EC&I 832 Learning Journals – Jordan Halkyard's Portfolio

Final Project Overview

As the world continues to become more reliant on digital technologies, it is imperative that schools recognise this reality and adapt to the needs of students. If students are going to be successful in the world outside of school, they need to be familiar with all of the ways to communicate and engage with the world around them. This means that they will need to become comfortable with all the possible ways to communicate and go beyond the traditional forms of expression that have been used previously.

The Saskatchewan English Language Arts (ELA) curricula’s main goal is to help students “become effective communicators, learners, and critical thinkers through developing their skills as viewers, listeners, readers, representers, speakers, and writers” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 4). As students progress through from kindergarten through grade 12, the hope is that their literacy skills will continually progress and allow them to develop a multitude of literacy-based skills in a multiple modes of literacy. To help the course adapt into the modern age, it is imperative that educators and government stake holders recognize the importance of evolving media literacy in the required literacy skills students need to be ready for the realities of the modern world.

All of Saskatchewan’s ELA courses should include some form of media literacy education, and this project will focus specifically on the province’s ELA B10 course. This is one of two ELA courses that are currently required in the province. The course is supposed to take place over one semester, and is divided into two suggested themes:

Equity and Ethics

– for this theme, students examine questions of right and wrong while also reflecting on their own morals and judgements. Students also look at questions of what shapes their ethics, and how their values can change and adapt over time.

The World Around and Withing Us

– this theme asks students to look at how they are part of a larger community, and how their community contributes to who they are as people. As well, it asks students to investigate how nature, their constructed worlds, and their understanding of themselves to become agents of change to help build a better world.

(Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 10-11)

In addition to the two themes, students are asked to demonstrate their understanding and skills in three outcome indicator areas:

Comprehend and Respond (CR):

skills associated with student skill in areas of viewing, reading, listening, comprehending and how they respond to the texts they interact with.

Compose and Create (CC):

skills associated with writing, speaking, and other forms of representing to allow students to express thoughts, feelings, and experiences to an audience.

Assess and Reflect (AR):

skills associated with students assessing their own language skills and what they can do to improve their language skills and setting goals for future improvements.

(Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 4-5)

These themes, and the three outcome areas associated with ELA courses, provide amble opportunities for integration of aspects of digital citizenship and media literacy, as outlined in the Saskatchewan Digital Citizenship Continuum (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2015). Like the Saskatchewan ELA curricula, the Continuum provides a progression of skills from kindergarten through Grade 12 that see students progress their knowledge and application of digital citizenship and media literacy skills in the overarching areas of “respect, education, and protection” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 14), which are meant to align with Ribble’s Nine Areas of Digital Citizenship. These Nine Areas hope to make students more comfortable with the skills that are necessary to function in digital spaces, while also empowering students to become engaged digital citizens who are ready to express their beliefs confidently in digital spaces.

The emphasis that ELA B10 puts on students grappling with deep questions of morality and their impacts on the world make it a perfect candidate for infusion of digital citizenship content. For students to be prepared for all the kinds of texts they will encounter in their lives, and they need to also enhance their digital and media literacies. This project will align Saskatchewan ELA B10 outcomes, Saskatchewan Digital Continuum Knowledge and Skills, and resources from sources such as Common Sense Education, Media Smarts, and other digital citizenship education organizations in the hopes that more ELA teachers in Saskatchewan can see how digital citizenship can be incorporated into their classrooms and how digital literacy skills can align with the traditional literacy skills in the ELA curriculum.

Below, are links to the blog posts I have written for the different lessons I have curated. They will be separated into the two course themes of “The World Around Us and Within Us” and “Equity and Ethics.”

The World Around Us and Within Us

Curated Lives: Teaching Students to Show Their True Selves Online

The Filter Bubble and how it fits into ELA B10

Combating Confirmation Bias: A Lesson Battling Fake News

Having Students Reflect on Their Online Behaviour and Usage Through Journaling

Starting off the semester with a technology survey

Equity and Ethics

Digital Citizenship as a Tool to Combat Hate Speech

Using Digital Citizenship Skills to Talk About Cyberbullying in ELA B10

Trying to Teach about Privacy Rights

As well, I made a final reflective post about my final project, which can be read here.

References

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Final Project Final Reflection

After going through resources about digital citizenship and trying to connect them to ELA B10, I can see that there is a lot out there and a lot of potential for what can be done in trying to infuse high school ELA course with digital citizenship content. However, there needs to be a clear commitment about this from all stakeholders involved, including government and school divisions.

ELA B10 is a course that centres around themes of “Equity and Ethics” and the “World Around Us and Within Us.” Both of these are fantastic themes that make students ask questions around right and wrong, as well as what makes them them. By the end of the course, I hope that students come out of it with a better idea of their morals and how the world they have been surrounded with has influenced their identity. In the modern age, this also includes questions of digital ethics and how constructed online world influence who we become. The lessons I have curated in this project provide a good start for how to have students begin to ask these questions, but they are just that. A start.

