The first draft...

... is almost here! Yesterday I spent some time formatting my chapters and putting them in one document. I am now 76,000 words in and with the double spacing of what has been signed off so far, the thesis is almost 300 pages long! The first draft should be all done for mid June, and I can't wait to look at it.

This is what my cover look like on the iPad. Pretty swish!

I had a quite frustrating time over Christmas, trying to understand the statistical part of my data, but after finally finding someone who could help me with SPSS, everything is coming together. Now there is just three further chapters on my list: The analysis (of which a draft already exists to some extend), the conclusion and then the introduction. Great stuff!

I have also had some further good news that I have been accepted to the BERA conference in Belfast in September. It will take place the week after our own HEO conference, so that is going to be an exciting month. BERA is a proper 'grown up' conference and I am chuffed to be speaking there.

PhD paperwork and the last deadlines

It is difficult to believe that my last blog post is already almost five month old now- how time flies! 

Since November, I have used my new research skills working for the Manchester University on the Culture Metrics Research Project and have also picked up various bits and pieces of work at Leeds Beckett University. A colleague and I founded the Holistic Education Organisation UK in January and we are planning our first conference for September- there is much to do!

My PhD viva date has now been set to the 7th October and my external examiner is going to be Dr Rachael Levy. The title of the thesis is now also confirmed: It's going to be called 'Nurturing writing skills in the primary literacy lessons of the 'City of Film': The impact of using moving images on attainment and subject perception'. Fingers crossed the next weeks promise good progress!

I have a couple more deadlines between now and June, when the first full draft is due. The data chapters needs to be reviewed (and has been giving me a great headache because of its statistics), and there are still three chapters to write: the analysis, the conclusion and the introduction. I can't wait for everything to come together soon. It's going to be a very high pile of paper in print!!

Last week, I spoke at the Bradford Film Summit, and have also been accepted for a conference in Sheffield and one in Marseille together with my colleague Abi Gilmore from Manchester Uni. Have a look at the conference page for details. It is my hope that the conferences will also help me to finally get pen to paper and draft at least one more journal article. I about to start applying for work for September and it would be great to have a few more publications under my belt before trying to enter the scary world of professional full-time academia. 

First presentation of the results

Hello from Prague and the Media Education Summit 2014!

Two exciting months have passed since my last blog post: both the data and the methodology chapter have now seen a review and I am looking forward to getting started on the deeper analysis before Christmas. This afternoon, I am presenting some first insights of the attainment site of the project at the MES and hope to convert the presentation into a journal paper before too long.

In other academic places, October and November have also seen a couple of short term and part time research and teaching positions at the University of Manchester, Durham University and Leeds Beckett University. It's exciting to get stuck into the different areas of education, cultural analysis and policy. The Manchester project is particularly interesting, as I am working for another report for the NESTA R&D project fund. This time, I am looking at common quality metrics across arts projects.

25 months into the PhD, I feel much more comfortable amongst the different academic tribes I dip in and out of and seem to find my own corner more and more. There are just two more chapters to go for my thesis and I am really pleased about my progress. Fingers crossed all this researching, writing and lecturing experience will help me to find an interesting position next summer.

More thoughts on Florence and other things

Hello again from Florence!

By now, I am back at the hostel to have a bit of a breather before my friend and I are going to head out for the first World Cup game of the year. So far, I've had a great time in Florence. This evening we took a walk around the city centre and I bought a pasta roller to inspire me when I get back home.

The conference is interesting (and I am still super chuffed about being here) but unfortunately I don't quite feel that it lived up to its title 'Future of Education'. It's been a shame to hear a few vague desinterested people talk about their commercial projects and I've really been missing the amazing key notes I am used to from other conferences. That said, the programme for tomorrow looks a little bit better and I already made a good friend today. I am also looking forward to my presentation tomorrow afternoon.

