Media Literacy

Students in today’s society are continually bombarded by advertisements, video games, websites, television shows, newspapers and magazines.  Even clothing and CD covers may convey messages and influence students’ lives.

Media texts can use words, graphics, sounds, and/or images, in print, oral, visual, or electronic form, to communicate information and ideas to their audience.  

Media literacy focuses on construction of meaning through the combination of several media ‘languages’; images, sounds, graphics and words.

Students must be able to apply critical thinking skills to media products and messages.  Understanding what an advertisment is trying to get you to buy, or influence how you think, is necessary for students to respond intelligently and responsibly.

At GLC, students not only develop their media literacy skills, but also have opportunities to view, analyse, and discuss a wide variety of media texts and relate them to their own experiences.  They also use available technologies to create media texts of different types, such as computer graphics, cartoons, graphic designs and layouts, short videos and web pages.                                                                                                                                                                  

- from The Ontario Language Curriculum, Media Literacy – page 13.