In the early months of 2011, the eyes of the world were on the Middle East, watching as the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and other autocratic regimes buckled under the pressure of democratic protest. Among those watching were a group of elementary students in northern Canada, who were able to watch a live Twitter feed of the protestors and other citizens of the region reporting what was happening. Despite their geographical isolation, these students were connected to events happening halfway around the world, thanks to the efforts of their teacher to bring digital media into the classroom.

Few professions in our society have been as affected by the advent of digital technologies as teaching: from cell phones in classrooms, to the use of Wikipedia and other online resources in coursework, to the push to integrate ICT across different subject areas, every aspect of teachers' professional lives has changed. And not only their professional lives: the increasing popularity of social media, among both youth and adults, has made it harder than ever for teachers to keep a clear line between their professional and personal lives.

In 2011, Media Awareness Network began Phase III of its ongoing study Young Canadians in a Wired World. The first two phases, released in 2001 and 2005 respectively, were a watershed in our understanding of how Canadian youth use the Internet, and continue to be relied on and widely cited by researchers and government agencies. To launch the long-awaited Phase III, MNet began with a qualitative research study in which teachers who had been identified as having been successful in engaging their students positively and creating an excellent learning environment in the classroom – one elementary and one secondary teacher from the North, the West, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic region – were asked about the role played by digital technology in their lives and their professional practice. Over the course of a semi-structured interview they volunteered their opinions about their students' abilities to make effective use of digital media, obstacles to teaching youth digital literacy skills, ways of overcoming these obstacles, ways in which emerging digital technologies can enrich students' learning, and strategies for managing the use of digital technology in the classroom.

Adults are often dazzled by the technical proficiency shown by youth in using digital media, particularly their ability to seemingly master new tools almost instantly – moving from MySpace to Facebook, for instance, or learning to use the latest model of smartphone. What our survey group told us, however, is that our impression of students' abilities is often misleading. As one secondary school teacher from the Atlantic put it, “I don’t think students are all that Internet-savvy. I think they limit themselves to very few tools on the Internet and they don’t think it’s as expansive as it could be. They’re locked into using it in particular ways and don’t think outside the box... I’m always surprised at the lack of knowledge that students have about how to search and navigate online.”

In particular, teachers were concerned about how uncritical students were about the information they found online: one elementary teacher from the North referred to an incident in which grade five students researching the Sasquatch myth – surely a topic that called for extra scrutiny – were taken in by a website that had been intended as an obvious and humorous hoax. Much of the misinformation that's available on the Internet, of course, is much less innocent – from online scams to subtle hate sites – which shows just how important it is for youth to learn tools and strategies for authenticating the information they find online.

When asked about the challenges teachers face in helping students get the most out of digital media, our respondents identified five main issues:

• the pressure to teach technical skills instead of digital literacy skills;
• the impulse to revert to “drill and kill” teaching methods;
• the potential for digital technologies to cause disruptions in the classroom;
• the shortage of professional development opportunities for teachers to learn how to integrate digital media in the classroom; and
• the issues that arise with Internet filters and bans on personal digital devices such as tablets and smartphones.

This last was the issue most often mentioned by teachers: many reported being unable to make full use of digital media in their classroom practice due to being unable to access services such as Twitter, Skype and YouTube. One teacher's story highlights both the limits of filtering and the best response to encountering inappropriate content online: after one of his students had stumbled upon a hate site – a type of inappropriate site that often goes undetected by filters – he had the whole class examine it critically: “They didn’t know what they were looking at. I asked them to look a little closer, and some of them started to see it and others still couldn’t. And that interested them, because I could see something they couldn’t. That was a way for them to see, for them to get interested in the idea that somebody was actually preaching hatred and it didn’t even feel like it.”

This example shows how the teachers in our study were able to volunteer strategies and solutions to address each of the issues they identified. All of our respondents told us that they spent little or no time teaching students how to use particular technologies, but chose instead to focus on the skills they need to access, understand and use the content they would encounter using those technologies. An elementary teacher from the Western region, for instance, introduced iPads to her class with no more technical instructions than to tell them “if you don’t like where you end up, press the round button on the side.” Allowing the students to teach themselves how to use the technology gave her the time to integrate it more meaningfully into the curriculum and into her classroom practice.

One particularly interesting finding of the survey was the role a teacher’s age played in the integration of digital media in the classroom. While one might assume that younger students would be more comfortable in using digital media, survey participants said that more senior teachers' experience in classroom management gave them the freedom to take chances and give up some control to students, letting them take the lead and teach themselves – and one another. Many participants talked about the importance of having access to mentors in helping them bring digital media into the classroom, particularly with the shortage of professional development time and resources reported by nearly all of the respondents.

Despite these issues, teachers had no trouble identifying several significant ways in which digital media are already enriching students' school experience. As well as providing access to a wealth of knowledge and learning resources (provided students were able to tell good information from bad), teachers told us that digital media gives students new opportunities to have an impact outside of the classroom, by publishing their work and communicating with people around the world, and to collaborate with their peers both during and outside of school hours. Finally, teachers also spoke of the value of digital media in allowing them to appeal to students' different learning styles – giving math instruction in a visual or kinesthetic form, for example, through a “virtual protractor.” This also held true for students with special needs, such as the student with autism who used a dictation program on his iPad to overcome his difficulties with writing.