My talk is going to be on Free Schools (see post below) and unfortunately we've been having a really tough time with the New Schools Network and the application in general. It seems that one of the primary requirements for the applications at the moment is that the team has to have at least one outstanding school leader as one of the main applicants and although we've got a lady who is helping us with it, she is unsure whether she'll be able to commit. And as a busy principal who would be able to dedicate an extensive amount of time to a project like a completely different school to their own?!

My friend Natalie (who is also an academic) and I have been thinking and writing extensively on our application and I am hoping to try to finish a prospective journal article at the end of June. Additionally, I would really like to finish my PhD data gathering by the end of the month. In three weeks' time I am seeing the Film Literacy teachers for the last time and have just sent out a batch of questionnaires to them. Hopefully at least some of them are going to come back!

I have recently started to work with SPSS and NVivo and can't wait to post some exciting findings next week when I am back home. SPSS has helped to to think about how girls and boys think about writing and it will hopefully also show me whether the film literacy scheme has actually made a difference to attitudes and attainment at the end of the year. Fingers crossed something useful is going to emerge!

More conferences and publications

Last week I had some brilliant news: I have been accepted for this year's Kaleidoscope conference in Cambridge and the Future of Education conference in Florence! The latter even includes a publication and I am chuffed to bits that the University of Bradford is paying for me to go. Here is the submitted abstract:

Ros McLellan, my new second supervisor from Cambridge, came to see me last month and together we discussed many questions I have had for a long time. She also encouraged me to do get involved in some additional research and to potentially apply for a postdoc position for next year. It was really wonderful to talk to someone who has so much experience in the academic education community and I am looking forward to working with her over the next year. Our next meeting is at the end of the month at the Kaleidoscope conference.

In the last month, I also re-submitted an article for the Kaleidoscope journal and hope to hear back from them soon. It would be great to go into my second research summer knowing that I have two publications under my belt already.

My research is currently focused on observing as many media literacy lessons as I can. I am working closely with one particular teacher and I think her school might become a case study for the scheme. I am also planning my questionnaires and interviews for the end of the year. The project evaluation day is not actually until the beginning of July, but I am hoping to see a couple more classes until then. I am particular looking forward to evaluating the data about students' emotions about writing. It's going to be fascinating!

Happy new year!

I am now almost half way through my PhD; time has really flown. After a year of reading and writing, I finally finished my literacy review yesterday. It now includes sections on film and education, literacy, motivation and emotion and I am really proud that  it is done. Overall, it spans 40,000 words. I am very excited about passing it on to my (potential) new supervisor Ros McLellan from the University of Cambridge. Hopefully we will finally be able to start working together in a fortnight's time.

In the first week of January, I visited the MeCCSA in Bournemouth and spoke about the student population of the Bradford Film School. This was a very interesting experience as it was the first time I visited a conference and held a presentation on something that was not PhD related! You can actually find a short video here. I am writing quite a lot for the Steiner Academy Leeds free school bid at the moment, so I might try to put a different paper together for that, too.

Unfortunately my PhD research has hit a bit of a wall- the schools are not very good at getting back to me and after gathering data from the first 10 classes, it is very quiet now. I am a little bit worried that it is too late to re-approach some of the class teachers and I am hoping that Ros can help me to figure out a new strategy to gather as much data as possible in the last months of the school year. Fingers crossed!

A common framework for literacy assessment

A lot of the best things that happen at conferences take place between the talks: no matter whether it’s receiving feedback for your presentation or meeting someone who feels passionately about an interesting area of research, these conversations are really the human backbone of why I enjoy taking part in conferences.

This lunchtime, I met Kamakshi Rajjagopal from the Open University in the Netherlands and we had a very interesting chat about literacy frameworks. Something that almost everyone at the conference seems to struggle with is ‘assessing’ media competencies. How do we know whether someone is media literate?

On a holistic and more general level this is easy to determine: I would expect the person to be able to access and evaluate the media and then, possibly, to be able to produce it, too. In the case of film education for example, there should be an understanding about how meaning is constructed (shots, editing, lighting, …) and what effect these techniques have. However, as soon as we move into the categorisation of these skills at different levels, things become more difficult. I have always found the AQA and WJEC marking criteria for practical coursework pretty limiting.

