After more than a week of travelling I am finally back at my desk and can report back on all of the amazing things which I have experienced in the last days!
Friday and Saturday I spent at the MEA conference at the BFI. It was absolutely brilliant to meet so many likely minded people and walk away with lots of new ideas and contacts. It was especially interesting to finally see David Buckingham speak, about whom I had heard many great things in the last weeks! He started off the conference on Saturday with a key note talk on the state of media education today, which looks pretty gloomy! Although it was very entertaining to hear him speak, I wish he would have offered some solutions, too!
In my fist chosen session of the day, I listened to Julian McDougall speak about a research project in which he observed A-Level and undergraduate classes as they used a computer game instead of a book as part of English literature lessons. The approach was fascinating and showed how excited the students were about the change of medium. In my project,we are trying to move being 'using films instead of books' but I am pleased that computer games are now getting into this first stage, too!
The second chosen session of the morning was my favourite! I discovered that there is somebody else out there who is focusing on reading levels and use of films in primary schools- Carrie Virginvie. Carrie is the English subject leader in her school and created a project in which teachers used films in different ways to improve writing levels. She then compared this work with another unit in which the teachers had used books and found that motivation and levels increased!
After the MEA conference, I also went down to Bournemouth University to give a lecture on student film distribution and attend their new student film festival BUtiful. The festival was inspired by the Watersprite Festival which I founded in Cambridge more than three years ago and it was great to see that more than 280 young people submitted work!
On Wednesday afternoon I was finally back in Bradford and met my supervisors to discuss our plan for the next months. In the past weeks I have felt a little bit stressed by researching, writing, meeting the team members and planning the methodology so hopefully a little 'break' will do me some good!
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