Minding Media: New Media Literacy Educational Resources for Children

A set of digitised, interactive media literacy educational resources have been created to help children learn more about media, advertising, fake news and social media.

Between the ages of 8-12 children’s knowledge of the persuasive tactics used in the media is growing. The challenge is that as children become more expert and adept at consuming digital technologies, the nature and form of the commercial messages they see also becomes more sophisticated, stealthy and covert. Children remain vulnerable to the harms and unintended effects of digital media consumption. In response, the Minding Media Educational Resources have been carefully designed to complement the media literacy learning outcomes of the Wellbeing Curriculum in Primary School”.

Dr Vicky O’Rourke, Senior Lecturer in Research Development at the Faculty of Business, ATU Donegal

The resources comprises of 4 modules:

1. What is Media?, Advertising Literacy, Fake News and Social Media, and the resources comprise:
2. A Minding Media Video Training Library: 8 short videos, and interactive quizzes (4 for children aged 8-10, and 4 for children aged 10-12).
3. A Minding Media Minecraft Education World: 4 sub-worlds (1 per module) dedicated to solving media literacy related challenges, treasure hunts and quests, along with an instructor’s manual.
4. A Minding Media Teachers Toolkit: 8 step by step lesson plans for use in the classroom, with accompanying lesson plan slides (4 for children aged 8-10 and 4 for children aged 10-12)

The ‘Minding Media’ resources are free to use, and are available to download at www.mindingmedia.eu For more information please contact: Vicky.orourke@atu.ie