Kamakshi suggested that we should look at the common aspects between old and new literacy and consider the common frameworks for literacy competence across Europe. Here, competencies are described with positive statements such as ‘I can write a paragraph without errors’. Where I think this comparison falls short in terms of film is that very little attention is paid to creativity (just like in writing)! Students are rewarded for ‘imaginative’ work but it is much more difficult to define ‘imaginative’ than it is to say that there are no grammatical errors in a sentence.

In a way, however, the comparison is an appropriate one if we remember that written language has many things in common with film making: there are parts (sentences and shots, paragraphs and scenes), there is a framework of rules (grammar and editing rules such as the construction of shot-reverse-shot) and there is the same consideration of fiction vs non-fiction (reports and documentaries). In the end, both forms include a degree of creativity no matter how ‘objective’ they are, too.

There are some examples of frameworks (done by the European Commission and UNESCO), however many definitions are basic and vague. On the other hand: would it really be possible to develop specific frameworks for every 'part' of media (film, radio, newspapers, blogs, ...) and where does that list end? Also, as we have seen with the development of film and media as subjects on their own right, just because something is assessed does not mean it gets taken more seriously. 

Yesterday, I was writing about how surprised I was that even after years and years of discussion, media literacy still did not have a common framework- surely by this point we should have long left definitions behind and moved on to making a united move towards implementation? An assessment scheme like the ones that exist for traditional literacy might potentially have a lot to contribute- whether Europe or communities beyond will be able to agree on one framework is a different topic! 

Media and Learning conference live update

Last night at midnight I arrived in Brussels for the Media and Learning conference 2013. The conference takes place at the Flamish ministry of education and the lunch was suitably exciting. Unfortunately my hotel is not in a very nice area but it’s warm and dry and this morning it only took 15 minutes to walk to the conference. I got lost on the way but in end it was really my fault that I did not see the major signs!

I was scheduled to speak this afternoon at 3:30 and so I had plenty of time to go to talks, meet people and tweet! I really enjoy chatting with people online as the conference goes on and I think this is something that I picked up last year at the conference of the Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg. Online people make friends much easier than in real life- although I don’t really have any scruples to go up to strangers and say hi at conferences, either. Tweeting, I made a new friend and connected to lots of interesting people in the media literacy area.

The conference has a coherent strand of ‘media literacy’ and much of what is said centres around this topic. It is fascinating to see how even after years of talking about media literacy, theorists and practitioners from all over the world still seem to take many different things from media literacy- in the opening talk media literacy was defined as ICT, film and online media by three different people.

One of the people who opened the conference was Baroness Beeban Kidron, one of the co-founders of Filmclub UK. I was very surprised to see that she simply explained the Filmclub model and praised it. She is a very engaging speaker and I am sure that she wanted to introduce everyone to her project on a positive note, however saying that media literacy is now playing a big part in schools over the UK and not mentioning that Filmclub does not actually exist anymore annoyed me a little bit.

Filmclub and First Light have now merged to become Film Nation UK and the old organisations are going to disappear. Her comment regarding the media literacy in the schools is simply idealistic- England has removed all traces of media from its latest primary curriculum and in the secondary sector more and more schools cancel media as an A-Level and GCSE because of the move towards the English baccalaureate.

In the afternoon, I went to a lecture on ‘big data’ and the impact of data gathering and analysis on education. Dai Griffiths from the University of Bolton began his talk with a quote from Michael Gove, in which teachers are encouraged to collect and generate data to ‘show what works’. This is very much in line with the approach of my PhD: the education department wants statistics and quantitative ‘proof’ of what makes a difference to learning (or rather testing!). Dai talked about how companies like Wonga and Google gather masses of data and how this data helps them to make decisions but then also noted that this might not be the right model for education.