The Saskatchewan ELA 10 curriculum came out in 2011, and while that is still much newer than many other curricula in the province, it is still starting to show its age. Students are still asked to write a business letter to file a complaint, or to write journal entries. While these tasks do have value, they can still feel inauthentic to the lives of students in 2023. The curriculum should continue to change and adapt with the lives of the students it is serving. While teachers are free adapt outcomes to fit their needs, the curriculum should still reflect the types of skills we want students to be able to receive.

By providing more digital citizenship and media literacy content to students, we are getting closer to providing students with those key skills that they need. Students should grapple with questions in the spaces they inhabit now, especially online spaces. That is why it is valuable for students to take some of those questions about racism, sexism, and other ethical issues and shift them to online space to better reflect the lives of our students, and to give them the skills to use these skills in their real lives.

The biggest takeaway from this project I got came from Cho, Cannon, Lopez, and Li’s “Social media literacy: A conceptual framework” (2022). This article made me change my view of what literacy is, and what it needs to look like going forward. The article asserts that if social media literacy is going to be affective, we need to shift our view of what literacy means. Instead of being about the finished product that is being analysed, the individual choices of consumers is what needs to be looked at. What social media literacy looks like is going from an evaluation of a finished product to “the evaluation of one’s values” and going from “production to contribution” (2022) to the greater common good. Seeing these words made me want to bring more reflective practices into my classroom, not just about students’ reading and writing goals, but their contributions to the world.

Much like how Cho and company spoke about a shift in literacies, we too need to shift our view of what ELA can look like. With the infusion of more digital citizenship and media literacy into our ELA classes, teachers across Saskatchewan can let this shift begin.

References

Cho, H., Cannon, J., Lopez, R., Li, W. (2022). Social media literacy: A conceptual framework. New Media and Society, p. 1-20. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14614448211068530.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Trying to Teach About the Privacy Rights

Outcomes

CRB10.1- Comprehend and respond to a variety of visual, oral, print, and multimedia texts that address:
• identity (e.g., Diversity of Being);
• social responsibility (e.g., Degrees of Responsibility); and
• social action (agency) (e.g., Justice and Fairness)

CC B10.2 Create and present a visual or multimedia presentation supporting a prepared talk on a researched issue, using either digital or other presentation tools.

Digital Continuum Skills

Understanding the legal implications of online activity

Course Theme

Equity and Ethics

Overview of the topic and lesson

Privacy rights and other aspects of the legal implications of digital citizenship can be difficult to teach. These topics are dense and complicated. Even trained legal professionals could struggle to adequately explain how privacy rights work, and what the implications of them are, so how are teachers supposed to be able to properly prepare students to understand their rights online. This is a difficult topic to try and approach, but organisations have tried to give a road map for how to teach about this.

In 2016, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and MediaSmarts teamed up to try and create resources for teachers to teach their students about online privacy and some of the legal consequences that can come from being online. One of the resulting lessons was titled “The Privacy Dilemma.”

The lesson takes students through a series of case studies about students dealing with privacy issues online. The first one is about a Grade 10 student named Rick who notices a camera in his school cafeteria. Seeing the camera makes Rick think about all of the cameras he interacts with on a day to day basis, from school to the webcam in his computer. This leads Rick to do more research about cameras in public, and he presents a report to his class about what he learned. The second case study is about a Grade 12 student named Jill who starts to get targeted ads for dating services on a website she shops on. Jill begins to worry that she is getting sent ads that are someone far older than her, and she starts to think about whether her younger sister could get similar ads online. The final case study is about a Grade 9 boy named Jared who gets in trouble at school for photos that were posted online of him without his permission. A photo was taken of Jared drinking something, and people begin to claim that it was alcohol. Jared objects, but he gets into trouble with his parents over the photo (Johnson, 2016). Students are to be divided into groups, with each group doing a different case study before sharing their findings with the class.

Each case study has some value, but there is also potential for them to be elevated slightly. Instead of just reading and sharing about their case study, students could create a role play, or write an alternative scenario. This could allow students to start to think about a time in their lives when they experienced something similar.

After going through their case studies, students are to go onto the Privacy Commissioner of Canada website to the “What information is collected about me when I am online section?” Students are supposed to go through the website and see how much of the information on it applies to them. As well, they are supposed to learn about what information is collected about them as soon as they go onto a website, and try to learn what they can do to protect their privacy online (Johnson, 2016). The hope is that students will learn about the different ways their data can be collected, and what they can do to stop this, such as using private browsers and adding content blockers, as well as managing their internet history (Office of the Privacy Commissioner, 2020).

The culminating activity for this lesson is to have students create a video essay about what they have learned about privacy. To successfully do this, they are encouraged to go through the full process of creating a video, from storyboarding and scripting, to getting ready to shoot the video. This is a valuable part of the video creation process because it allows students to see the full process that is necessary to create a video. As well, their videos are not supposed to be too long. MediaSmarts encourages just a one to two minute video (Johnson, 2016). This could allow students to use platforms they may be more familiar with, such as TikTok, to upload their content to. As well, the content they create could be used to be shared with other students to teach them about privacy online, and what they can do to protect their data.

