UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Digital Emergency Medicine is proud to share with you the Second Edition of Learning for Life program resources for educators teaching grades 4-7!

Learning for Life is an education initiative that promotes healthy lifestyle behaviours and builds digital health literacy skills among intermediate elementary students and families, in BC. Learning for Life provides students with competencies to use technology to support their health, to critically assess information provided through technology, and to balance technology usage with the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviours, using up to date Canadian guidelines.

Second Edition Learning for Life resources include:

New! Downloadable student workbooks
New! Interactive online graphic novel adventures
New! Activities and connections to the BC Curriculum’s PHE Competencies

 

Developing a healthy foundation in digital health literacy at an early age benefits children for life. Find both First and Second Edition Learning for Life program resources below.

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Background

Please check out our 30-minute Professional Development video below! This is a great introduction to the Learning for Life program for teachers and educators. Dr. Helen Novak Lauscher (Research Lead) provides background to the program and its development, and two educators from the Burnaby School District discuss their experiences teaching Learning for Life.

School-aged children in Canada are highly involved with information technology and social media. According to a 2010 Stats Canada survey, nearly 80%, or 19.2 million, of Canadians aged 16 and older are going online for personal reasons. However, with an overwhelming amount of health care information and tools available on the internet and a lack of established guidelines or trusted advocates on how to use them, locating and selecting the most appropriate information can be difficult.

Learning for Life was originally developed and tested in a pilot which ran from 2014 to 2016. The pilot focused on building knowledge around digital health, sleep hygiene, mental health and wellness.

Building on this rigorous pilot and lessons learned, Digital Emergency Medicine developed, tested and researched exciting, new Second Edition Learning for Life program resources. These enhanced resources build knowledge and competencies related to physical activity, nutrition and healthy eating, stress management, and social/emotional wellbeing as well as digital health literacy and sleep hygiene. They are designed to foster students’ competency in applying health information to their own lives (i.e., to make personal choices for health and well-being). This content also supports students in being able to identify relevant health resources online and via electronic means, and assess their quality.

The enhanced program has been piloted with three demographically diverse schools across BC. As part of this 2016-2018 project the Digital Emergency Medicine research team collected valuable feedback from participating students, parents, teachers and administration to inform the refinement of program resources. Check back over the coming months for findings from our research, as we continue to analyze and understand the Learning for Life’s potential!

 

This work was made possible by the generosity of The Lawson Foundation and the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine.

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For further information, please contact:

Research Lead
Dr. Helen Novak Lauscher
Phone: 604-822-2761
Email: helen.nl@ubc.ca

 

 

Coming soon!

Meet the experts on the Learning for Life team and the creators of Patoo!