What data can we really gather as educators? At the moment, all data that we collect or that we are supplied with is about exam results and standardised attainment levels. Does this reflect learning? If you have read a few posts on this blog you might have realised that I feel very strongly about how little testing and grading contribute to education and that much of the education system in which we work is based on the wrong foundations. Dai finished his talk with the question whether using more data (and the trend is developing that way) can really help students and teachers or whether the benefit is just for the managers and data becomes just another inflated tool of performance management.

At 3:30pm it was finally time for my talk. I was part of a panel which spoke about media literacy as a contributor to ‘core competence’ and the two other panel members introduced a practical project and gave a further introduction to Filmclub. I think the beginning of my talk might have sounded a little bit angry- all fired up from the ‘big data’ talk, I passionately argued for the importance of quantitative research and against the casual use of quotes and bad methodologies. I introduced everyone to the City of Film media literacy project and shared a few data points I have gathered so far. I also spoke about the political landscape in the UK and the fact that there was little funding for enquiry and little government support for media. Overall, I think it went pretty well and there were almost 20 people there who listened to me and my colleagues.  Afterwards, I was approached by a lady from the University of Barcelona who wanted to interview me for her film and we agreed to meet tomorrow morning.

This evening, there is the show for the Media and Learning awards. I was a judge for the competition as few months ago and looked at eight media projects from films to interactive software and video games. I am looking forward to seeing some of the other projects which have been nominated. I think there is a group from Yorkshire, too!

Tomorrow, I am going to attend sessions on research into film and media across Europe and one of my new friends, Julie Smith from Southern Illinois University is going to speak about reality TV shows. The plenary at the end of the day will look at how to create systematic change towards a more media friendly education system- something I am particularly looking forward to! Thanks for reading and I’ll keep you updated! 

Starting the research

It's been quite some time since I have blogged- the summer flew by and now I am already half way through the first phase of my research. I started to contact schools in August and also met the teachers at the first teacher training event. Unfortunately it turned out that the classes were actually Year 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (instead of only Year 5), but on the other hand there are almost 30 schools who are part of the scheme this year. It has been challenging to get in touch with them and organise a day at school with the teachers but whenever I have met students it has been very interesting and rewarding. So far, 200 students have taken questionnaires on writing and film.

On a none-PhD note, I have joined a group of people who are trying to apply for a Steiner Free School in Leeds. Have a look at the website if you are interested :-)

I passed my transfer a few weeks ago, too, so there is one thing I can tick off! Hurray! Chapter-wise, I am now done with film, literacy and motivation and also hope to submit the section on emotion at the end of the week. Unfortunately I still haven't got a second supervisors but I have got my fingers crossed that the paperwork is finally going to come through before Christmas.

Last Saturday I attended the Media Education Association conference in London and spoke about the ways in which the scheme uses film to teach literacy. I only spoke to a small group of people, but I think that most of them found it interesting and helpful. One of the attendees turned out to be Paul Reeve, the new head of Film Nation UK. I had another quick chat with him at the end of the day and he told me to 'get on with my PhD quickly' as it was needed by the film education community and that it would be 'dynamite' once it was published. That was pretty great feedback from someone so important!

In three weeks time I am off to my first international conference the Media and Learning Conference in Brussels. You can find the programme here. It looks like a very interesting event and I look forward to sharing my research with the international film and media education community. I have also been accepted to speak at the Meccsa conference in Bournemouth in January and will be presenting a paper on how Bradford introduces film to people on the margins of society. 

First international conference acceptance

Many exciting things have been happening in the last two weeks, starting with the official launch of the Bradford Film School on the 2nd July. Representatives from India and beyond  came to celebrate the launch with us and it was great to see such a warm reception. It has been amazing to be part of the team which made the new school possible and I am especially proud of my involvement in the BA (Hons) Film and a BFI Film Academy bid which I submitted last week.

One of the guests at the reception was David Wilson, who spoke about the importance of learning in the world's first UNESCO City of Film. 

