My reflections were just too lengthy to hold in a single post (and that was just with the abstracts, 3 key points, and a few photos!) Here is the second half of my reflections from the 2023 edition of the Global Media Education Summit, held in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Global Media Education Summit (2)
Conference Reflections by Diana Maliszewski
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Opening Keynote - Artivism to Promote a South-to-South Dialogue (9:00 am PST)
Summary (taken from program): This panel, convened by Andrea Medrado and Isabella Rega, brings together academics and artivists to reflect on the topic of artivism and how artivism can support a Global South dialogue to promote global social justice and to launch the new book:
Medrado, A. and Rega, I. (2023). Media Activism, Artivism and the Fight Against Marginalisation in the Global South. Routledge.
In the first part of the session two experimental animations celebrating two black female activitsts will be screened: “Portrait of Marielle”, produced in Kenya by young artivists within the AHRC eVoices project and a sister animation produced by N’gendo Mukii with Brazilian artists with support from the Goethe Institute in Salvador de Bahia, “Homage to Wangari Maathai”. After the screening, Milena Anjos, Paula Callus, A-zee Cotpel, Marina Lima and Judith Lumumba will participate in a roudtable and share their perspective and experiences as scholars and artists involved in the two projects.
3 Key Points:
1) By learning about other countries in the south (Brazil & Kenya), via an animation project that completed after a 3 or 4 day workshop, it led to powerful transformation and shared knowledge.
2) The Brazil group got to meet Wangari Maathai (Diana note: she's in the picture book "Wangari Speaks for the Trees", so I have heard of her), and the participants said how impactful that way and how she was ahead of her time and not just a benefit for Kenya but for all of humanity. (The Kenyan team did Mareille Franco, who was murdered and the crime is still unsolved.)
3) Animation is a unique medium to use because it borrows from many different practices and can bring artists from a range of practices such as photography, music, and these artists/makers can combine their skills and expertise in new ways for a collaborative process (and can be "research through/for/in art"), with no specialized software equipment required. They printed stills from footage and printed them on paper and then chose what to layer or do or add or enhance and there was lots of discussion on what those choices and the new results meant.
Media Artifacts:
CEMP Conversations 5 (10:30 am PST)
Creating Digital Media Nutrition Labels
Summary (taken from program):There are many labels in our lives. Some tell us the contents of things, some warn us of hazards, and some tip us off to better uses. Food labels have been law since 1990 and appear on almost everything but fresh food. These labels help us make informed decisions. What if we thought about our digital consumption like mental food?
Media literacy assignments should promote critical thinking and be fun, engaging, and relevant for learners. This series of lessons on creating digital media nutrition labels is designed to achieve all these goals. This activity invites crowd-sourced recommendations for digital media experiences. The students create Digital Fact Guides for platforms and apps that are similar in design and function to food Nutrition Facts labels. How might the discussions, designs and labels help users and others be mindful of their media activities?
Evaluation is one of the higher order thinking items in Bloom’s taxonomy. The students become evaluators of their chosen digital media experience. In these lessons, the students generate and then apply their evaluation criteria. By asking them to work in groups, they collaborate and make their thinking visible. They practice negotiation, cooperation, and group skills. The students create the criteria, the assessments and the label categories, so their thinking reaches the top of Bloom’s taxonomy. There is a great deal of differentiation in content, process and product with these lessons. This Conversation, by Neil Andersen and Diana Maliszewski, unit creators and facilitators, will explain the process and results.
3 Key Points:
1) (Bias alert! This was the session Neil Andersen and I presented.) Bloom's Taxonomy has at its top things like analyze, synthesize and create, and this project used all three.
2) It is fascinating to compare Diana's results (Grade 5-6s in 2021) with Neil's results (adult learners in 2023) - pattern recognition both for the creators and for our audience are useful tools for analysis.
3) The choice of media platforms differed based on the student audience (e.g. Roblox was just a kid option, whereas YouTube was both) as well as the categories they chose to use within the nutrition label format.
CEMP Conversations 5 (10:30 am PST)
Media Literacy and Implementation Science
Summary (taken from program): We will conduct a CEMP Conversation, and review learning from the rising field of Implementation Science by giving a brief overview as well as an example now underway in a US School District. We will have four three panel members: one (Barbara J. Walkosz), a research scientist who provides programming and evaluation for media literacy; another (Tessa Jolls) who provides program design and implementation to major organizations; and third and fourth, a State of Washington professor (Marilyn Cohen) and a Chicago Public Schools executive (Heather Van Benthuysen) who have laid a foundation for the State and a District’s media literacy programming, respectively.
Indication of Approaches/methods/research results, significance for media education:
Implementation science, the study of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practices, is emerging as a framework to study the implementation of media literacy. Implementation science emerged in the public health field, and is just becoming known and applied in media literacy programs, and demanded in US Federal grant programs. Relying on theories of change and rigorous evaluations of programming that exemplify these theories of change, Implementation Science provides a solid foundation for dissemination and scaling and for helping media literacy take its rightful place as a central educational offering. We will provide an overview of Implementation Science, describing steps taken to date within the State of Washington and Chicago Public Schools to illustrate how Implementation Science works to strengthen and sustain media literacy.
