Jan 05, 2017 06:16 AM EST By Jane Reed, UniversityHerald Reporter

Using pop culture can help engage students when it comes to the classroom setting. Teacher's lessons can become more meaningful as well.

Teachers, professors and educators are always on the look out to find ways to engage students with their lessons. This can be possible by making their lessons relevant to what is happening in the real world. Which is why popular culture in the classroom can be a winning strategy.

Leveraging on pop culture can open dialogues and help the students understand the lesson as well, as reported by eSchool News. Students these days are much more updated when it comes to tech, celebrity news and media events. And they are more updated than the adults. Once an educator understands the kind of attention these kids give to smart phones and other tech devices, it can become a meaningful and powerful lesson.

Teachers are advised to use music, entertainment, film and even tech in their classroom lessons. By linking these subjects to the lessons, students can interact and recall well. Topics can be tackled in languages they can understand which can be an effective way to get the students to be vocal in class and start thinking critically.

A webinar from the School Library Journal has featured pop culture as a form of student engagement tool, as reported by Education Drive. Strategies from the webinar include linking learning material to celebrities, as an example.

One specific strategy is incorporating celebrity comments on current events into lessons. Students can then be asked to research films related to the issue or ask students to compare magazine covers. As long as students can check their facts correctly and not take celebrity comments at face value, the strategy can work. Teachers should teach students the importance of media literacy.

Other teachers are using technology such as Minecraft in the classroom to encourage students to build and explore. Virtual reality is one effective tool for education that is popular now in the tech world.

Check out the highlights from the 2016 School Library Journal Summit in the video below:

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