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"We all have magazines at home and at school. They have a high student engagement factor in the classroom and are proving to be a very effective way to teach visual literacy, media literacy, and a host of Common Core standards. It all started for me when NBA basketball player LeBron James adorned the cover of several magazines, published within weeks or months of each other. Using Google's image search function, it was easy to locate and download cover images for the activity I planned with a large group of teachers. I created a one-page handout, which you can find here. (I have since revised this activity, using cover images of actress Jennifer Lawrence.) It seems every week, some celebrity is featured on more than one magazine. So this activity can easily be updated. Here's the trio I chose:"

"Our brains on multitasking aren't nearly as good as we think they are. Let's say you're working on an activity over here, on the right side of the brain, and suddenly you're trying to multitask another activity, like talking on the phone. You're not actually doing both activities at the same time, in fact, you're now diverting your attention from one part of your brain to another part of your brain. That takes time, that takes resources, that takes brain cells."

"The owner of video game marketplace Steam said it has removed a game where players could simulate a school shooting, a premise that sparked outrage among the families of survivors and turned out to be the work of a previously restricted publisher.  Valve Corporation said it has pulled Active Shooter, which was scheduled to launch on its Steam platform June 6. Steam offers a developer program allowing smaller game designers to publish their video games - commonly played on PCs or Macs - on the platform. Active Shooter was described as a "dynamic SWAT simulator" where players can choose to work as the member of a SWAT team attempting to disarm the shooter, or the shooter themselves."

Developed in collaboration with the Newspaper Association of America, Messages & Meanings is a collection of curriculum activities for analyzing print and electronic media. This resource includes instructional activities for strengthening access, analysis, evaluation and communication skills, as well as evaluating new technologies like internet web pages.

"But it doesn't end there.  In recent years, some researchers have argued that the latest generation of young people (i.e., "kids these days") are much more narcissistic and lacking in empathy.  This supposedly makes them less disciplined, more selfish, and less focused on self-improvement, an opinion that seems to be shared by the general population.  As one example, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 70 percent of American adults believed older adults to have better "moral values"  than young people do (young people being defined as "millennials" in the survey).  "

"It's become a basic truism that adolescence can be a time when we are far more likely to engage in different kinds of risky behaviour.  Since the teenage years often represent a "twilight stage" between childhood and adulthood, the desire to set aside childhood fears and try more adult activities can be hard to resist.  This can mean experimentation with drug and alcohol use, sexual activity, unsafe driving, and even brushes with the law at times. "

"The term 'slacktivism', a portmanteau of slacker and activism, appeared for the first time in the year 2009. It refers to casual or armchair activism, also known as clicktivism. Those who support the latter argument, question the real impact of the anonymous justice seekers whose commitment goes no further than the Facebook wall. They see it as superficial activism, no more than social marketing. For José Manuel Guerra de los Santos, professor in Social Psychology at the University of Seville, this type of behaviour reflects the need for internal reinforcement. "We all like to reinforce our self-worth, our ego, by feeling that we are taking part in meaningful actions. Social media makes it easy for us to fulfil that need." For him, 'social desirability' is a key driver. Supporting a cause is socially desirable. "But what happens next with such people? Will they go to a demonstration, will they get more involved? I don't think so, because it is low-level solidarity.""

"he same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of "likes" on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to a first-of-its-kind UCLA study that scanned teens' brains while using social media."

"While there is no demonstrated link between video game play and violence of the kind we have seen all too often in recent years, there is an active scientific debate over what we know and do not-and which next steps the scientific community should take to more definitively understand the dynamics of the many factors that are associated with highly damaging anti-social behavior. To help unpack the debate, I asked Cheryl Olson, Sci.D., one of the nation's leading authorities on the subject and author of Grand Theft Childhood to weigh in on the key research issues"

It would seem that for someone like Kim Kardashian West - queen of selfies, breaker of Internets, mother of two - sharing a nearly nude selfie with millions of followers on social media is a pretty ho-hum weekday activity. But her latest racy photo, published last week on Twitter with a mundane caption ("When you're like I have nothing to wear LOL"), quickly drew a mix of young, powerful celebrities into a debate over whether sharing such an image is a symbol of sexual empowerment, or an example of a powerful woman selling herself short."