As well, there are other ways that students could use what they learned to help encourage others around the school to learn about online privacy. Students could create a podcast through a service like Audacity to communicate problems people have had with online privacy, or they could create posters and other marketing materials on services like Canva to educate their fellow students about these issues.

By providing students with opportunities to educate their peers about these issues, they may be encouraged to take more control of their learning, and they may be able to more effectively communicate a message about digital citizenship to their peers. By allowing students to use mediums they are familiar with, it may allow them to provide a more powerful message.

Refernces

Couros, A. & Hildebandt, K. (2015). Digital Citizenship Education in Saskatchewan Schools. Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. file:///Users/jordanhalkyard/Downloads/83322-DC_Guide_-_ENGLISH_2%20(5).pdf.

Johnson, M. (2016). The Privacy Dilemma. MediaSmarts. https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/lesson-plan/Lesson_Privacy_Dilemma.pdf.

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2020, Jan.). What kind of information is being collected about me online? https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/about-the-opc/what-we-do/awareness-campaigns-and-events/privacy-education-for-kids/fs-fi/choice-choix/.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Using Digital Citizenship Skills to Talk About Cyberbullying in ELA B10

Outcomes

CR B10.2 View, interpret, and report on ideas and information from more than one source to develop and support positions on various topics related to the course including identity, social responsibility, and personal agency.

CC B10.2 Create and present a visual or multimedia presentation supporting a prepared talk on a researched issue, using either digital or other presentation tools

Digital Continuum Skills

Evaluate and discuss case studies and video vignettes that foster building healthy relationships in
a digital world including cyberbullying, sexting and homophobia.

ELA B10 Course Themes

Equity and Ethics

How this lesson fits with ELA B10

As the lives of students have gone online, so have many of the problems that are present in the real world. In 2019, 1 in 4 Canadian students between the ages of 12 and 17 reported being victims of cyberbullying (Statistics Canada, 2023). Just as with the traditional form of bullying that came first, cyberbullying is a major issue that needs to be addressed by all stakeholders in children’s’ lives, including educators.

In ELA B10, students are asked to look at questions of equity and ethics. Part of equity and ethics is making sure that all members of a society can feel like they are safe to express themselves as they see fit, but this may not be possible to happen if someone fears that they are at risk for harassment because of how they wish to express themselves. This includes online. Although this lesson comes the Grade 11 curriculum with Common Sense Education, these questions fit best with the ELA B10 curriculum because of its emphasis on right and wrong, and how one’s actions can affect the lives of others.

Students in ELA B10 should be able to explore how cyberbullying affects their lives and the lives of their fellow students. Along with this, students should then be empowered to challenge cyberbullying and to provide strategies for their fellow students to combat cyberbullying and to be ready to see it around them.

Overview of the Lesson

As with all Common Sense Education lessons, there are slides and a worksheet to go along with the lesson. They can be adapted to best fit needs.

The lesson begins with a brief video about Netflix star Millie Bobby Brown, who left Twitter after being subject to harassment on the platform. Students are asked to think about what could have motivated this reaction from Brown, but also from the people who harassed her. What could have made them go after her? Why did they feel they could do this?

Students will then watch a video from PBS Digital Studios called “Is the Internet Making Us Meaner?” The video presents students with interesting ideas about why people can feel more free to be cruel, or to overshare online, because of a concept called the “online disinhibition effect.” The basic idea of this effect is when online the voice inside people’s heads that can tell them not to share something is turned off (PBS Digital Studios, 2019). However, the video also points out that this effect is not always bad, as it can also lead people to reach out to others for support online, and for other people to give them that support (PBS Digital Studios, 2019). This is because there are two types of disinhibition: toxic and benign. Toxic disinhibition can create a harmful environment online characterised by harsh rhetoric, while benign presents a more pleasant and welcoming atmosphere online. Students will also go through the causes of disinhibition: anonymity, lag time, and a lack of non-verbal cues. All of these can have positive of negative effects on online communication.

Students are then given a pair of situations where people are targeted online. One is a celebrity, and the other is a regular teenager. Students will need to discuss how the three causes of disinhibition could have lead to the targeting, and will also need to suggest a way to counter the disinhibition.

How to Extend the Lesson

Presenting the scenarios is a great start to ending off the lesson, but this can also be extended further by giving students to take part in a form of a role play for one of the situations.

Students could choose one of the two situations and act it out. As they are going through, they could present ways that the factors of disinhibition played a factor in the targeting, and what can be done to stop something like this from happening again.

This could be extended further by having students film their role plays to be turned into vignettes to use with other classes around the school to teach about disinhibition and its effects.

Additional Resources

Cyberbullying: Online bullying affects both victims and bullies- This video from CBC Kids News gives a nice primer on cyberbullying to set a good definition for a class. It is a little below Grade 10 level, but it could still be used to reintroduce the concept and get students ready to talk about it.

