it real? Is it reliable? Can it be confirmed? Always check sources of news found through social media outlets before believing it. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is facing criticism for the amount of fake news posted on Facebook....

Contains plans for three lessons that teach students to examine junk mail critically. In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as assessment and reflection...

This article from Edutopia offers an overview of both the importance of media literacy and some innovative examples of teaching media literacy.

A tip sheet to help both students and adults learn how to test online content for validity.

In previous decades, most news with global reach came from several major newspapers and networks with the resources to gather information directly. The speed with which information spreads now, however, has created the ideal conditions...

Research regarding what is internalized and learned from television and the responsibility parents and educators have helping students to decipher between reality and fabrication. Media literacy, or how a viewer perceives what they are...

As educators, the goal of developing learners into discerning, critical viewers may enable them to negotiate with more confidence through the treacherous waters of today's multimedia. Studying the various viewpoints as expressed in...

This interactive activity, from the Web site developed for the PBS series "Building Big," explores tunneling and the tools and methods used to do the job.

In this interactive activity, from the Web site developed for the PBS series "Building Big," think like an engineer and use your knowledge of dome design to match the right type of dome to the right location in a fictitious city.

In this interactive activity from the Web site developed for the PBS series "Building Big," investigate hypothetical structural emergencies and figure out how to repair them.

Was it only a matter of time that people would begin buying into any news, even when it was actually fake? This writer felt it was no surprise. Find out why and how a librarian can help educate students how to best vet resources for...

Critical appraisal tests like CRAAP and RADAR can also be used to evaluate the credibility of news websites and the stories they produce (which often go viral on social media). Here are some more resources to help you check! (CRAAP...

Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart. [4:48]

Part of a teacher workshop called "Making Civics Real," this section explains how to use questioning, especially Socratic questioning, in problem-based learning. For those not used to employing the Socratic method, the "Taxonomy of...

In this blog, a teacher offers strategies for building engaging digital lessons as a result of the Covid Pandemic. My first task is to figure out how to make my lessons clear. I am working without the benefit of being able to circle the...

Twenty-six half hour videos on literary analysis for high school students that feature authors, scholars, actors and noted critics. Topics include The Art of the Essay, Setting and Character in Short Fiction, Responding to Literature and...

A founding father of the New Criticism movement in literature, this is a brief biography of Robert Penn Warren featuring his poetic and fictitious contributions to the literary world. See "Robert Penn Warren Activities" for related...