Although teachers were generally positive in their attitudes towards digital media, they did recognize that it brought challenges as well – particularly with regards to students' and teachers' privacy. Teachers told, for instance, of colleagues being filmed with cellphone cameras at school dances, causing them to worry about how their actions might be taken out of context later; of feeling unable to participate in social networks like Facebook, despite the opportunities they provide for personal learning and professional networking, due to the fear of blurring lines between their personal and professional lives; and, of course, the disruptions caused by digital devices of all sorts in the classroom.

Despite these issues, our survey participants overwhelmingly felt that digital media provide tremendous opportunities for teachers and students – so long as students are taught how to engage critically with the media they consume and to consider the ethical ramifications of what they do online: as an elementary teacher from the Northern region put it, “the biggest skill they need is a moral compass.” Today's students are not just users of digital media, they are citizens of the online world. This survey makes it clear that young Canadians need to learn digital literacy and digital citizenship in their schools, and that teachers need to be provided with the tools, support and learning opportunities to be ready to teach them those skills.

To view the full report, Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Teachers' Perspectives, visit the MNet website.

Surely you've heard of Inspector Spacetime, the cult British TV series that's run (with interruptions) since 1962. It has a tremendously active, engaged fanbase that's created blogs, videos and music devoted to it. Oh, and one more thing -- it never existed. It was made up as a thirty-second gag on the sitcom Community, as a parody-cum-homage of Doctor Who.

But that didn’t stop the fans; within days of the episode's airing, a genuine Inspector Spacetime fandom had emerged, devoted to celebrating and debating a show that never was. A message board was created to coordinate the creation of the show's fictional canon, with fans receiving tips from the actor who played the Inspector on Community. The show's producers took note of this response, naturally, and Inspector Spacetime has become one of the show's running gags.

This sort of response is nothing new, of course: it parallels the relationship between Doctor Who and its fans, particularly in the long period when that show was off the air. Nor is the amount of work involved in creating this material that unusual -- fan-fiction has been one of the mainstays of the Internet since the days of Usenet. What is perhaps unusual is that all of this started on Community, one of the lowest-rated shows on American network television and a likely target for cancellation at the end of this season (at the time of writing, it had been removed from the midseason lineup, with no return date announced.) The disconnect is obvious: if Community is so engaging that one of its throwaway gags inspires an entire fictional fandom, why aren't more people watching it? But perhaps the reverse question is more important. Given the commitment that fans have to the show, are ratings measuring the wrong thing?

Of course, Nielsen ratings have come a long way from the days when Star Trek was canceled. As well as raw numbers, they also measure demographic data, and so far as the networks are concerned all viewers are not created equal: Community is one of the top-rated shows among young viewers with college degrees, but only if you count those who watch it after its initial airing (which adds a full 40 per cent to its viewership, an unusually high number). That's a lot of qualifiers, though, and advertisers don't generally count time-shifting viewers on the not unreasonable grounds that they're likely to skip past the commercials. The fact that NBC has not announced if Community will return in the new year suggests that even with both demographics and time-shifting taken into account, the network is not happy with its numbers.

Advertisers may be right to be wary of shows, like Community, with small but devoted audiences: there's little evidence that those audiences are any more likely to buy the products advertised than those who watch shows with larger but more casual viewerships. Even the example of Star Trek, which famously went from a canceled television series to a never-ending succession of movies and spinoffs, should be taken with caution. The short-lived series Firefly has a fanbase that is equally dedicated -- in fact, you're more likely to see a "Browncoat" in costume these days than a Trekkie -- but Serenity, the feature-film follow-up, was a flop.

It would be a shame, though, if a show that inspires so much devotion were to become a victim of mass-market economics. It may be that to support shows like these, networks need to look beyond advertising as a source of revenue. One way to make money off a property with a small but loyal fanbase is through merchandising -- Star Trek lived on in tie-in toys and novels for many years before returning to the screen, and the Wonder Woman comic is essentially a loss-leader to justify the existence of Wonder Woman merchandise. It's only recently, though, that broadcasters have been able to sell niche content directly to viewers. HBO, for instance, has had tremendous success in using high-quality shows to lure subscribers; AMC uses the cachet of Mad Men, which has a similarly small but devoted viewership, to offset its more commercial (and cheaper) offerings of old movies; and Netflix is pioneering the idea of selling TV series directly to the viewer by reviving Arrested Development, a series whose appeal was very similar to Community's. Ten years from now we may look back at Community as an early step in the evolution of how TV pays for itself -- or as one of the last victims of the advertising-driven model.

The classic 1985 science fiction novel Ender’s Game is one of several books of that period that foresaw both the advent of the Internet and its eventual importance in society. While certain aspects of its portrayal seem dated – in particular, it more resembles the text-based bulletin board systems of the time than today’s graphic Web – one element stands out as being particularly prescient: the use of the Internet to allow youth to participate fully in society. While today’s young people aren’t using the Internet to take over the world, as the characters in the novel do, they are increasingly using it to change the world, and more and more teachers are using the Internet to bring civic engagement into the classroom.