References

CBC Kids News. (2022). Cyberbullying: Online bullying affects both victims and bullies [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFsI5ZTe3ro.

Common Sense Education. (2019, August). Online Disinhibition and Cyberbullying. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/online-disinhibition-and-cyberbullying.

PBS Learning Media. (2019, August). Is the Internet Making You Meaner? | Above the Noise [Video]. Public Broadcast Service.https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/internet-making-you-meaner-above-the-noise/internet-making-you-meaner-above-the-noise/.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Statistics Canada. (2023, Feb. 21). Cyberbullying among youth in Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2023017-eng.htm.

Digital Citizenship as a Tool to Combat Hate Speech

Outcomes

CC B10.2 Create and present a visual or multimedia presentation supporting a prepared talk on a researched issue, using either digital or other presentation tools.

Digital Citizenship Skills

Use digital technologies to engage as active citizens.

Curricular Themes

Equity and Ethics

How This Topic Fits with ELA B10?

For years, there has been a sharp rise in hate speech that is spread online, and this rise only got worse during the pandemic, when it was believed there was at least a 20% rise in hate online (BBC, 2021).

The way many people talk online is hateful, and there are real world consequences because of this kind of speech. In ELA B10, students have to engage with questions of equity and ethics, including if the way people are being treated online fits with our definition of equitable treatment. If online spaces are going to be considered a part of public life, then they should abide by the same rules of decency and respect that are present in the rest of society. Students should engage with these types of lessons so they can gain a better understanding of what online hate speech is, and what they can do online to help combat it.

Overview of the lesson

Like all Common Sense Education lessons, there are a set of slides, and a worksheet to go along with the lesson.

The lesson begins with having students watch a short video where other teens speak about their experiences with online hate speech. As students are watching the video, they should be listening to the experiences of the teens to try and create their own definitions of what hate speech is. Students should share their definitions so a class definition of hate speech can be created. Before moving on to the additional texts for this lesson, students will need to have a definition for hate speech and xenophobia.

Hate Speech= An attack using any form of communication targeting a person or people because of a group they belong to — race, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.

Xenophobia= he fear or distrust of someone or something that is foreign or unknown.

Students will use this definition when they are reading or watching the two sources they choose for the next phase of the lesson. As students read or watch their texts, students will need to explain what their sources say about xenophobia and hate speech online, and how online hate speech can be addressed.

The sources students can choose from are:

Xenophobia: The Fear of Strangers– a guide that tries to give readers a basic overview of what xenophobia is, different kinds of xenophobia, and how they can see it in themselves.

Is YouTube Radicalising You? – a video from CBC News that includes an interview with a sociologist who tries to explain the role YouTube can play in spreading hate speech online.

Instagram Has A Problem With Hate Speech And Extremism, ‘Atlantic’ Reporter Says– An NPR News Story about how extreme content and memes has migrated onto Instagram, and what Facebook, Instagram’s owner, should do about it.

Common Sense did a good job here of providing a wide variety of sources students can choose from. These sources include multiple forms of media, including print, audio, and video mediums. Students can experience the medium they are most comfortable with and use that to go deeper into the topic. After reading with a partner, students can share their findings with the class, and this can help to students to understand why xenophobia and hate speech are problems.

The lesson concludes with a discussion of “counterspeech.” Counterspeech are messages that challenge extremism (Common Sense Education, 2019). Students begin with a video from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue about how online hate speech can be different from offline hate speech, and it provides a definition for what counterspeech is.

After this video, students will watch a piece from YouTube from the creator Hamza Arsad about how his life has been impacted by hateful ideas about Muslims, and how he tries to combat these ideas through comedy. As they are watching the videos, students are to note how Arsad uses counterspeech, and asks them to start to think of ways that they could use counterspeech in their own lives. Students are asked to think of broad areas of discrimination, such as racism or sexism, and students will then describe how they could use online platforms to go against these narratives.

How to extend the lesson

The lesson ends on a good note, students beginning to think about how they could use counterspeech to go against negative ideas. However, while it is great to have students begin to think about how they can use social media platforms to combat hate speech, it would be even better to see them actually try to do it.

To extend this lesson, students could have to actually create a social media campaign about one of the areas of discrimination they spoke about. Students could work in groups to create a campaign for their school to help combat racism they may see in their community, or they could create a vignette to talk about the dangers of hateful talk online. This would help to take the theoretical ideas presented in the lesson and make them more real.

Other Resources that Could be Used in this lesson

The Making of a Youtube Radical– the story of Caleb Cain, a West Virginia junior college student who feel down a rabbit hole of right wing online content, fits well with the ideas of how YouTube can feed viewers extreme content, and how consumers can be passive in their viewing as it becomes too late for them to combat the ideas they are presented with.

References

Baggs, M. (2021, Nov. 15). Online hate speech rose 20% during pandemic: We’ve norlamised it. British Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-59292509.