"Gold and Phillip offered their insights on examples of rumors and misinformation in the 2016 campaign, discussed the competing issues and agendas they must navigate in their reporting, and chatted with students and educators about the active role young people can play as consumers and creators of news and information about political issues. The hangout was part of a special series on "Building News Literacy, Critical Media Skills, and Political Awareness Today" produced in connection to Letters to the Next President 2.0.  NLP NEWS Check out the News Literacy Project's latest developments. "

Facebook plans to migrate its Sponsored Stories ad platform into users' news feeds early next year, the company says. Introduced last January, Sponsored Stories - a new ad format integrating your Facebook friends' activities into small ads - began appearing in the column on the right side of the News Feed. Last month, the ads began appearing in the Ticker as well. Perhaps anticipating criticism for the latest migration of Sponsored Stories, a Facebook rep emphasized that the ads will be used sparingly. Most users, she says, will see the maximum of one ad per day in their News Feeds. The speed at which the ads cycle through the News Feed, meanwhile, will depend on various factors that Facebook hasn't yet determined, a Facebook rep says.

"Yes, it's that time of year again--just after the holidays.  Magazines in particular feature cover stories on losing weight.  And weight loss advertising seems to be everywhere, especially in these new year's publications. Presented here are some resources, ads, and activities that will encourage young people to use "critical thinking skills" as it relates to these persuasive forms of advertising.  Since teaching ad technique and awareness is in most state's health teaching standards, these ads are perfect for use in classroom settings."

"LESSON PLAN: UNDERSTANDING NEWS LITERACY July 24, 2013 To seek truth and report it lies at the heart of any journalist's mission. But what is "truth?" And will we know it when we see it?  Deciphering credible, accurate information from an abundance of perspectives is harder today than ever before. These lesson plans, developed by Megan Fromm and made possible through a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, will help you discover how teaching news literacy in your program develops critical minds, encourages active citizenship, meets Common Core state standards, and strengthens your publications' public reputation and perception."

"Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15 percent of all internet visits, and 91 percent of mobile internet access is used for social activities. By investing heavily in this space Twitter can essentially guarantee a richer future… and a significant audience uptick. This infographic from Super Monitoring takes a closer look at the state of mobile 2013."

"A preview of what the next wave of anti-corporate activism might look like. Call it Big Dada: speaking noise to power."

"Growing numbers of observers contend that the dominant public role of our time has shifted from citizen to consumer. Indeed, respondents in polls typically cite entertainment, shopping, and other consumer activities as their top free time preferences. Commercial media and public entertainment venues offer environments carefully constructed to avoid politics and real world problems that might disturb these consumer impulses. As people in global societies increasingly enjoy the freedoms of private life, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate about many broad public concerns. The personalized society enables people to choose individual lifestyles and identities that often lead to disconnection from politics. Many citizens become receptive only to consumer-oriented messages about tax cuts, retirement benefits, or other policies targeted at particular demographic social groups. Culture jamming is an intriguing form of political communication that has emerged in response to the commercial isolation of public life. Practitioners of culture jamming argue that culture, politics, and social values have been bent by saturated commercial environments, from corporate logos on sports facilities, to television content designed solely to deliver targeted audiences to producers and sponsors. Many public issues and social voices are pushed to the margins of society by market values and commercial communication, making it difficult to get the attention of those living in the "walled gardens" of consumerism. Culture jamming presents a variety of interesting communication strategies that play with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to make consumers aware of surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences that warrant their attention. "

"How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question. The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today. Here are eight findings that stood out to us:"

"Smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis. The survey also finds there is no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today. Minorities of teens describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative. These are some of the main findings from the Center's survey of U.S. teens conducted March 7-April 10, 2018. Throughout the report, "teens" refers to those ages 13 to 17."

"Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback who inspired a player protest movement but who has been out of a job for more than a year, has signed a new, multiyear deal with Nike that makes him a face of the 30th anniversary of the sports apparel company's "Just Do It" campaign, Nike confirmed on Monday. The first advertisement from Nike, one of the league's top partners, debuted Monday afternoon, when Kaepernick tweeted it, assuring that his activism and the protest movement against racism and social injustice he started would continue to loom over one of the country's most powerful sports leagues."

"Last week, a study published in the journal Developmental Psychology found that helicopter parents - those who hover over their children - can diminish their children's ability to regulate emotions and behavior. Concerns like these have spurred a backlash against overprotective parenting, with some parents, psychology experts and lawmakers calling for a return to a more laid-back style of child-rearing, with less parental involvement and more autonomy for kids. (This is, of course, a choice of privilege; in impoverished neighborhoods where children regularly encounter unwanted danger and adversity, few parents would actively choose more risk.) The movement to give children more independence got a boost last month when Utah became the first state to put into effect a "free-range parenting" law."