G7-Media Balance

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My Media Use:
A Personal
Challenge

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP | GRADE 7

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Essential Question

What is your strategy for finding media balance?

Multiple Choice

What is media balance?

• When the media gives you information that is balanced instead of biased

• Using many types of media so that the amount of time you use it is equally balanced

• Using media in a healthy way and is in balance with other life activities

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Make an inventory of their media choices
and how those choices make them feel.

Brainstorm personal strategies for balancing
media use.

Create personal guidelines to promote
healthy media balance.

Learning Objectives

l

2

3

Poll

Do you think you have media balance?

• yes

• no

• I'm not sure

Open Ended

List ALL of the digital media you use in a day. (Not devices, but apps, software, sites...for example, WeChat, Teams, YouTube)

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What?

When?

What are the media you're
consuming (or creating)?

For example, are you watching
a movie? Searching for videos
on YouTube?

Playing online games?

What device(s) are you using to
consume (or create) the media?

When are you consuming
(or creating) the media?

What day of the week?

What time of day?

What else is happening at this
time (e.g., during dinnertime,

right after waking up in the
morning, etc.)?

How much are you consuming?

How long did you spend
consuming (or creating) the
media?

How often do you consume
the media?

What makes a healthy media plan for me?

How much?

Open Ended

When do you use this media?

In the morning? At home before school? At home after school? In your classes? At lunch?

Poll

If you add up all the hours you use digital media in a weekday, how much time do you spend using it?

• 0-2 hour

• 2-4 hours

• 4-6 hours

• more than 6 hours

Open Ended

List 5 positive effects of digital media.

Open Ended

List 5 negative effects of digital media.

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What are some of the effects—positive and negative—of
media use?

Directions:

1. Take a moment to write a response to this question.

2. Then, take turns sharing your response with your partner.

ACTIVITY: WRITE-PAIR-SHARE

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OBSERVE + ANALYZE IMAGE

Source: Center for Humane Technology, 2018.

Observe this graph.

What do you see?

Open Ended

What do you see in this graph?

What do you observe? What is the x-axis? What is the y-axis?

How does it represent the number of minutes per app?

What is being compared?

Open Ended

What is this graph telling us?

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KEY VOCABULARY

Guideline

A set of criteria or piece of advice for how to do something

Word Cloud

Imagine your friend was out of media balance because they watch 4 hours of YouTube each day.
What is one thing they could do to decrease their time on YouTube?

(short answer)

Word Cloud

Imagine your friend was out of media balance because they spend 5 hours per night on WeChat.
What is one thing they could do to decrease their time on WeChat?

(short answer)

Word Cloud

Imagine your friend was out of media balance because they spend 6 hours per night on Microsoft Teams.
What is one thing they could do to decrease their time on Microsoft Teams?

(short answer)

Poll

Do you think you have good media balance?

• Yes

• No

Word Cloud

Why is it important to have media balance?