Getting started
Need ideas, inspiration, or curriculum materials to incorporate climate, ecojustice, and environmental topics into your media classes? This site features curated educational resources to support media educators who want to “green” their teaching.
Don’t know where to start? “Bringing Ecomedia Literacy into the Classroom” and “Ecomedia Literacy: Principles and Practices” are short articles that offer some ideas.
Each learning activity and lesson plan (called a “workshop”) has a short summary and links to lesson plan documents, slides, and handouts (not all lessons have slides and/or handouts). You can also see at the bottom of each post a quick glance of learning outcomes, applicable Common Core Standards, and a list of related UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The level for students indicated in each activity is basic (accessible to any level, including elementary/primary), intermediate (appropriate for middle school, high school/secondary, or college), and advanced (college or post-graduate level).
Search by tag or browse curriculum and audiovisual materials
Use the following filters to browse materials:
- “Learning activities” are specific lessons that can be done during a class session.
- “Workshops” are activities that involve multiple sessions.
- If you are looking for materials to screen in class, select “video” to browse our curated selection.
- If you are building a lesson, click the tag to match what you are looking for. For example, try “discourse” to build a lesson on environmental discourses, or select “pastoral” if you are focusing on one type of environmental discourses.
Topics
activism (5) advertising (23) agribusiness (4) animation (7) anthropocentricism (2) art (3) care (9) climate (7) conservationism (8) consumerism (12) cryptocurrency (2) data cloud (3) discourse (22) disinformation (5) documentary (9) e-waste (3) eco-ethics (4) eco-values (14) ecocentricism (2) ecojustice (3) ecoliteracy (3) electric vehicles (EV) (5) energy (3) environmental ideology (26) environmental literacy (5) film (3) food (7) footprint (8) gender (3) greenwashing (13) humor (4) Indigenous (6) media literacy (8) mediamaking (6) nature (8) news (11) pastoral (4) production chain (4) representation (12) science (4) sustainability (11) transformative (4) unrestrained utilitarianism (4) wilderness (3) writing (2)
Recently added learning activities and lesson plans
Curriculum Materials- Visualizing the Climate CrisisThis learning activity engages students in critically analyzing climate crisis visuals, exploring the power of imagery in environmental communication through interactive tasks based on seven principles of visual climate change communication. The activity aims to enhance students’ analytical and visual storytelling skills while cultivating a sense of agency in addressing climate issues.
- Deciphering Climate DisinformationThis lesson plan enhances students’ ecomedia literacy skills by teaching them to identify and analyze climate disinformation in various media sources. Through hands-on activities like group analysis, fact-checking exercises, and creative projects, students develop critical thinking skills focused on climate change communication.
- Decoding Ecomedia: Unearthing Attention-Getting HooksThis lesson plan focuses on developing students’ critical thinking skills to identify and analyze attention-getting hooks used in ecomedia.
- Green or Greenwashed? Cultivating Ecomedia Literacy SkillsThis lesson introduces students to the concept of greenwashing and develops their ecomedia literacy skills. Students will learn to identify various greenwashing techniques used by companies and critically evaluate environmental claims in marketing and advertising.
- Ecosystem Awareness: Local Environments and MediaThis learning activity aims to enhance students’ awareness of their local ecosystems and the influence of media on environmental perceptions by contrasting their familiarity with brand logos against their knowledge of local flora, ultimately cultivating a more integrated understanding of the relationship between media literacy and ecoliteracy.
Recently added videos, audio, multimedia
Audiovisual Materials- Animation of the Environmental Impact of GadgetsA short stop motion animation exploring the human and environmental impacts of our smartphones and devices. It shows how the production chain impacts ecosystems and human health through the extraction of conflict minerals, exploited labor, fossil fuel emissions to power server farms, and e-waste. Accessible for all ages.
- Chobani Ad: Dear AliceThis short animated Choboni ad about the future of food production can be useful for exploring different environmental discourses, including pastoral, food, and sustainability. It can be used to generate a discussion about food, agriculture, eco-modernism, and mechanism.
- Avatar/Pocahontas Mash-upThe video of the trailer for Disney’s Pocahontas (1995) is combined with audio from Avatar (2009). It demonstrates how these films have common environmental discourses and genre conventions.
- Keep America Beautiful: The Crying Indian (1970)This is a great media example for discussing environmental discourses and ideology. It utilizes the eco-utopian discourse (often represented by indigenous and First Nations peoples) to promote conservationist environmentalism, which aligns with anthropocentric environmental ideology.
- Why Bitcoin is so Bad for the PlanetA short video presentation from the Guardian’s UK technology editor Alex Hern, who examines how exactly bitcoin uses electricity and if the environmental cost is too high.