Two days ago we also had the last day of the City of Film literacy scheme, where seven of the participating teachers write up their case studies and commented on their experience of the year. All of them were overwhelmingly positive and most of them the teachers will continue on the scheme as mentors for next year's teachers.

In other great news, I have been accepted to two further conferences, the Media + Learning Conference in Brussels which takes place in September and the Media Education Summit in Sheffield in September. On both occasions I will be speaking about the differences between media literacy and using media for literacy. Whilst the Media Education summit it going to be my first 'professional' conference, Brussels is going to be my first international one. I am very excited!

My last two days have been completely taken up by the completion of my methodology chapter. After checking with the university about ethical approval last week, I was told that I had to submit my whole chapter (or rather most of its content) together with my application, so I am trying to get everything done before I start travelling for two weeks tomorrow. Yesterday I wrote 6,000 words in one hit, so have my fingers crossed that everything will be done tonight! I will post some ideas once everything is submitted.

Pockets of Excellence: Film Education in Yorkshire and the Humber

On Thursday the 27th I was invited to the Sheffield Showroom Cinema to attend the launch of the CapeUK report Pockets of Excellence: Film Education in Yorkshire and the Humber. The report was commissioned by CapeUK, an arts umbrella organisation which manages, designs and delivers arts projects across Yorkshire and beyond. The aims of the report were to map film education activity and to lay the foundations for a coherent cross-county network.

Geraldine Walker, Sarah Mumford and Dr Becky Perry (my secondary supervisor for the first half year of the PhD) summarised the findings of the report.One of the main topics that emerged very quickly were the impact of passionate individuals on film activities. No matter whether in schools or arts organisations, the researchers found that it was often these individual people who started, maintained and drove project. 

However, the key to success with integrating film into the curriculum and beyond is by including the whole of the organisation. Once the leader (for example the head teacher) believes in the benefits of film education, whether because of its intrinsic value or the improvement of other skills, the structures to put film in place are then filtered down into the classroom and whole school activities. There are many reasons why people engage with film.

Becky closed the first part of the morning with the hope that the BFI and other film organisations would tap into whole networks rather than individual institutions. Although the report highlights excellent practice of individual groups, it should rather be seen as an overview of all film activity that is going on in the region and CapeUK hopes that it will lay the foundation stone for further collaboration.

Professor Andrew Burn from the Institute of Education gave the key note speech of the day and spoke about film's place in the national curriculum and last year's Henley Review, in which film was mentioned very little and media studies was omitted fully. Where organisations invest in film education, it often fosters on national heritage cinema and audience building. Andrew argues that it will be difficult to create a coherent film production framework for schools as it is almost impossible to 'mark' skills like editing and producing.

After Andrew's speech, Nikki Christie from the BFI spoke about the Film Academy scheme and Film Nation, the newly founded film education organisation consisting of FilmClub and First Light. The BFI supports the view that schools, teachers and students should be at the heart of film education policy. Nikki stressed that it is very important for organisations like the BFI to tap into national research and very few studies are available as of yet. The evidence has to go beyond the general notion that film engages children but should really include quantitative data and long-tern cohort studies.

Paul Hewlett took over from Nikki and expanded on the Film Nation ideas. In their option, film should be used as a tool for learning and as in intrinsic subject. Film Nation is very keen to foster collaboration and Paul encouraged other individuals to work together, too. He argued that only as a coherent front can film educators really make a difference with regards to policy change. Film Nation will support these ideas by building an online platform which connects film makers, parents, teachers and students.

After lunch, we heard from great film initiatives like Magic Frames, Anim8ed and Love Bytes; three film projects which have engaged primary and secondary school students through film making activities. Animation was mentioned as an especially suitable tool. Martin Grund and David Prosho also introduced the Leeds Young Film network and the Golden Owl Awards which I was lucky to attend at the beginning of the year. All presenters highlighted the importance of collaboration and the need to connect film making activities with government-based targets in the classroom.