Common Sense Education. (2019, August). Countering Hate Speech Online. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/countering-hate-speech-online.

Laud, Z. (2019, June 7). Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.

Roose, K. (2019, June 8). The Making of a YouTube Radical. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Curated Lives: Teaching Students to Show Their True Selves Online

Outcomes

CC B10.1 Compose and create a range of visual, multimedia, oral, and written texts to explore:
• identity (e.g., Diversity of Being);
• social responsibility (e.g., Degrees of Responsibility); and
• social action (agency) (e.g., Justice and Fairness).

AR B10.2 Set personal language learning goals and select strategies to enhance growth in language learning.

Curricular Theme

The World Around and Within Us

Overview of the Lesson

Social media allows for new kinds of self-expression that were not possible before. Since users are not necessarily interacting with people they know, they have more freedom to express themselves in ways that would not have been possible to them before. People who may otherwise be afraid of judgement from their communities can find a safe space to try things they could not before online.
However, there can be problems with this kind of self-expression when the online version of oneself comes into conflict with the version that is in the offline world.

This lesson asks students to reflect on the version of themselves they put out on social media, and whether or not that version matches with who they are offline. Along those same lines, students begin to ask themselves if there is only “real” version of themselves, or if there can be multiple parts of themselves that come together to form one whole.

As with other Common Sense Education lessons, they provide a set of slides and a worksheet that can be used with the lesson. These resources can be adapted to best fit the needs of any teacher.

Start of the lesson

Common Sense Education suggests beginning the lesson by having a discussion with students about whether they link the “you people see on social media is the real you?” (2019)

While beginning with this type of questioning may be appropriate, it could also be worthwhile to have students begin the lesson by thinking about what kinds of things they see shared on social media, and why those things get shared? As well, since social media thrives on engagement, students could also think about what kinds of posts they see that get the post “likes”, and why people engage more with those particular posts.

After discussing their ideas with the class, students are to watch a short video about teens and their opinions about what they see on social media. As they are watching, students should be keeping track of the different speakers and trying to find one who stood out the most to them in terms of what they had to say. Students will then share what they thought with the class.

Development of the Lesson

During the development phase of the lesson, students are to work in partners and go over two resources of their choosing. Two of the resources are videos, and one is an article.

This is not recommended by Common Sense, but I would recommend having all students use the article, and they can choose one of the two videos to watch. This would allow for more types of literacy skills to be utilised in the lesson.

The resources are:

Are you living an Insta lie? Social Media vs. Reality– YouTube video about the lengths people will go to appear “perfect” on social media.

Our Digital Selves Official Teaser #4– a documentary trailer about the video game Second Life and the people who play it. This trailer seems to take the position that these types of games can allow people to extend their existence and do things that they may not be able to do in their non-digital lives.

I Have 2 Million Instagram Followers, But No Friends– New York Post article about online influencers who feel an emptiness from not having friends to share their successes with offline.

For these resources, students are to take notes on the handouts provided about what each text is saying about “curated” vs. “real” selves. As well, they need to think about what the benefits and drawbacks of each sources depiction of the two selves presented.

Conclusion

As a final piece of assessment, students are to make an avatar for how they wish to be presented when online. Common Sense recommends using the website Avachara, a free online avatar creator. From going through the website, this particular site seems a little outdated, and there are other potential avatar creators students could use, such as Fotor, another avatar maker with a more high resolution engine.

The most vital part of this exercise is to have students reflect on the aspects of their real and curated selves that are present in their avatars. This should have students examine the parts of themselves that are important, and the aspects of their identity that they want the world to see, and what they want to keep private.

The goal of this lesson is not to necessarily make students want to share all aspects of their lives online, but it should make them more aware of what they are sharing online and if they want others to see that. While the process of posting has not always been considered a part of the reflective process, it is important for students to become reflective posters if they are going to be caring and engaged digital citizens.

References

Common Sense Education. (2019, August). Curated Lives. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/curated-lives

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Having Students Reflect on Their Online Behaviour and Usage Through Journaling

Outcomes

CC B10.4 Create a variety of written informational (including a business letter, biographical profile, problem solution essay) and literary (including fictionalized journal entries and a short script) communications.

AR B10.2- Set personal language learning goals and select strategies to enhance growth in language learning.

Course Theme

The World Around Us and Within Us

Overview

For students to engage with their media consumption they should take time to reflect on what they are consuming and why they are consuming it. This is why students should take time to journal about their social media habits, and what they liked or did not like about that media.

One aspect of the ELA course in Saskatchewan that can be easily overlooked are the Assess and Reflect (AR) outcomes. These are the outcomes that ask students to reflect on their language learning and create goals about how they want to improve in their language learning in the future. These outcomes require a lot of time and modelling for students to understand what it takes to make a deep reflection of their work.

One way to expand the Assess and Reflect outcomes is to redefine what is meant by “language skills” in the curriculum. Many times language skills can only be described as a student’s reading and writing skills, but their language skills go far beyond those two strands of literacy. Students need to think about all strands of their literacy, including their social media literacy. To do this, students will journal about their media consumption on two days of the week and reflect on what they viewed and what they think this media was telling them.

