Critical Thinking: News and Media Literacy

What is journalism? Learn more about the history of Canadian journalism and the ideals of the profession. This article also addresses the impact of technology, multimedia and Journalism 2.0.

What are news agencies and how do they contribute to the news we get on TV, in newspapers and online? This article explains how news agencies contribute to our news feeds.

The Crash Course YouTube channel has a playlist for their series about media literacy. There is a quick preview video plus twelve videos that address various topics related to media literacy.

This 7 minute video from PBS describes efforts by educators and media literacy advocates to help students tell fact from media fiction. (American-based content)

This is an extensive (Canadian) resource that offers explanations of digital and media literacy fundamentals, as well as how these two concepts intersect.

Making Your Voice Heard: A Media Toolkit for Youth is designed to help young people understand how the news industry works (different roles), why youth stereotyping happens and how they can access media to get positive youth voices and stories heard.

Media Smarts has developed these "media minute" videos for use by educators. Each video discusses a specific topic in media literacy and includes a lesson plan (linked just below the video).

Mozilla has created a framework for entry-level web literacy & 21st Century skills. Explore the map by selecting what you want to learn more about: Participate, Write or Read. Each of the subsections provides definitions and teaching resources.

This page from the Media Literacy Now website has an explanation of media literacy with a short animated video. There is a second video that has high school students describing why media literacy is important to them.