Games | News Sources | Organizations | Professional Development | Resource Hubs

Curriculum

Be Internet Awesome
A media literacy curriculum produced by Google that teaches students the fundamentals of digital citizenship and safety through a series of lessons and an interactive game called Interland.

Civil Rights Lesson Plans (Newseum)
These tools teach students to think critically about news coverage during the Civil Rights movement and today. They learn how the press works and the social and technological challenges reporters faced then and now.

Deconstructing Disney (Media Education Lab)
Seven engaging activities that promote reflection and dialogue about Disney culture. This fun intergenerational workshop explores what we love and hate about Disney films, characters, and brands from the past and present.

Détournement Unit
This four-week unit focused on creating video détournement, which I developed during my doctoral studies, provides a guide for implementing the détournement project in your classroom–complete with readings, videos, and détournement creation resources. I have implemented the détournement project in several different contexts, so if you’re wondering how best to implement the project in your context, please send me an email!

Digital Citizenship Curriculum (Common Sense Education)
This series of lessons tackles timely topics to support teachers with improved classroom tools and prepare students to take ownership of their digital lives.

Free Speech Essentials (Newseum)
A free resource created by Newseum, this is a collection of lesson plans centered around critical questions related to the First Amendment.

Media Constructions of Social Justice (Project Look Sharp)
High School through College – This kit explores how people in the United States have perceived social justice movements over the past 180 years and how the U.S. media have constructed that public perception.

Media Education Lab Teaching Resources
The Media Education Lab creates free multimedia curriculum materials to help learners of all ages advance knowledge, skills, and competencies relates to CML. Based out of the University of Rhode Island, their mission is to advance media literacy education through research and community service, emphasizing interdisciplinary scholarship and practice that stands at the intersection of communication, media studies, and education.

News & Journalism Lessons (PBS Student Reporting Labs)
A series of ten lesson plans organized by grade level that takes students through a crash course on news and journalism, from “What Is Newsworthy?” to “Production Team Work and Planning.”

Rock Your World
An innovative, project-based middle/high school curriculum, Rock Your World inspires students to ask bold questions about the challenges they see in their neighborhoods, communities, and the world around them, and then engages them in the development of advocacy campaigns designed to overcome those challenges.

Games

A Day in the Life of the Jos (Paid)
(Grades 6-8) In this educational game, students help the brother and sister team Jo and Josie with situations they encounter online as they go about a typical day in their lives. The modules are represented as five days in the lives of Jo and Josie, covering topics that research has identified as being important for youth: cyberbullying, data privacy, privacy and reputation, privacy ethics, and authenticating online information.

Factitious
This simple game challenges students to identify which news stories are real and which ones are fake, teaching them the importance of looking beyond first impressions when encountering news stories. There are six game levels and three reading levels for middle school, high school, and college.

Fake It to Make It
This fun, interactive game teaches students about the ulterior motives behind creating fake news. It was created to help users be more skeptical of the news they encounter.

Reality Check (Media Smarts)
These fast, fun, and engaging activities provide teens and adults the opportunity to test their skills and learn new authentication techniques. Each scenario is designed to be played in 15 minutes or less, and each mission matches one of the five Reality Check topics: 1) News You Can Use, 2) Authentication and Citizenship, 3) Getting the Goods on Science and Health, 4) Authentication 101, and 5) We Are All Broadcasters.

News Sources

Blue Feed, Red Feed
Produced by the Wall Street Journal, this news feed enables users to see Liberal and Conservative Facebook posts side by side to demonstrate to students how reality may differ for different Facebook users.

Organizations

ELATE Social Justice Commission
This is the online platform for the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) commission for social justice. It contains resources for teaching social justice as well as a new discussion forum each semester to engage students in online conversations about timely topics with other students all over the country.

National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)
The official organization for media literacy education in the United States, NAMLE offers helpful resources for teachers, media literacy news, and a link to their academic journal, the Journal of Media Literacy Education. Membership is free, and the community of educators provides an invaluable network of support.

Project Look Sharp
An outreach program at Ithaca College, Project Look Sharp provides training and materials for K-16 educators to integrate media literacy and critical thinking into their existing curriculum. They provide a variety of professional development opportunities and a collection of free media literacy resources for the classroom.

Professional Development

CML for Teachers
This eight-module professional development resource, which I developed during my doctoral studies, introduces teachers to CML through articles, conversations, and resources designed to teach them why CML needs a place in their curriculum and how to go about integrating it in practical ways.

Resource Hubs

ACME Resources and Trainings
From half-day professional-development presentations to week-long institutes, the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) offers a wide variety of fun, interactive, hands-on SmartMediaEducation trainings for classroom teachers and working professionals interested in deepening their understanding of “best practices” in media education.

Critical Media Project
This resource is designed to enhance young people’s critical thinking and empathy while building on their capacities to advocate for change around questions of identity. It features videos from a variety of pop culture sources on topics of age, class, disability, gender, LGBTQ, race & ethnicity, and religion; each video is accompanied by discussion questions to guide teachers in a critical interrogation of the videos with their students.

Education 466: Critical Media Literacy (UCLA)
Developed by leading CML scholar, Jeff Share at UCLA, this platform organizes the topics and resources included in the UCLA Teacher Education Program’s CML course, which prepares educators for teaching K-12 students to explore their relationships with media, technology, and pop culture by critically questioning different types of representations and creating their own alternative media messages.

The Global Critical Media Literacy Project (GCMLP)
GCMLP is a digitally connected network of educators, activists, and students dedicated to CML education at all stages of life. This hub provides access to resources and tools, students work, and an electronic forum for users to engage in productive dialogue.

The LAMPlatoon
Similar to the Critical Media Project, LAMPlatoon features a collection of problematic advertisements from contemporary media for the purpose of encouraging people to think critically about media they see every day. It also features a MediaBreaker tool that provides a ready-made resource for creating a video détournement.

Mass Media Literacy (MML)
MML is committed to ensuring that all children in Massachusetts have access to comprehensive media literacy education. Their resource hub contains a general information sheet, tips for evaluating news, and a resource list for engaging with CML from a variety of perspectives.

Media Literacy Now
This collection of resources organized by Media Literacy Now is intended as a convenience to teachers, parents, and students. It features links to a variety of classroom materials, media literacy organizations, and other resource hubs.