In the Nova Scotia Vision for the Integration of Information Technologies, media literacy is considered to be an essential part of information technology.
The following excerpt details how media education and information literacy combine to create literate citizens.
Teachers promote social, cultural, racial and gender equity when they provide opportunities for students to critically examine the texts, contexts, and environments in the classroom, in the community and in the media.
Technology, including information technology, makes it possible for students to interact more and more easily with a wide range of visual, aural, and print media. IT manipulation is not enough; students must also learn to evaluate resources to better extract information, make decisions about it, and so construct meaning. Also, our pedagogy must consistently provide an opportunity and a priority for students to develop and present their understandings.
As students prepare to take meaningful places in our society, educators must apply IT wisely to promote their literacy, intellectual development, and ethical growth. The result should be student self-respect; their empathy towards human diversity; their wisdom and understanding; and their commitment to life-long learning and the well-being of others.
The curriculum is comprised of cumulative, key-stage outcomes for the integration of information technologies within the public school program.
Learning Outcomes Framework
There are five components to the learning outcomes framework for the integration of IT within curriculum programs:
- Basic Operations and Concepts: Concepts and skills associated with the safe, efficient operation of a range of information technologies.
- Productivity Tools and Software: The efficient selection and use of IT is to perform tasks such as
- the exploration of ideas
- data collection
- data manipulation, including the discovery of patterns and relationships
- problem solving
- the representation of learning
- Communication Technology: The use of specific, interactive technologies which support collaboration and sharing through communication.
- Research, Problem Solving, and Decision Making: The organization, reasoning, and evaluation by which students rationalize their use of IT.
- Social, Ethical, and Human Issues: That understanding associated with the use of IT which encourages in students a commitment to pursue personal and social good, particularly to build and improve their learning environments and to foster stronger relationships with their peers and others who support their learning.
Nova Scotia Vision for the Integration of Information Technologies (K-12)
To obtain specific, media-related outcomes within the Information Technology curriculum, as well as supporting resources for individual grade levels, see the sidebar. (Note: as many of our lessons can be adapted to suit different grade levels, specific lessons may be listed for more than one grade. Teachers should also note that individual lessons often satisfy a number of learning outcomes.)
