Media Mentor Month ’24

“Hey, are you still doing Media Mentor Month this year?” The DMs started to come in around early January, causing me to smile. I love that Media Mentor Month has struck a chord with teachers (and parents) around the world, and I’m thrilled that people still want ideas for talking with students about these important topics.

This year we assembled a brains trust of thought leaders in EdTech, and started spitballing ideas. I knew it was time for some new prompts and loved the idea of a mason jar full of questions, but where to start? That is where Doug Taylor stepped in. He kindly set up a ChatGPT Bot using all the previous examples of prompts we had created, along with information about the intention of the initiative.

From there, we generated prompts and adapted what we found to best suit our international audience. We colour-coded the themes and added icons, but it was Alex McMillan who first suggested the idea of a printed set of cards. I am a long-term lover of unique card decks – in fact, my Secret Santa last year even gifted me some decks to add to my collection – so this was an idea I absolutely had to get behind!

Alex & I tried a range of formats, sought feedback from students and finally settled on a design. Each card has a front and a back that is designed differently to help you select questions that are best suited to your child or student.

Cards with a solid background are geared towards Primary or Middle School students.
Cards with a white background are aimed at older students from Middle to High School.

The cards are organised into different colours according to each of the following themes:

We have versions available that you can print yourself and cut out accordingly, or you might prefer to view them on a device. We hope that however you interact with them, they spark conversation and dialogue in a constructive and positive way.

Media Mentor Prompts in English

All – Media Mentor Month 2024 by Keri-Lee Beasley & Alex McMillan

Media Mentor Prompts 2024 – Printable A3 version

Of course, it wouldn’t be Media Mentor Month without providing you options in different languages! Thanks to a team of talented educators, friends and students we have translations available in different languages (see below). If you don’t see a language you speak represented, we would love to expand!
Simply click on this link to access the template, and translate away!
Please do share the translated link back to us so we can include it below.
Pro Tip: Canva translates automatically, so if you prefer, do an auto-translate and then edit for meaning.

Chinese A3 Printable
Chinese Digital
Translation by Luna Wang & Susan Su

French A3 Printable
French Digital
Translation by Ludivine Kennedy

German A3 Printable
German Digital
Translation by Rachel Smith

Hindi A3 Printable
Hindi Digital
Translation by Sabrina Mukadam

Japanese A3 Printable
Japanese Digital
Translation by Junichi Nakamura & Mariano Zuk

Korean A3 Printable
Korean Digital
Translation by Sophia H

Russian A3 Printable
Russian Digital
Translation by Evgenia Barinova & Matthew Payne

Spanish A3 Printable
Spanish Digital
Translation by Tim Evans

Vietnamese A3 Printable
Vietnamese Digital
Translation by Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ

We hope you will join us for #MediaMentorMonth to have meaningful conversations and cultivate media literacy alongside the young people in your lives

Media Mentor Month 2022-23

March is just around the corner and you know what that means…!

Media Mentor Month is a global education initiative designed to help parents/teachers develop a supportive relationship with their children/students around digital technologies. It provides prompts to celebrate positive uses of technology, explore creative pursuits, and encourage us to take time for important conversations about how we best use our devices.

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of maintaining and developing these positive relationships with young people. Globally, many students have had to work through extended periods of hybrid learning and/or online learning, bringing with it many challenges.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

With this in mind, I invite you to join me once again to participate in Media Mentor Month, where, in addition to the Monopoly-style game board for Elementary students/parents, we now have a Middle/High school edition! For these older students, we developed some conversation starters around a series of weekly themes:

• 🗣 Communication
• 🗓 Organization
• 🧘🏽 Well-Being
• 📱 Social Media
• 🧠 Learning

We know students benefit from sharing with their peers. They have often developed sophisticated strategies and approaches that others could learn from, e.g. how they manage distractions, or their use of extensions or apps to stay productive. We adults can learn many great tips just by listening once we have offered a prompt.

