It's the day after the Media Literacy Conference ended and I thought I'd try not to think about it but that turned out to be impossible. Sitting up in bed at 9.00am and having the long-planned-for cup of tea and a nice long read (first time since January, maybe?), the text just flowed under my eyes while I thought "...shall I read the evaluation forms?...shall I have a look at the #2010MLC tweets?...shall I reply to emails?...no, that way madness lies. But I have, and it does. At least my "To Do" page in my daybook has more crossings-out that it's ever had - even if there'll be a new page to write tomorrow with a ton of new things to do. I've already written down Certificates of Attendance, airport shuttles, water, evaluation form as a Word attachment - and that's just from the 12 evaluations so far received. Then reading through several hundred tweets, relieved to find that the majority are positive or at least engaged. Friends and colleagues were all hugely positive yesterday, and indeed the day before, but I'll admit that one thing about Twitter is you do get instant reactions from people you don't know, and that's really fascinating. Yes, the usual stuff about why aren't there any kids here, why aren't there more teachers here, why so much "academic theorising", but sadly no one asking why was the programme almost entirely organised by one unpaid person? No, I may be exhausted but I'm not bitter - just hopeful that now we've created a much bigger online community, people will be mucking in from now on with constructive ideas about how to make next year's better.
I'd already agreed with our admin team that we must offer a really tempting standard fee for UK teachers, but even so there are still huge barriers to getting teachers to attend. Those specialist Media Studies teachers who can get permission and funding to attend anything at all (a small minority!) have already spent that, either on Awarding Body INSETs or on the BFI Conference. Anyone else faces the problem of media education not being a statutory part of the curriculum and all the rest of the usual prejudices, and in any case who's going to pay for supply cover? What if we had a special "teachers' day" on the Saturday? Teachers just aren't getting the continuing professional development they need. And I think the conference (and the Media Education Association) HAVE to be for the widest possible range of media educators. Media teachers who've only worked with older students should read NYPotamitis' tweets about Angela Colvert's workshop on Alternate Reality Games for primary kids. As he points out, what is going on in some primary schools should be a model for those teaching much older students.
So those (a tiny minority, I'm pleased to see) who think that the conference is too large-scale and up market should think about how otherwise we can raise the profile of media education and media literacy - because raising its profile is going to be the important door-opener that will enable teachers to justify attending this and other CPD. We have to try and reach the opinion-formers and the policy-makers - so what a delight that three prominent people completely outside our field (and by the way Peter Bazalgette is only my distant cousin) were keen to come and speak at our final session!
Getting students at conferences is another minority but vocal plaint: I want to hear what age students this means, what they'd do when they got there, and why they wouldn't be bored. We tried to get a posse of young journalists but we couldn't afford the train fares, overnight costs (not just for them for their chaperones and group leaders too): I thought the BBC would love to sponsor that but they wouldn't. It would be so great if someone would offer to take on the challenge of working out a way to bring groups of all ages to next year's event, what their roles would be, and who'd pay for it. I have buttock-clenchingly embarrassing memories of occasions when groups of kids have been put on conference platforms as juries or as generational representatives: there are a lot of spectacularly bad ways of doing this and I don't think there are any cheap options, but it should be possible to find good ways of doing it and to make them appeal to sponsors.
We argued and worried before the event about whether we could really bring off the attempt to merge classroom practice and academic enquiry. I think we did pretty well. If I have a complaint about the research panels it's that there's too much descriptive regurgitation of empirical data and not anywhere near enough real theorising. Why is it that some teachers think theorising has to be boring and pointless? We all do it all the time. Any theories about why the Gunners went down to Spurs yesterday after being 2 up at half time? I look forward to the next issue of The Gooner to read the theories on this one. The challenge about theory is how to teach it in an exciting way. Final debate next time then: "iTheory: How to Teach Theory in the New Media Age"?
Enough already. TAS's plan is that we catch up with Let the Right One In on DVD this afternoon with tea and buns in front of a roaring fire and then go off for dinner with my brother Ed and his family tonight. Will that stop me lying awake tonight thinking "if only I'd...."? I doubt it.
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