AMES e-Newsletter May 2017

The May 2017 newsletter has 3 sections:

  • AMES News (AMES conference, MEJ 61, AMES membership)
  • News from other media education organisations(MediaSmart, UK Safer Internet Centre, Project Censored)
  • News from other organisations(Ofcom, Education Scotland)

Use CTRL-click on text or images to follow links.

AMES news

  1. AMES Conference: 3 June 2017 1015-1600

A reminder that the AMES 2017 conference will be held on Sat 3 Jun at St Leonard's Hall, Pollock Halls, Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh. The theme of the conference is Media, Politics and Young People. The keynote speaker is John Swinney MSP, Deputy First Minister of Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills. Little did we know when planning the event, that it would coincide with a General Election campaign.

As Paul Laverty is unable to attend the conference we have had to make some changes. Roy Stafford’s session on I, Daniel Blake has been moved to the morning to fill Paul’s slot. Two extra workshops have been added: before lunch there will be a session on ‘Teaching the Animation Persepolis’to complement the session on the graphic novel; after lunch there will be a session ‘How to Read Donald Trump’ which will carry out a textual and contextual analysis of the President’s language, rhetoric, expression, gesture and coiffure as well as situating the phenomenon in the history of political communication.
Other sessions include workshops on National 5/Higher Media, fake news/post-truth, teachingBend It Like Beckham, teaching Adam Curtis's acclaimed documentaries, Disney princesses.
As well as this, there arethree double sessions in the afternoon focusing on the development of literacy and creativity through film and media production. For example, following its very positive reception in the 2016 conference, filmmaker David Griffith is doing a session on Storyboarding a Short Film. Into Film is offering an iPad session on Raising Literacy Attainment through Film. And Scottish Film Education is offering a session on Teaching Cinema in the Classroom (this has been influenced by Alain Bergala’s The Cinema Hypothesis and the book will be available at the conference).

The full programme now reads (P: primary; S: secondary; F: FE/HE):

0945-1015 Registration and coffee

1015-1030 Introduction: Mary Birch, Convener of AMES

Welcome: Charlie Jeffery, Professor of Politics, Senior Vice-Principal of the University of Edinburgh

1030-1110Keynote: Politicians & the Media: John Swinney, MSP, Deputy First Minister of Scotland & Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills plus Q+A

1110-1120 Comfort break

1120-1230 Workshops A

A1: Teaching I, Daniel Blake: Social Realism in a Time of Social Media: Roy Stafford (SF)

A2: Disney Princesses: Dream Big?: Wendy Elrick (PS)

A3: Teaching Visual Literacy: Lorna Macdonald & presenter tbc (P)

A4: Teaching the Animation Persepolis: Rick Instrell (SF)

1230-1315 Lunch

1315-1430 Workshops B

B1: How to Read Donald Trump: Rick Instrell (SF)

B2: Teaching Cinema in the Classroom (part 1 of double session): Nicola Kettlewood

& Kate Burton (PSF)

B3: Raising Literacy Attainment through Film – iPad (part 1 of double session) Presenter tbc (PS)

B4: Teaching Bend It Like Beckham: Des Murphy (SF)

B5: Teaching the Role of the Media for N5 and Higher Media: Kirsty Brown (SF)

B6: Storyboarding a Short Film (part 1 of double session): David Griffith (PSF)

1430-1445 Refreshments

1445-1600 Workshops C

C1: Fake News and Post-Truth: Alex Law (SF)

C2: Teaching Cinema in the Classroom (part 2 of double session): Nicola Kettlewood

& Kate Burton (PSF)

C3: Raising Literacy Attainment through Film – iPad (part 2 of double session) (PS)

C4: Teaching Graphic Novels – Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: Rick Instrell (SF)

C5: The Long and the Short of Adam Curtis’s Documentaries – teaching Bitter Lake and OhDearism II: Julie Laing (SF)

C6: Storyboarding a Short Film (part 2 of double session): David Griffith (PSF)

1610-1630 AMES AGM

The conference has been designed to be attractive to educators working in the primary, secondary and adult/further education sectors. Full details plus fees and registration form are contained in theconference flyer.

As last year, we will try to ensure that as many presenters make their resources available on the ames.scot website. Feedback from last year shows that many delegates appreciated the fact that they could go into class the following week fully resourced and able to use or edit the resources to match their contexts.
Digital versions of the registration form are available inPDForWordformat. You may need up-to-date versions of Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word to access these.
The venue has limited capacity and any delay might mean that you miss out.
Fees are as follows:

  • Non-member (£60)
  • Individual/institutional/retired member and concession fee (£35)
  • Joining AMES as new individual member + conference (£55)
  • Joining AMES as new institutional member + conference (£70)
  • Joining AMES as new retired member + conference (£50)

Note that if your school/college has institutional membership then all delegates will pay £35 each. So two delegates from your centre will cost £70 (as opposed to 2 full fees costing £120).
Non-members will save by joining AMES. An individual joining AMES and attending will pay £55 rather than £60. Two delegates from a centre which does not have institutional membership will save by joining AMES £70 + £35 = £105 (as opposed to £120). Members benefits include 2 issues of the Media Education Journal as well as access to a wide range of members-only film and media digital resources.

If you have already applied and indicated your workshop choices, and find that these have to be changed please email your amended choices (just use the ABC codes above) to Robert Preece at .

AMES gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from Scottish Film Education and Into Film.