Parents might choose to find a topic of interest and drop some of the suggestions into conversations. Teachers might select one a day to focus on with a whole class, or use a prompt in a 1:1 mentoring conversation. However you choose to use them, you can find them embedded below, or view them via the link here.

MS/HS Media Mentor Month Prompts

Below you can find the Elementary Game Board (we recommend printing A3 size)

Click here to access the A3 Board Game in English

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Click here to access the A3 Board Game in Chinese

For individual versions of the gameboard prompts, please see below:

We hope you will join us in completing some of the activities and look forward to seeing your tweets using the hashtag #MediaMentorMonth!

For further reading relating to Media Mentor Month, please see the links below:
Media Mentors, Not Media Police – blog post explaining the background to our first MMM, including research findings and book recommendations.
Managing Distractions with Mario – blog post containing strategies for creating the conditions for successful learning
More Digital Parenting Conversation Ideas – myths about screen time and some healthy habits to foster.
Speaking to G12 about Digital Wellness – a video of my talk with WAB senior students earlier this year, highlighting potential positives and negatives of technology for their consideration.
Media Mentor 2021 – Our fourth iteration of Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2020 – Our third iteration of Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2019 – The second Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2018 – Our inaugural Media Mentor Month!

Media Mentor Month 2021

We are now in our 4th iteration of Media Mentor Month – surely the perfect time to mix it up! But before I launch into all of that, a little background information:

Media Mentor Month is a global education initiative designed to help parents develop a positive relationship with their children around digital technologies. It provides prompts to celebrate positive uses of technology, explore creative pursuits, and encourages us to take time for important conversations about how we best use our devices.

Click here to access A3 PDF via Google Drive

Click here to access A3 PDF via Google Drive. With thanks to Stephanie Lu Wang for the translation.

This year, I worked with educators Sandra Chow and Clint Hamada to create a game-based format for Media Mentor Month. You will still find prompts (as in previous iterations), however, as busy parents ourselves, we wanted a format to allow families to dip in and out of the suggestions, and to gamify things a little for students who are motivated by that.

Select the activities you wish to explore from the gameboard. As you complete them, cut out the corresponding pieces and glue them to the gameboard.

Below you will find larger versions of each activity, along with links to resources that you may find useful.

We hope you will join us in completing some of the activities and look forward to seeing your tweets using the hashtag #MediaMentorMonth!

For further reading relating to Media Mentor Month, please see the links below:
Media Mentors, Not Media Police – blog post explaining the background to our first MMM, including research findings and book recommendations.
Managing Distractions with Mario – blog post containing strategies for creating the conditions for successful learning
More Digital Parenting Conversation Ideas – myths about screen time and some healthy habits to foster.
Speaking to G12 about Digital Wellness – a video of my talk with WAB senior students earlier this year, highlighting potential positives and negatives of technology for their consideration.
Media Mentor 2020 – Our third iteration of Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2019 – The second Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2018 – Our inaugural Media Mentor Month!

Media Mentor Month 2020

March Media Mentor Month is BACK! This year seems more relevant than ever as we have so many families involved in distance learning online due to school closures as a result of the #COVID-19 outbreak.

Click here to access via Google Drive, or click here to access via Dropbox.

Click here to access via Dropbox, or click here to access via Google Drive

(The PDF above is also available in Korean via Dropbox here, or Google Drive here)

In my household, we are now onto week 4 of online-only learning. It has been a huge learning curve for our family, highlighting our complete reliance on our devices as learning tools (and entertainment powerhouses!), but also the value of spending time together – both on and offline.

I hope that Media Mentor Month 2020 provides an opportunity to engage in experiences that celebrate positive uses of technology, explore some creative pursuits, and encourage you to take time for important conversations about how we best use our devices. Let us be the media mentors our children need us to be.

For link to .ppt file in Chinese (above), click here.