The day was wrapped up with a quick feedback session in which the participants supported more regular meetings of a film education network in Yorkshire and the wish to access more local and national research in film education. Hopefully I will be able to contribute to a collection of data very soon; it definitely looks like the perfect time for my PhD! You can read more about the launch here and the report itself is here.

Social Sciences conference at Sheffield Uni

This week was my last conference for the term: The Translation and Transformation conference at the Social Science department of the University of Sheffield. Although much smaller than Kaleidoscope, there were actually more people in my talk than last week. This time I spoke about film education and policy in the UK, which was great fun. It's so much easier speaking about things that you know something about rather than an uncertain lit review!

My favourite part of the conference was the interesting, divers topics and the open minded people who attended it. I learned about everything from violence to lapdancing and banter! When you work in education, ironically you sometimes forget that the world is there to be discovered! Hopefully I will reconnect with the people from the conference soon. I tweeted through most of the conference so have a look at my twitter stream if you are interested in what went on`

 On the topic of my lit review, I have now finished my first chapter. It looks at film education, film literacy and film as a tool and I am pretty proud of my first 11k words! My transfer is now not going to take place until October due to uni regulations and there should be lots of time over the summer to engage with methodology and methods.

Kaleidoscope @ Cambridge University

Yesterday I gave my second conference presentation at the Kaleidoscope Conference at the University of Cambridge. This time, I spoke about my literature review and the way that the difference between film literacy and literacy through film shaped my understanding of the primary school scheme I will be researching next year. This is getting a bigger and bigger topic in my thesis at the moment, because I keep getting frustrated that many people don't understand the difference between the two.

Kaleidscope itself was brilliant and I felt very privileged to show friends from Leeds around Cambridge. The atmosphere of the conference was really inspiring and with over 70 presentations by education students plus professional workshops, the program was pretty full! I learned a lot about lots of different things including my own research.

On the first night, there were music and spoken word performances by members of the MPhil in Arts, Culture, Education and Creativity of the faculty- the same course that I did last year. Once again I was really impressed by the way in which the arts educators approach their research in a really creative and open minded way. Piano performances and poems related to the individuals' research and their PhD journey. I am hoping that this blog contributes a little bit to my own inflection even if it is maybe not quite as artistic!

Newspaper articles

This time I have got some really exciting news! Through my work at the Bradford Film School, a website and a newspaper wrote articles about me in the last days. You can find the piece in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus here and the article on 4rft here.

I also did lots of promotion on twitter on Friday, attending and speaking at the Leeds Uni Education Research Conference. My presentation went really well and I am looking forward to attending the next conference in Cambridge

After two conferences last week, I am hoping to finish my first chapter of the literature review in the next days. Fingers crossed everything will be ready for the transfer at the beginning of July!

Mixed methods

Today I am writing the blog from my new hometown: Leeds. I moved last week and look forward to taking part in lots of events and exciting things around my new favourite place in Yorkshire!

This morning, I attended the White Rose research conference on Mixed Methods and, for the first time in a few months, actually started to think about my research design and methodology again. I am hoping to use qualitative research to gather the writing scores as well as the students' perception of how their emotions change because of the film watching. Through qualitative interviews I am going to find out about the students' individual responses to the films. Overall, I am hoping to see (1) whether there is an emotional change when students watch films and (2) whether there is a correlation between this possible change and their motivation for writing.

The most interesting part of the morning was to hear Professor Stephen Gorard from Durham uni speak about the importance of a holistic point of view with regards to research methods. He argues against a division between qualitative and quantitative research, as one should always gather as much evidence as possible, no matter which method. He complained that people make informed decisions in their everyday lives based on all information they have access to, rather than just looking at numbers or 'the rest'. I am looking forward to reading more of his work.

On Friday morning I visited Chris Mayoh at the Innovation Centre in Bradford. Last week, the different schools involved in the literacy scheme I am researching visited the centre to train 'film literacy ambassadors', year 5 students who would then go back to their schools and help other students engage with film. I spent the morning with Wibsey School, who looked at the Pixar short film For the Birds (one of my favourites!). The students came up with some great ideas about the theme of the film and how emotion was illicited.

