Today at the jail where I do outreach we worked with Publisher software. The group is designing a flyer that will be posted in the facility to let people know about a project they are working on. By using Publisher they learned how to focus the message of their project in an attractive way and to match the images to their topic. Once we got past the clip art search for ‘girls’ we were well on our way to having a product that could be posted. When a group of observers came to visit the library they were impressed with the guys ability to navigate the software.
Two of the guys were working on a computer connected to a large flat screen that projected everything. It could be easily seen by anyone, including the guards, walking by. Fortunately none of the staff present at the jail ‘freaked out’ when images of women appeared on the flyers in progress.
We used this as a learning opportunity for the guys to think about the audience for their flyers and whether or not such a graphic would be appropriate. We also talked about other key words (such as music) they might choose to use in a search that were related to their project. They even learned to limit their search to include photographs but not movies. This was a great chance for teamwork, as well as expressing visual, written, and information literacy.
