Do You Use Popular Media in the Classroom? Do you use popular media in the classroom? This includes TV shows, movie clips, songs, etc. If so, how do you use it? If not, have you ever thought of using it? I'm wondering if/how others are using popular media in the classroom because I'd imagine it could be an excellent way of engaging students while teaching them a little something at the same time.
When I took Biology in HS, the teacher showed some episodes of Mythbusters that dealt with biology-related myths. With something like Earth Science or focusing on Space, the most recent iteration of Cosmos could be helpful
I use a lot of music and movie clips in English class as examples of certain types of figurative language. When I start teaching Argumentative Writing on Monday, you can be sure I'm using the sketch from Monty Python.
I use popular media all the time. Just today, I used clips from a Donald Duck cartoon, Big Bang Theory and What a Girl Wants in my psychology lesson and clips from Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple movies in my US History class. Next class, my US students will use a created music video for "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and the actual music video of "Cost of Livin'" by Ronnie Dunn to compare the Great Depression to the recession of 2008. I find this sort of stuff makes the lessons much more interesting.
I used a song by the the Ramones and compared it to a poem by Maya Angelou that was in their reading text.
Thank you all for your responses, links, and insight! Based on the responses, I must ask a couple of follow-up questions: How do you find these clips, songs, etc.? Are there any websites that you use to find them, or do you just know about them already?
Youtube, mainly. There are a few I go in knowing (like Forest Gump, or the song just my own listening) but mostly I just look up ideas on YouTube and look for appropriate clips. Looking up "id, ego, supergo" gave me the Donald Duck clip and "Freud analysis" gave me the Big Bang Theory clip. I'm just lucky some other genius recognized and uploaded it. It's amazing what all you can find online with a bit of elbow grease.
I play the CNN Student News clip everyday in my classes. I also show other videos linked to any news stories I am discussing that day from sites like CNN, HuffingtonPost, MSNBC, The Baltimore Sun and local news websites. I also show non-educational video clips from ESPN and Yahoo! Sports.
