Countless organizations, community groups and schools organized tremendously successful events across Canada for Media Literacy Week 2009. Below are testimonials, pictures and videos from some of these events.
If you would like to contribute your stories or pictures, please e-mail Media Awareness Network.
What Does Media Literacy Mean to you?
On Monday, November 2, 2009, the Manitoba Association of Computing Educators and Manitoba Education jointly sponsored an exciting evening to kick off Media Awareness Week and to explore how it supports the province-wide critical and creative thinking initiative ICT Across the Curriculum.
The first portion of the evening featured four virtual presentations by leading Canadian educators, followed by a combination of a live and virtual panel of K – 12 educators from across Manitoba discussing what media literacy looks like in their classrooms. Thirty-five individuals participated in the live audience and many more participated virtually via our UStream.TV broadcast. The entire evening is archived for future viewing on a USTREAM.TV Channel. The activating video for the event, Show Your Media Literacy, has already been viewed on YouTube over a thousand times.
Panel Discussion Featuring Montreal Media Personalities
The English Montreal School Board marked Media Literacy Week with a high profile panel discussion at Rosemount High School on November 3.
Students from Rosemount High School joined students and teachers from East Hill, Edward Murphy, Nesbitt and John F. Kennedy at the event moderated by Steve Kowch, a graduate of Rosemount High and the news and program director at CJAD Radio. Panellists for the event included Chantal Desjardins of Virgin Radio 96 FM, CTV Montreal News executive producer Barry Wilson, Mitch Melnick from THE TEAM 990 and Mathieu Potvin, a collaborator in the Université du Québec à Montréal YouTube sensation lipdub of the Black Eyed Peas “I got a feeling” video.
Experimental Films and Educational Documentaries
The Media Education Working Group’s film event on November 2, organized with the help of various media organizations from around the province, featured experimental films and educational documentaries. In between screenings, a group of media educators from the National Film Board (NFB), the Association for Media Literacy, and the Media Education Project led group discussions, connecting these films to other contemporary media practices and potential classroom uses.
The NFB brought three short films, highlighting the experimental tradition within Canadian film. These films are available through the NFB’s Web site, along with hundreds of other films for use in classrooms. The Canadian Filmmaker’s Distribution Centre brought two experimental films in 16mm format, which ‘re-mixed’ traditional, authoritarian educational films from the 1950s. This use of film to question its own pedagogical potential generated some excellent discussion and segued perfectly to the final collection of films, from the Media Education Foundation (MEF). The MEF films were contemporary documentaries tackling important issues of representation in mainstream media texts.
Media Literacy in Nova Scotia
November 2-6, Lighthouse Media Group partnered with the South Shore Regional School Board, DesBrisay Museum, Empire Theatres and the Royal Canadian Legion to present Time To Remember - Time To Envision for the students of South Shore, Nova Scotia. Close to 2000 students attended sessions where they saw locally produced videos featuring WWII veterans from the area. Afterwards, they got to meet with veterans right in the theatre. The students returned to the classroom to reflect on the experience and then share their interpretations via a community Web site: www.southshorenow.ca/timetoremember.
Media Education Workshop
For the third consecutive year, Beat Richert, media observer, futurologist, media education professional and evangelist of the digital revolution, gave a media education workshop at Joseph-François Perrault High School in Montreal. The workshop, which took place in two 1.5-hour long sessions, was integrated into the geopolitics course and was used to demystify the media industry amongst secondary 5 students. Together they analyzed how the industry functions to better understand how people consume and produce media and its interdependence on publicity.
Digital Conversations
November 4-5, Vancouver's Pacific Cinémathèque guided students from the Social Justice course from across the Lower Mainland in the production of Public Service Announcements. Exploring bias, media construction and issues of global citizenship in the digital age, students created PSAs on assigned topics. Following this, students used video rants to express their own views about the success or failure of digital media in engaging youth in global issues. All the resulting videos will be posted on Pacific Cinémathèque’s YouTube Channel to encourage further discussion and comments from the participants' classes and from fellow youth around the globe.
Media Literacy in Toronto
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Mediatheque continues to be at the forefront of media literacy awareness. As part of Media Literacy Week 2009, the NFB participated in engaging and thought provoking programming. This included free screenings for high school students of two brand new NFB documentaries (RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Roadsworth: Crossing the Line) in the NFB Cinema followed by a discussion focusing on the principles of media literacy. In addition, throughout the week we offered free screenings on our digital viewing stations of films that help us to learn through and about media. The week ended on a high note with a popular participatory workshop facilitated by the NFB’s award winning filmmakers Katerina Cizek and Heather Frise about interventionist media.
Media Literacy Training in Montreal
Two groups of educators (elementary and high school teachers) from across Montreal and surrounding areas met up at the Segal Centre's MediaWorkshop and participated in day-long media literacy trainings. There were over 20 educators at each workshop which were led by filmmaker and media educator, Paul Shore.
Media Literacy in the Classroom: A Workshop for Educators took place at the elementary school level on October 30. Featured panelists and guests included Louise Bourque from Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS) and Association of Teachers of English of Quebec's as well as Suzy Brisson from MELS. The high school workshop took place on November 6 and featured guest panelists Susan Peters from Hebrew Academy and once again Ms. Bourque.
News Gathering in the Digital Age
Media Awareness Network (MNet), the Canadian Teachers’ Federation and Encounters with Canada, a program of the Historica-Dominion Institute, marked the start of Canada’s 4th annual Media Literacy Week (November 2-6), with a panel discussion on the impact of digital media on journalism and news gathering in the 21st century. Over 100 students from Encounters with Canada participated in the event which was also streamed live on the Media Literacy Week Web site. A copy of the video is available on MNet's YouTube channel.
The English Montreal School Board marked Media Literacy Week with a high profile panel discussion at Rosemount High School on November 3.
November 2-6, Lighthouse Media Group partnered with the South Shore Regional School Board, DesBrisay Museum, Empire Theatres and the Royal Canadian Legion to present Time To Remember - Time To Envision for the students of South Shore, Nova Scotia. Close to 2000 students attended sessions where they saw locally produced videos featuring WWII veterans from the area. Afterwards, they got to meet with veterans right in the theatre. The students returned to the classroom to reflect on the experience and then share their interpretations via a community Web site: 
November 4-5, Vancouver's Pacific Cinémathèque guided students from the Social Justice course from across the Lower Mainland in the production of Public Service Announcements. Exploring bias, media construction and issues of global citizenship in the digital age, students created PSAs on assigned topics. Following this, students used video rants to express their own views about the success or failure of digital media in engaging youth in global issues. All the resulting videos will be posted on 
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Mediatheque continues to be at the forefront of media literacy awareness. As part of Media Literacy Week 2009, the NFB participated in engaging and thought provoking programming. This included free screenings for high school students of two brand new NFB documentaries (RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Roadsworth: Crossing the Line) in the NFB Cinema followed by a discussion focusing on the principles of media literacy. In addition, throughout the week we offered free screenings on our digital viewing stations of films that help us to learn through and about media. The week ended on a high note with a popular participatory workshop facilitated by the NFB’s award winning filmmakers Katerina Cizek and Heather Frise about interventionist media.
Two groups of educators (elementary and high school teachers) from across Montreal and surrounding areas met up at the Segal Centre's 
Media Literacy in the Classroom: A Workshop for Educators took place at the elementary school level on October 30. Featured panelists and guests included Louise Bourque from Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS) and Association of Teachers of English of Quebec's as well as Suzy Brisson from MELS. The high school workshop took place on November 6 and featured guest panelists Susan Peters from Hebrew Academy and once again Ms. Bourque.