  1. MEJ 61

MEJ 61 should be published in May. Articles are likely to include

  • Fake News (Alex Law)
  • Storyboarding (David Griffith)
  • Understanding Comics (Rick Instrell)
  • Arrival(Roy Stafford)
  • Strictly Brexit (Tina Stockman)
  • Pedagogy of Serial Narrative (Jeff Chown)
  • Disney Princesses: Dream Big? (Wendy Elrick)
  • National Digital Learning Week 2017 (Lorna Kerr)

Plus the usual reviews.

Remember that we are happy to receive ideas for articles from members. Contact MEJ editor Des Murphy at .

  1. Membership Reminder

Members are reminded that membership renewals become due in the next few months. Members who pay by Direct Debit will have had their fee collected on 1st April, or thereabouts. Institutions who pay by cheque will be advised to raise a purchase order during May, so that the money can come from local authority and college budgets in the new financial year. Personal and retired members will also be contacted, unless they have paid the Treasurer before he gets round to issuing reminders! Fees are unchanged for the coming year: £40 for institutions, £25 for personal membership, and £15 for the retired and unwaged (students in training remain free).
For those who have failed to renew for the current year (2016-17), we regret that we were unable to send you issue 60 of the Media Education Journal when it was issued last December, and we will have to withdraw membership benefits (e.g. access to the resources on the website) very soon after receipt of this e-mail. Issue 61 of the MEJ is due to be issued at the time of our conference in early June.
Thanks to those who have completed Gift Aid forms: we have just collected £456 from the taxman to cover the claim for the last three years. If you can complete a Gift Aid form, and have not done so, please contact the Treasurer.
For membership enquiries, please contact Robert Preece at

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News from other media education organisations

  1. MediaSmart

MediaSmartis a not-for-profit companyfunded by the UK advertising industry.It creates free educational materials for schools to help young people think critically about the advertising they come across in their daily lives. The materials use real and current examples of advertising to help teach core media literacy skills.

Downloadable resources include:

  • Digital advertising: resource designed to explain digital advertising for 9–11 year-olds
  • Body image and advertising
  • An introduction to advertising
  • A resource explaining advertising for students aged 7–11
  • Social media and advertising: explaining social media and its relationship with advertising for students aged 11–16
  • Vivo: free online body image and advertising resources.
  1. Safer Internet Day

The UK Safer Internet Centre is a partnership of three leading organisations: SWGfL, Childnet International and Internet Watch Foundationwho aim to promote the safe and responsible use of technology for young people. The website has resourcesrelated to Scotland. Safer Internet Day 2018 is Tue 6 Feb.

  1. Project Censored

Project Censored is a non-profit US website whose aim is to educate students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. They expose and oppose news censorship and promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking. This is a useful site for keeping up-to-date with US media studies academics’ view of US and Western media. It has an archive of hour-log radio programmes on, for example, media coverage of drone warfare and Donald Trump.

News from other organisations

  1. OfcomAnnual Plan

We submitted a response to Ofcom’s draft annual plan 2017/2018 and the response can be found on p50 of the annual plan:

“The Association for Media Education in Scotland (AMES) submitted that there is a need to inform the wider public about Ofcom’s roles, especially given Ofcom’s imminent assumption of regulatory responsibilities in relation to the BBC, as well as current concerns over ‘fake news’. AMES suggested that Ofcom’s media literacy remit would benefit by contacting Education Scotland’s Digital Learning and Teaching team with a view to developing on-line resources which would increase public understanding.

We agree that providing clear information about communications developments is important. We have a range of consumer guides on our website to assist in this area and communicate with consumers via social media. We have developed educational resources using our children’s media literacy research data which we launched in 2016, and updated in February 2017 as part of Safer Internet Day. We liaise regularly with a range of stakeholders about our media literacy research, and sit on various steering groups to advise and promote media literacy best practice, including MediaSmart which develops classroom resources.”

See items 4 and 5 above for details of MediaSmart and Safer Internet Day 2018.

  1. Reminder: National Digital Learning Week, 15-19 May

The National Digital Learning Week 2017 (NDLW 17) will take place from15–19 May 2017. This year the theme of the week will be ‘Digital Difference’ and throughout the week you are asked to share and celebrate the digital approaches which make a positive impact on classroom practice.

The weekwill be packed with inspiring case studies from Early Learning and Childcare through to Senior Phase and beyond showcasing how digital makes a difference throughout the entire learner journey equipping young people for work. There will be online events and activities giving everyone the opportunity to get involved whether you’re a digital leader or simply just starting out and looking for some digital inspiration.

On the run up to the week more details will be published about how you can get involved. Time start to think about what you might do as a class or whole school to celebrate National Digital Learning Week 2017. Visit the latest news.

The National Digital Learning Week 2017 (NDLW 17) will take place from15–19 May 2017. This year the theme of the week will be ‘Digital Difference’ and throughout the week you are asked to share and celebrate the digital approaches which make a positive impact on classroom practice.

The weekwill be packed with case studies from Early Learning and Childcare through to Senior Phase and beyond showcasing how digital makes a difference throughout the entire learner journey equipping young people for work. There will be online events and activities giving everyone the opportunity to get involved whether you’re a digital leader or simply just starting out and looking for some digital inspiration.

Why not promote some of your media education work with pupils? Visit the latest news.

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Please note: News items for the Jun 2017 e-newsletter should be emailed by Sun4 Jun. Please include weblinks.

Rick Instrell, AMES web administrator and e-newsletter editor, .

AMES is a registered Scottish charity SC029408.

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