Last week was also the launch of the new BBC3 production of Carmen, which will take place in the Bradford city centre in June. City of Film are actively involved in the project and I was invited to the press launch. Just a few minutes after the actors, who had introduced the opera, had left the stage we were atcually able to see the BBC coverage at a big screen outside. Very exciting! You can read more about the project here. 

Conference submissions

In the last week I submitted two proposals for conferences. One entitled 'Media and Film education, policy and implementation in schools' for the Sheffield Postgrad Research conference (5th June) and one for Kaleidoscope (30/21 May) in Cambridge. I am really getting into the swing of writing different summaries of what is going on in my research and I am learning to focus my thoughts and chapters.

Now you just need to cross your fingers for me that I actually get in!

Oxford STORIES and UKLA

This week I attended two conferences: The Oxford STORIES conference, which allows postgrads researchers to present their work to peers and the UKLA (UK Literacy Association) conference on digital literacies.

The weather is Oxford was beautiful and although the coach journey there almost killed me (4,5h!), it was great to meet other young researchers who are involved in education. It's really interesting that when you go to an education conference of this kind most of the people who attend are international women in their late 20s/ early 30s.

In Oxford I learned two very useful things. Although most of the sessions did not feel particularly relevant to my research, this was the first time that I went to a conference which was put on for research students by research students and it taught me a lot about how to structure a conference presentation. I have got my first own presentation in London in two weeks time and I am glad I had this experience before I went. Secondly, the Department for Education at Oxford uni also had some brilliant posters on display and they showed me that posters at conferences are not at all second class to presentations.

Where STORIES looked at all kinds of educational topics, the UKLA conference was much more focused on research which is connected to my work. I finally met the Media Literacy heroes Jackie Marsh and Guy Merchant and also encountered a very interesting project by Petula Bhojwani, who also wrote her PhD about using films to motivate boys to write.

The best speaker of the day was David Mitchell, who spoke about the use of blogs in classrooms and how using internet technology had transformed his students and the school as a whole. His presentation style was really entertaining and reminded me a lot of Ken Robinson. It's always refreshing to have a very academic conference broken up by a few laughs! Thanks to David, I have finally started to tweet a bit more about my PhD and I am hoping to update this blog more frequently, too!

Conferences in 2013

I am very excited to post that two of my proposals have been accepted at events and I am going to be talking about my research at a MEA dinner on the 26.03.2013 and at the University of Leeds Education Research Students' Annual Conference on the 09.05.2013.

I am also hoping to submit to the Kaleisdoscope Conference in Cambridge, which takes place on the 15th March. For more information on events I am attending please have a look at the Paper and Conferences page.

Cambridge Oxford Exchange

After long months of reading, changing my topic and feeling pretty isolated in Bradford, I came down to Cambridge on Friday to mingle with other education posgrads at the Faculty of Education. I am still pretty connected to the uni here due to my PGCE and MEd and the fact that I am only graduating in March. I am still hoping to come back one day as a researcher or for a postdoc.

A couple of months ago I wrote about Ken Robinson and that you need to connect to the people of your 'tribe' to become good at what you are doing. Meeting all these lovely education postdocs and hearing from some really inspiring people was great- it really reminded me of the joys of studying and sharing practice!

While I was here, I also popped into the brilliant faculty library and worked for a few hours. I wish we had such a wonderful place to read and write up north! I am spending more and more time in one of the two libraries of Leeds uni, but working in front of a beautiful garden is something different all together!

Conferences on media literacy

After spending a couple of brilliant days away from my desk, speaking to people and getting to know the media literacy world out there, I decided to sit down yesterday and come up with a list of other conferences and gatherings that are coming up in the next months. This is what I found:

If you know of another conference that is going on and/or organisations which would be interested in sponsoring travel, accommodation and/or conference fees please get in touch!