It’s Elementary! Using Children’s Television to Teach Information Literacy

Abstract

Getting learners to recognize, develop, and practice the knowledge and skills they need to be information literate is hard. What if we exposed learners to those concepts at their most basic level? In this session, learn how one teacher librarian used segments from preschool and children’s television shows to build a foundational understanding of information literacy in a freshman level, for-credit college course. The presenter will share how these multimodal lessons connected to learners’ prior knowledge and experiences while engaging their critical thinking skills and allowing them a look at their world through the eyes of an information literate individual. Potential opportunities for use in one-shot library instruction and in K-12 libraries and classrooms will also be discussed. Participants will have the opportunity to collaboratively build a list of television shows for possible future use.