For link to the Google Slides file in Korean, click here, or .ppt file in OneDrive here

For further reading on how Media Mentor Month came about, please see the links below:
Media Mentors, Not Media Police – blog post explaining the background to our first MMM, including research findings and book recommendations.
More Digital Parenting Conversation Ideas – myths about screen time and some healthy habits to foster.
Speaking to G12 about Digital Wellness – a video of my talk with WAB senior students earlier this year, highlighting potential positives and negatives of technology for their consideration.
Media Mentor 2019 – The second Media Mentor Month.
Media Mentor 2018 – Our inaugural Media Mentor Month!

More Digital Parenting Conversation Ideas

As part of #MediaMentorMonth, my colleague Daniel Johnston and I have put together some conversation starters for parents. We are always on the lookout for more great resources, so I am excited to share the following with you.

Dave and Blake are two presenters of My Life Online a series of workshops for schools around keeping kids safe and positive in their online interactions. The pair have recently released a 3-part video series aimed at parents, incorporating strategies that aim to improve conversations with kids and present information in a calm, non-sensational manner.

First up, is a video entitled “The 3 Habits Every Kid Needs to be Safe & Responsible Online.” In this video, they focus on helping kids make safe and good choices, on increasing empathy and on considering their online legacy. You will appreciate the easy to remember strategies to pass on to your children, and the fact that it is realistic advice, not the “Guess the right answer” type of advice that has kids cringing on the inside.

The second video in the series focuses on the 4 Myths about Screen Time and How it Affects Your Child. It addresses the myths that:

1. Social Media is a “Bad Thing”
2. Kids are addicted to their phones
3. Kids are losing their ability to socialise in person, and
4. Kids need online monitoring

Again, what I appreciate about their approach, is they are not demonising social media (which is not helpful in our digital world), but instead are giving parents approaches to improve communication and foster positive relationships with their child(ren).

Lastly, the third video centres around 3 Crucial Conversations To Have With Your Kids About Using Social Media.

One of the most practical tips they share in this video, is considering online posts on the following continuum: Helpful to Hurtful; Self to Others. This can be a great way of encouraging kids to see the impact of their posts may have.

Each video is about 15 minutes long, and well worth the time. I hope you find them useful!

Media Mentor Month 2019

Click image above to access A3 PDF

What is it?
Media Mentor Month is an initiative to help parents develop a positive relationship with their children around digital technologies. Just as we want to be mentors for our children in reading or having a healthy lifestyle, we also want to mentor them in their digital world too (see more details about being a Media Mentor here). The trouble is, sometimes we don’t know exactly how to go about that. Media Mentor Month provides parents with some ideas and strategies to help foster and develop that relationship.

Click here to access the A3 version of the Calendar.

Who is it for?
Anyone, really, but probably best suited to parents who are looking for direction to connect with their children around technology. Especially the ones who feel they only ever battle with their kids about being on screens too much (see more about that here).

When is it happening?
Ideally, March, so we’re all on the same page. Realistically? Any time that fits in to your family schedule.

What do I need to do?
You can participate as much or as little as you like. Personally, I would love to see you share some photos of your family engaging in the challenges. Make sure to add the hashtag #MediaMentorMonth so we can follow your progress!

Media Mentor Month

What is it?
Media Mentor Month is an initiative to help parents develop a positive relationship with their children around digital technologies. Just as we want to be mentors for our children in reading or having a healthy lifestyle, we also want to mentor them in their digital world too (see more details about being a Media Mentor here). The trouble is, sometimes we don’t know exactly how to go about that. Media Mentor Month provides parents with some ideas and strategies to help foster and develop that relationship.

Click here to access the A3 version of the Calendar.

Who is it for?
Anyone, really, but probably best suited to parents who are looking for direction to connect with their children around technology. Especially the ones who feel they only ever battle with their kids about being on screens too much (see more about that here).

When is it happening?
Ideally, March, so we’re all on the same page. Realistically? Any time that fits in to your family schedule.

What do I need to do?
You can participate as much or as little as you like. Personally, I would love to see you share some photos of your family engaging in the challenges. Make sure to add the hashtag #MediaMentorMonth so we can follow your progress!