Teaching the Junior Cycle Digital Media Literacy Short Course

Two lessons that establish an honest map of where you are starting from (the confidence audit), a working understanding of what the JC DML Short Course requires of students, and a productive mindset for delivering an unusually wide subject without pretending to be an expert across all of it.

Frameworks and worked examples for teaching real critical evaluation: source evaluation, the spec-explicit misinformation/disinformation distinction, algorithmic curation and bias, and the new layer of generative AI content. The spine of the subject (Strand 2 with overlaps into Strand 3).

Two lessons covering the practical and the personal sides of DML: practical creation including the spec's digital montage activity (LO 3.8), and the rights, responsibilities and wellbeing thread across Strands 1 and 4, including the class-charter activity (LO 1.7) and the role of Coimisiún na Meán (LO 4.3).

The longest module, because the Student Project is where good teaching most directly affects student outcomes. Three lessons: reading the NCCA Features of Quality fluently, coaching cross-strand topic choice and scoping, and supervising, judging and participating in the SLAR meeting.

Closes the course by treating DML's overlaps with English, SPHE, Art and Religious Education as opportunities, using shared Statements of Learning and Key Skills as the bridge, and synthesising everything into the participant's year plan and final reflection.