I just read a book called Using Pop Culture to Teach Information Literacy (ISBN: 1591583012). After reading this book, it makes me want to formulate my workshops to include pop culture ideas that might be successful for the students to remember information literacy concepts. This book is written for high school librarians, but 90% of the content could be applied for the content that we cover in the Success Strategies workshops.
For example, the book talks about how many students know how to download music, program their TIVO, etc. So, if they can accomplish these things, using the library databases should be a breeze, but we all know that some students have very little experience with any technology.. Due to the "digital divide" and Rasmussen students entering college from many different generations, you'd have to be creative when using pop culture because otherwise someone may be confused when your information literacy workshop is based solely on Napoleon Dynamite. I use this example because they wrote a lot about Napoleon Dynamite in this book. The book also includes ways to use pop culture for explaining Boolean Searching and for evaluating resources. Check it out. I feel like I am on Reading Rainbow..
4 comments:
Thanks for the recommendation, Amy!
That book looks great! I agree with your comment about not pushing only one type of pop culture too much.
We have such a wide span of student ages! I've had everywhere from teenagers to retirees!
Great resource - thanks again for the recommendation!
I have tried using some of the strategies mention in this book.. and it has been successful.. For example, in Workshop #2, I printed out 4 different examples of resources on Lord of the Rings.
Also, in the Workshop #1, I had them do the Mapping exercise about Reality TV shows- that worked really well, b/c I had them write "Reality TV shows" in the middle circle, and then the smaller circles were reality shows that they know (varied depending on age group- Flava of Love, Extreme Home Makeover, Deadliest Catch, Amer. Idol, etc.. The branches were characteristics about the shows. I explained how they would then write a paper based on this Mapping exercise. It clicked. The students understood the concept better than when I didn't use a pop culture example.
Also in Workshop #1, for the worksheet that asked for subtopics and a search string, I had them write on the topic of 'whether or not there should be a law banning text messaging while driving.' Everyone had an opinion on this topic, and students were able to come up with subtopics like safety, etc. Then, we went through boolean and truncating: Text* AND messag* AND driv*. It really came full circle.
Great ideas for making our workshops connect to our students in a creative and fun way. I'd like to borrow the reality TV idea.
Thanks for letting us know about this!
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