The hope with this task is to have students investigate why they are making the choices they are on social media to try and gain a better understanding of themselves. Part of this deals with the change in focus social media literacy has from mass media literacy. In their conception of social media literacy, Cho, Cannon, Lopez, and Li state the social media competency of analysis differs from analysis of traditional media in how it “includes the abilities to monitor and observe one’s social media use behaviour, motivations, and outcomes” (Cho et al, 2022). For reasons like this, social media literacy needs to be looked at with a different set of skills than traditional media analysis. Instead of analysis of the content being presented itself, the focus of analysis in social media shifts to the self and “the choices it makes about what content to consume and engage with” (Cho et al, 2022). This makes social media literacy a much more reflective process that requires more time for consumers to think about their choices and what values they represent.

How it can de conducted?

Social media journaling could take a number of forms. Students could be encouraged to set up traditional blogs on websites such as WordPress, or Blogger and update their blogs once a week, or whatever amount of time the teacher sets as they believe appropriate.

However, traditional written blogs do not have to be the only way students can journal about their social media lives. Students could create a monthly vlog where they take on a month long investigation into what their social media diets look like. They could look at the amounts of time they spend on certain apps, and go through what they were most likely to engage with.These vlogs do not have to be uploaded to a website like YouTube if students are not comfortable with putting their videos out into the world.

As well, there is no reason that students could not take part in the practice of traditional journaling if access to digital technology is a problem. They will still be engaging with the process of reflecting on their media consumption and the affects their choices have on them.

No matter what their method of journaling is, the practice of consistent reflection should aid students in assessing their own media choices and help them develop a deeper sense of social media literacy.

References

Cho, H., Cannon, J., Lopez, R., Li, W. (2022). Social media literacy: A conceptual framework. New Media and Society, p. 1-20. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14614448211068530.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Combating Confirmation Bias: A Lesson Battling Fake News

Outcomes

CRB10.3- Listen to, comprehend, interpret, and summarize information and ideas presented in a variety of literary and informational texts including group discussion, oral readings, interviews, prepared talks, and a talkback show about a topic or issue being studied.

CRB10.4- Read, interpret, and summarize a wide variety of classical and contemporary literary (including drama, biography, autobiography, poetry, short stories, novels) and informational (including letters, diaries, memoranda, electronic communications) texts.

Digital Continuum Skill

Examine the “viral nature” of online communication and identify strategies to combat
the spread of negative and anonymous postings.

ELA B10 Course Theme

The World Around Us and Within Us

Fake News and Its Impacts on Students

The online media landscape has allowed for an easier spread of misinformation than ever before. As it becomes easier and easier for anyone to post anything with little vetting it becomes more important for consumers to be critical of the information they are getting from digital sources. However, many of these non-credible online sources are difficult to distinguish from legitimate sources because of a seemingly professional appearance and a tone that can sound credible. This is why it is vital for people to develop a critical lens when it comes to online content. Since schools are the primary teachers of literacy skills, it is then important that they begin to prepare students to understand how they can be tricked online

However, many students are currently not getting enough of a understanding of how they can be fooled by online information. A 2021 study found two thirds of American students studied were unable to distinguish between news stories from ads on a popular website (Breakstone et al.). As online information continues to become more sophisticated it is the responsibility of educators to instruct their students about how fake news sources can try to persuade them to believe untrue information.

How it fits with ELA B10?

One of ELA B10’s key themes is “The World Around Us and Within Us.” This theme asks students to think about the aspects of the world that impact their view of the world, and how they can challenge these perspectives, but also these forces can change them if they are not critical about what they are consuming.

The media environment students are in can have major impacts on how they view the world at large. This lesson from Common Sense Education asks students to examine their biases and question where they came from. Students should engage with their biases and ask these kinds of questions to gain a better understanding of themselves and the constructed worlds around them.

Overview of the Lesson

This lesson hopes to teach students about the concept of confirmation bias and why it is so easy to fall into. It provides students with a working definition of what confirmation bias is, and by the end it asks them to come up with strategies for how they think people should combat their own confirmation biases.

Along with the lesson plan itself, Common Sense Education has also provided a slide show, handouts, and a final quiz that can be used as well.

