Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Don't panic - what are we really worrying about?

This weekend many of us will be meeting in London for the MEA annual conference, titled Don't Panic. So what's to panic about? Plenty, it would seem. If you're a primary teacher, it might be about the multitude of media pressures impacting on your pupils:issues of online safety, access to inappropriate texts, covert marketing in schools, social networking, commercial interests making kids grow older younger - let alone the difficulties of tackling these issues in a still over-tested curriculum. If you're working with secondary-age pupils, it may be more of the same, plus the huge impact of continuing curriculum change, from the revised KS3 Framework to new specs at GCSE and A level, the introduction of the Diploma, functional skills, and so on. Not to mention the broader media education concerns we're confronting both withing formal education and in the public sphere: the unprecedented pace of technological change, the new world of Web 2.0 and the raft of cultural, creative and critical skills we need as teachers, together with questions of access, entitlement, and pedagogy - what do we really need to teach, and how do we do it? And finally, there are the so-called 'moral' panics - not new to media education, but particularly acute now in the light of the media's representations of the Byron Report, inner-city youth violence, debates about videogames, commercialisation, and children's health . . . A big agenda.

MEA invites you to tell us what you are really panicking about - if indeed you are. During the Don't Panic conference, we will be looking to identify the issues which are really concerning teachers of media, and ways of addressing them, as the start of an ongoing dialogue. We'd like to know, in 50 words or less, what your own media education priorities are, and what for you are the things we should really be panicking about. Post your response below. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

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