Junior Scholastic Teaching Kits
Teacher-approved stories, resources, and worksheets, courtesy of Junior Scholastic, the middle school Social Studies classroom magazine.
Featured Teaching Kits
Teacher-approved stories, resources, and worksheets for teaching about digital literacy and media literacy in your classroom, courtesy of Junior Scholastic, the middle school Social Studies classroom magazine
Spotting Fake Photos
It can feel like social media is flooded with fake photos designed to trick you. It’s becoming a big problem, but you can take steps to avoid being fooled. Read this article to learn how to browse smarter—and safer.
Ads Hidden on Social Media
As social media becomes a bigger part of our lives, companies are scrambling to keep up. Some of them have started hiding advertisements in plain sight, right in the middle of your social media feed. Can you tell a post from an ad?
Are You Hooked on Your Phone?
Info on your smartphone is designed to grab your attention and keep it—the average teen spends 4.6 hours a day on their phone! Find out why it’s so hard to put down your phone—and then learn some tips to make it a little easier.
All About Fake News
Fake news isn’t just a problem for internet users. The flood of fake news in our social media has started to have some very serious real-world effects. Learn the real facts about fake news and how you can keep from falling for it.
Quotes
Famous quotes about digital literacy
“Media literacy is not just important, it’s absolutely critical. It’s going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.”
— Linda Ellerbee, journalist
“No matter what the source, information is only powerful if students know what to do with it. As students are inundated with media messages, the challenge is not to amass more information, but to access, organize, and evaluate useful information from a variety of print and electronic sources.”
— Kathleen Turner, author
“There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.”
— Matt Taibbi, author and journalist
“Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves.”
— Henry Jenkins, author
Key Figures
Four people who made an impact on digital literacy
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web. The British computer engineer created the first web browser and set up the world’s first website in 1991. He also devised Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a widely used computer programming language.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg is the co-creator and chief executive officer of Facebook, a powerful social networking site with global reach. Since its creation in 2004, Facebook has grown into a multibillion dollar company with more than 1 billion users.
Susan Wojcicki
Wojcicki is one of the country’s most powerful technology executives. She was one of Google’s first employees and advocated successfully for Google to buy YouTube, a video-sharing website, in 2006. Today, Wojcicki runs YouTube as its chief executive officer.
Steve Jobs
As co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc., Jobs helped develop and popularize user-friendly personal computers in the 1970s. He went on to transform the way people access and listen to music by helping develop the iPod. Later, he influenced the way people use cell phones with the introduction of the iPhone.
Resources
Supplemental resources that pertain to digital and media literacy
Glossary
Terms and definitions that pertain to digital and media literacy
alternative media
noun
news and entertainment outlets, especially on the internet, that are not part of the mainstream media
mainstream media
noun
traditional forms of mass communication, such as newspapers, TV, and radio
media literacy
noun
the ability to choose reliable news sources, identify news and other forms of communication and understand the messages being communicated
product placement
noun
an advertising technique used to subtly promote a company’s products through placement in TV shows, movies, video games, and other media
propaganda
noun
false or exaggerated ideas spread in media and speeches to help or cause damage to a political cause
skew
verb
to make biased in a way that is inaccurate, unfair, or misleading
Explore Other Topics
Discover other free social studies topics and middle school teaching resources from Junior Scholastic magazine.
MachineHead/Getty (students); Thomas P. Peschak/National Geographic Creative (real shark image); Instagram (Selena Gomez post); Dean Belcher/Getty Images (eating cereal); iStockPhoto.com/Getty Images (Computer); David Sucsy/Getty Images (White House); Aaron Foster/Getty Images (UFOs); Felipe Trueba/EPA/Shutterstock (Berners-Lee); Taylor Hill/Getty (Zuckerberg); Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25 (Wojcicki); Alexandra Wyman/Getty (Jobs)