The lesson begins with giving students a list of three potential news stories. You tell them one is real and other two are fake. In reality, all three of them are fake. The examples from Common Sense Media are:
“Japan finally abandons microwave ovens by 2020”
“New iPhone will come with a holographic keyboard and projector”
“Australia to introduce 33 different genders on passport
When you are explaining to the class that all of the stories are fake, this reveals a confirmation bias we have. This is when we believe something because it conforms to things we already believe and not because it is really true
Play this video from PBS Digital Studios “Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News?” which tries to explain how confirmation bias works and how it affects the real world. It is important to note that it is an American source, so some terms like Republican or Democrat may need to be defined for students as they are watching.
As students are watching, they should be trying to take notes to answer the question “Why does confirmation bias make us more likely to be fooled by “fake news”? After you are done watching, discuss this question with the class.
After discussing with the class, students will get a chance to work in partners to watch a video and read one of two articles about confirmation bias. The video, “Defining Confirmation Bias”, is a short 2 minute video that attempts to give students example of confirmation biases. The two articles, “Cover up Your Confirmation Bias is Showing” and “Scientists Discover Simple Psychological Tools to Battle Fake News”, go deeper into confirmation bias and its affects on the world students see today. As students watch and read the resources, they will be taking notes about what their chosen resources have to say about confirmation bias and how it can be challenged.
The final piece of assessment students are asked to take part in is to use the skills they learned about from their article and video to create a mnemonic device remember the skills for how to combat confirmation bias.
Examples: CHeK (Consider other perspectives, Hold back from drawing conclusions, Keep asking questions), GAL (Google other sources, Ask if the story supports what you already believe, Look for articles that show the other side).
To add on to this final assessment, I would recommend having students make posters or other visuals to display their mnemonics. These could possibly be displayed around the school to remind students about these skills.

Conclusion

Confirmation bias and how it helps to spread fake news are topics students should have to grapple with in courses such as ELA B10. As students begin to understand how their world is shaped overtime, they should also have to confront the harsh truths of the biases they hold, and how these biases can be exploited to spread misinformation. By learning about how fake news can spread, hopefully students can recognise what they can do to help stop it.

References

Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., and Saaverda, A. (2021). Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait. Education Researcher, 50(8), 505-515. https://doi-org.libproxy.uregina.ca/10.3102/0013189X211017495.

Common Sense Education. (2019, August). Challenge Confirmation Bias. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/lesson/challenging-confirmation-bias.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Starting off the semester with a technology survey

When looking through the Saskatchewan Digital Citizenship Continuum, one of the first key skills students will need to do is look at their schools technology policy and use that to co-create a “Responsible Use Policy” (2015). This policy should make it clear how students can use technology in the classroom, and what appropriate use would look like. However, before these kinds of policies can be created, proper modelling of what proper use means and what that could look like in the classroom.

In our current climate, the use of technology in the classroom is becoming a very hot topic. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has even recently found that one in four countries have banned the use of smartphones in schools, with it being mose common in South and Central Asia (2023). Proponents for such bans claim that they help to raise student grades, and help to protect students from the frequent distractions that come from frequent smartphone notifications. However, there is also contention that the outright banning of technology from schools will lead to even greater disadvantages for students as they will be unable to work with the technologies that make it necessary to succeed in the modern world.

This is why it is necessary to find a balance between the two sides. Students need to understand that technology is like any other tool. There are times to use them, and times when they may not be the best help. As well, outright bans of technology from schools takes one group out of the discussion: the students.

Students need to be empowered to have a voice in how technology will be used in their classrooms and how they use to look. At the start of the school year, students should take part in a discussion about what technology should look like in their classroom, and what appropriate classroom technology behaviour is.

The Purpose of the Survey

I created an example survey on Google Forms that could be used at the beginning of the semester to get an understanding of students use of technology.

My reasoning in creating this survey was to understand students access to technology at home, and to also get a feeling for what they think would be appropriate when it comes to classroom technology use. Their suggestions around what an appropriate classroom policy would be would allow for students to have more agency in how class is conducted, and it would also allow them to reflect on their own technology use. Hopefully, this would set a baseline for what appropriate behaviour would look like in the classroom. As well, the survey could be used as a way to gage what knowledge students are coming into the classroom with when it comes to technology. It should give some idea of what skills students have when they come into the classroom, as well as what technological skills they want to work on the most for the semester.

Conclusion

While some believe that using technology in the classroom should be limited to try and prevent distraction, forbidding technology in the classroom may lead to students being further behind in the digital skills they need to be developing. Hopefully, by allowing students to have a voice in how technology should be used in their classrooms students will feel like they have contributed to the discussion of what is appropriate or not, and they will have a clearer idea of what appropriate online behaviour looks like in their circumstances.

References

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (2023). Global education monitoring report 2023: Technology, in Education: A Tool on Whose Terms? https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385723.

The Filter Bubble and how it fits into ELA B10

Outcomes:

CR B10.1 – Comprehend and respond to a variety of visual, oral, print, and multimedia texts that address:
• identity (e.g., Diversity of Being);
• social responsibility (e.g., Degrees of Responsibility); and
• social action (agency) (e.g., Justice and Fairness).

CC B10.2- Create and present a visual or multimedia presentation supporting a prepared talk on a researched issue, using either digital or other presentation tools.

Course Theme

The World Around and Within Us

Digital Citizenship Continuum Skills:

Weigh the value of online “filter bubbles” and their impact on search results and their implications for society.

