USING MUSIC TO ENHANCE LIBRARY INSTRUCTION

Royce Kitts

SCANNING THE ENVIRONMENT

Students Enjoy Music, as do most people.

More than library instruction.

I know right? Don’t believe me?

Just look at the excitement on their faces as you talk about databases,

evaluation strategies, and creating citations.

PROCESS

The process I will use builds upon:

Active Learning

Student Interaction

Modeling

Scaffolding

My success incorporating music into library instruction as part

of a one-credit hour library course IS 170: Library Research

Strategies and WU 101: the Washburn Experience.

MUSIC

What style of Music should I use?

For starters, using music in the classroom begins with

recognizing that your own musical taste is not necessarily

going to be that of your students.

Use the initial introduction of music into your classroom as

a way to break the ice, and learn about music together.

Abridged A-Z History of Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3GhDWMb_3E

LET THE STUDENTS LEAD

Get a feel for the individual tastes of the students and

connect musical examples to their own familiarity with

music.

History of Hip Hop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3GhDWMb_3E

From Portlandia

ACTIVITY 1: DEFINING GENRE

Pair and share activities work well to get the students engaged and involved. Break the students up into small groups and have them work on creating a definition of the music genre you want to discuss.

1. Ask them to keep track of where they get the information.

2. Have each group report back and start to build a classroom definition.

The students experience the benefits of becoming engaged in classroom discussion and realize that they are able to be content experts.

Ice T describes how to create your first rhyme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fsAmJCdtwU

ACTIVITY 2: CITATIONS & PLAGIARISM The repackaging of information that takes place in music is something that students can grasp and becomes a great way to reinforce how information evolves from the primary source to the secondary source, and the importance of citing sources.

Vanilla Ice denies plagiarism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW_Rduet230

Queen Version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpn8MANhdLU

Vanilla Ice Version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=149jGeIlx3I

ACTIVITY 3: EVALUATING INFORMATION

One of the beauties of music, is that a lot of stories have evolved over time about artists. It can be hard to determine what is myth and what is reality.

The goal of this activity is to create a set of standards that students will use to critically evaluate information.

1. Name a common myth in music. (Keep it clean).

2. Locate information.

3. Name a few criterions we can use to evaluate information

ACTIVITY 4: ANALYZING INFORMATIONAsk the students to critically analyze a song in the context of its time frame and the life of its performer.

When we consider the historical moment in which it was written and performed we start to understand the artist's motivation for producing that music and writing the particular lyrics The goal of this activity is to find the meaning of what we are analyzing.

The Clash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwm1v1R-qM

MIA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__TJABZDTJ0

TI featuring Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Jay Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjL-3Rlwh8U

CONCLUSION

The important thing to remember is that we want library instruction to be relevant to our students.

Use vocabulary that speaks to them in a language they already understand.

Provide the opportunity for students to be experts.

The goal is not to turn them into the model student but to show them that their worth in the academic environment already exists.