Learning about civic issues online

One of the easiest ways teachers can use the Internet to help get students engaged is to let them learn about civic issues that are current and relevant to students. For example, Michele Cooper’s math class at Holy Cross Catholic Elementary School in LaSalle, Ontario, is using the Web to collect data about topics such as education, literacy, hunger and income equity, in order to raise their awareness about social justice issues. These students are learning how to evaluate and present information about political issues, but just as importantly they’re learning how to find facts and opinions that may not match their own.

A study on Youth and Participatory Politics by the MacArthur Foundation found that although many young people encountered a wide variety of opinions and perspectives on political and civic issues, a third said they had not been exposed to any political opinions at all. Two key factors that determined whether youth would encounter political opinions online were whether they were engaged in online communities – related to politics or not – and whether they had been taught digital literacy skills. Teaching young people how to find and evaluate a wide range of views is essential to producing engaged and well-informed adults. 

Connecting with experts and activists

There’s also a more direct way in which teachers and youth can be exposed to different views and perspectives: by using the Internet to connect with experts and activists. Tina Bergman’s Grade 7/8 class at Breadner Elementary School in Trenton, Ontario, has drawn on a variety of experts to shed light on different issues relating to their course work, such as consulting with Dr. Gerald Conaty, the Director of Indigenous Studies at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, to learn more about the federal government’s relationship with First Nations throughout Canada’s history and by taking a digital fieldtrip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta, to learn more about environmental issues relating to water use.

Learning about citizenship through games

Another way that teachers are using new media to make civic engagement relevant to their students is through games and virtual worlds. Video and computer games are a classic example of “starting where the learner is,” because most young people – both boys and girls – play some kind of computer game on a regular basis. As well, the interactive quality of games helps to make the content more relevant and immediate, and encourages civic participation by letting students feel as though they are making a difference. Some classrooms use games that are specifically designed to address civic and political issues, such as iCivics, a suite of games revolving around civic engagement issues that were co-designed by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. (Most of these relate to specifically American issues, but the sub-game Activate deals more broadly with ways to promote change in social justice issues.) Another game that was created with political issues in mind is Path of the Elders, which introduces players to the culture and history of the Mushkegowuk and Anishinaabe First Nations and simulates the negotiation of the James Bay Treaty. Another option is Alternate Reality Games, which use custom-made Web sites, blogs and videos to simulate possible events. Some of these, such as World Without Oil, deal with political issues and are appropriate for classroom use (like iCivics and Path of the Elders, World Without Oil comes with a lesson plan package to help teachers bring it into the classroom.)

Teachers aren’t limited to games that were specifically designed to teach civic engagement, though. Many have used commercially-available games such as the SimCity and Civilization series, in either off-the-shelf or customized versions: Jen Dyenberg, a Canadian teacher currently living in Scotland, has used SimCity 3000 to make the “nuts and bolts” of municipal government more engaging to students and to help them understand the different pressures that shape the development of a city.

Taking action online

What’s truly unique about the Internet, though, is not that it is a channel for letting content into the classroom but that it allows students to have an impact outside the classroom. Teachers have two different opportunities to get their students involved on the Internet: by helping them to make a difference in an online community and to use the Internet to make a difference in their own communities.

Stephen Van Zoost, a teacher at Avon View High School in Annapolis, Nova Scotia, gave his students an opportunity to make a difference both online and in their community by expanding and improving the Wikipedia articles on two nearby towns, Stanley and Three Mile Plains. Brenna Gray, an instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, British Columbia, did a similar project and found that students were more concerned about the quality and accuracy of their work when they knew it would be published online.

Because it has such low barriers to participation, Wikipedia can be a great introduction to the idea that young people can be active participants in online communities. The Internet can also be a vehicle to help spread awareness of what youth are doing offline: the Canadian Teachers’ Federation’s Imagineaction Web site showcases a wide variety of civic engagement projects across Canada, from community gardens to promoting social action through studying Canadian authors.

It may seem like a long way from expanding a Wikipedia article to the kind of civic engagement seen in the “Arab Spring” (where social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter were used to help organize for mass social change) or projects such as Ushahidi, which has been used for initiatives such as tracking violence following the elections in Kenya and organizing relief efforts in Haiti. In fact, though, young people in Canada are using the Internet to get involved in real social change, advocating on issues such as copyright and graduated driver’s licenses (both areas where Facebook campaigns were credited with successfully influencing public policy). Teachers, too, are beginning to use the Internet to make civics education more relevant and engaging for students and to draw stronger connections between their course content and real-world civic engagement. The Internet allows youth to participate as full citizens in online communities and to make their voices heard in offline ones: it’s time that we took advantage of that to bring authentic civic engagement into the classroom.

For more information on how digital media can be used to make youth more active citizens, read Media Awareness Network’s report From Consumer to Citizen: Digital Media and Youth Civic Engagement.