Resources:

Eli Pariser’s Ted Talk about Filter Bubbles- https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?referrer=playlist-how_to_pop_our_filter_bubbles&autoplay=true

Wall Street Journal “Blue Feed, Red Feed”- https://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/

Ahmadi, Shaherzab. “Lesson Plan: Filter Bubbles.” https://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/2018/01/02/lesson-plan-filter-bubbles/

The Filter Bubble:

“Filter Bubbles” have been a hot topic in digital citizenship for over a decade.

In 2011, internet activist Eli Pariser introduced the concept of the “filter bubble” in his 2011 book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. In addition to his book, Pariser delivered a Ted Talk the same year his book was realised, and it has gone on to have been viewed millions of times.

Pariser was one of the first people to speak about how the algorithms used to recommend content on the websites like YouTube and Facebook can have detrimental impacts on the relationships between people with different political perspectives. He believed that because internet were becoming more personalised to individual users, more information was being kept away from users instead of seeing all of the information they needed to see to be fully informed on any host of topics. To put it simply, Pariser believed the internet was showing what users “want to see instead of what we need to see” (Pariser, 2011).

In the decade plus since Pariser first spoke about the filter bubble the power of algorithmically recommended content has transformed and become even more powerful. For this lesson, students are asked to investigate the impact filter bubbles have on them, and how they impact the way they view the world.

This topic fits well with the course theme of “The World Around Us and Within Us.” The apps that students use, and the algorithms and artificial intelligence these apps use to predict what they will want to see, can affect the way students understand the world, and it is important that students gain an understanding of how their online activity can impact their worldviews. Students should also be empowered to engage with their own filter bubbles to think about how they can shape them and how they can take control of the content they see.

Lesson Overview:

Ahmadi recommends one period for this lesson, that also includes a final project, to introduce the concept of a filter bubble, and to allow students to start demonstrating their skills in the area.

For this lesson, there are a few changes I would recommend to make to the lesson to ensure student understanding.

Begin the lesson with Pariser’s Ted Talk video about “Filter Bubbles.” Before playing the video, I would recommend making it clear to students that the video comes from 2011, so there have been some changes that have happened since then, but the concept Pariser is talking still holds power today.
After watching the video, discuss the concept with the class, and introduce how we can see filter bubbles around us today. For example, students can conduct Google searches on different topics and compare the results they get. As they are comparing results, they can be asked about what may be influencing the differences in results they are seeing around the room. As well, they should start to think about the broader topic of how seeing different results on search engines like Google can alter your world view and change your activities in the world.
Students will then look through the “Blue Feed, Red Feed” service from the Wall Street Journal. This website creates an example of what a Facebook feed can look like for a conservative and a liberal user. One drawback of the service is that it has stopped being updated, and has been archived from 2019. As they are investigating the posts, they should be looking for examples of different tones that are used in the verbs and adjectives that are used in the headlines. As they are reading, they should be thinking about what the intention is in using these types of words, and what the potential impacts could be on their audiences.
After investigating the feeds, have students discuss common factors they could find in the use of language in the conservative and liberal feeds. Ask them about the similarities they can see in the use of language and how this could impact the worldviews of audiences. Also, have them think about what could influence the formulation of these feeds.
Have students reflect on their own social media bubbles. What kinds of websites and viewpoints dominate? What kinds of people (ethnic background, class, gender, etc.)? How can these representations of the world impact their worldviews?
As an final assessment, students should create a type of advertisement to try and reach across the divide and appeal to someone in a different filter bubble. This can be for any type of product or service, but they should try to appeal to someone that is in a different background than them. This should help students to expand their view of others and try to think from a different perspective. Ahmadi recommends using Canva to create the advertisements. This service allows students to make a wide array of visual projects, and provides templates that can help students get started with their projects. As well, there is a new AI service from Canva called Magic Design that allows students to refine their work even more.

Other Resources that can be used for this topic:

“How Algorithms Spread Human Bias” by Corey Patrick White

a TED Talk from 2021 about how algorithms and their recommendations can have wide spread impacts on society, and can help spread dangerous ideas such as racism. This topic can be quite heavy for students, but it can still be important for them to understand the potential impacts of these ideas.
“How TikTok Reads Your Mind” by Ben Smith
A New York Times article from 2021 that tries to explain to readers the way that TikTok’s algorithm has made it the most successful app of the last few years.

References

Ahmadi, Shaherzab.(2018, Jan. 2). Lesson Plan: Filter Bubbles. Digital Writing and Research Lab. https://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/2018/01/02/lesson-plan-filter-bubbles/.

Keegan, Jon. (2019, Aug. 19). Blue Feed, Red Feed. The Wall Street Journal. https://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/.

Parsier, Eli. (2011, March). Beware Online “Filter Bubbles.” TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?referrer=playlist-how_to_pop_our_filter_bubbles&autoplay=true.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2011). Saskatchewan Curriculum: English Language Arts 10. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=37.

Smith, B. (2021, Dec. 5). How TikTok Reads Your Mind. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html.

White, C. (2021, May). How Algorithms Spread Bias. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/corey_patrick_white_how_algorithms_spread_human_bias.

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