3 Key Points:
1) Michael from Washington state explained that it was by having a sponsor - in their case, state senator Marko Liias - explain how to advocate to make a bill that helped their group (action4mediaeducation.org) get several bills legislated that integrated media literacy in the curriculum. They gave the senator and his staff as crash course on media literacy and they really understood and embraced the ideas. (Their first bill was in 2016, second in 2017, and third in 2019 that got $300K in grants to develop media literacy units.)
2) Heather from Chicago Public Schools said her case was a grassroots lead movement to get media literacy in the curriculum. Their offerings used an option of vertical or horizontal implementation, within disciplines or over the grades, and has been a 7 year journal and they've examined the mechanisms of power to ensure improvement was continually happening.
3) Tessa said many grants call for implementation science (scientific study of methods and strategies that facilitate uptake of evidence based practice and research into regular use by practiciners and policy makers) so many frameworks that use implementation science (such as diffusion of innovation theory) can be employed.
CEMP Conversations 5 (10:30 am PST)
Edupedagogy, Environmental Science, and Critical Media Production with Junior High Scientists: Responding to Extractivism in Southern California
Summary (taken from program): To encourage junior high science students to reflect on global citizenship within an ecopedagogy lens (e.g., Misiaszek, 2021), adolescent scientists (i.e., junior high school science students) are engaging in field learning in salt marsh/coastal sage scrub habitats in Southern California. This project, which is a school-community organization partnership, has three stages: first, students explored ethical considerations regarding human activity and associated harm within local ecologies. Specifically, the ethical questions considered revolve around the impacts of oil drilling in the Los Cerritos Wetlands, a practice that began over 100 years ago in the city of Long Beach.
This CEMP conversation will offer one vision for critical environmental science media production at the junior high level. To voice their concerns about continuing oil drilling, the students are writing letters to their future selves in which they will think about the predicted impacts of extractivist human relationships with the wetlands. Secondly, the junior high school scientists are helping the wetlands by collaborating with community partners Tidal Influence, planting native plants, and learning about the health of the environment. Finally, students are engaging in critical media production to explore their take(s) on the ethical issues and consequences of human actions on the wetlands. Student-produced media to be shared includes podcasts, children’s books, and Public Service Announcements (PSAs) as the junior high scientists share their vision(s) for their local ecology.
Misiaszek, G. W. (2021). De-distancing ‘us’ from the rest of Earth: Ecopedagogical analysis and approaches. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 30(1-2), 1-12.
3 Key Points:
1) Criticality has been coopted and is now an identity position in a post-truth era that encourages people not to accept the "dominant narrative", so we need to reground critical literacy where you need to go beyond texts to "look in the world" and at evidence.
2) The "both side-ism" pushes disinformation, especially in schools without libraries, so eco-pedagogy (influenced by Freire linked to environment) can be brought to STEM education so (in this specific case in southern California) junior high school students doing empiracle investigations on tides and wetlands in conjunction with the Sunrise Movement (a group working to end urban oil drilling), had students reground the way of looking at their local ecosystem being harmed and then making PSAs, videos and other media texts to share the message.
3) The pre-teens and teens drew on the texts they loved to make meaning from it - Noah Golden, the presenter, talked about how some teen boys discussed the environmental issues while recording their video game play. Noah showed an absolutely bang-on parody talk show that spoofed the current Wednesday Addams Netflix TV show that was hilarious and effective.
Media Artifacts:
CEMP Conversations 6 (11:45 am PST)
When Methodology Meets Pedagogy: Games Based Research
Summary (taken from program): At MediaSmarts, Canada's centre for digital media literacy, we position youth as experts in their own lives and design research studies that create safe spaces for them to share their experiences and strategies related to the internet and digital technology. Recent qualitative projects, in particular, have allowed us to meaningfully engage with young people regarding their attitudes, behaviours, and concerns about privacy online through creative and interactive focus groups. These findings inform recommendations that we mobilize to various policy- and decision-makers and serve as the foundation for the educational resources we create and share with schools, homes, and communities across the country.
In this session, we will speak about our project, Algorithmic Awareness, in which we facilitated a scaffolded learning experience that blended gameplay with in-depth discussions to gain insight into how young Canadians understand the relationship between artificial intelligence, algorithms, privacy, and data protection. In the second half of the session, we will showcase our new educational resource, #ForYou: A Game About Algorithms, that we finalized after piloting in the research study. #ForYou is a card-based pattern-matching game that helps players understand the role of recommendation algorithms and the value of personal information to companies that use those algorithms. The game is designed to be delivered either in school or in community spaces such as homework or coding clubs.
We will discuss the benefits of merging methodology with pedagogy and share best practices in designing and facilitating game-based digital media education.
3 Key Points:
1) Media Smarts (who did a lot of self-promotion during this session) employs mixed method researchers with three educators for their research to resource process. They begin with a needs assessment based on surveys, then they develop, then pilot test resources in some classrooms, then do more resource development.
2) Their latest project is called #ForYou and is a card game that is meant to increase algorithmic awareness in youth ages 13-17 years old. They used Role 20, a gaming platform, to talk with their focus groups during the development stage. They said they noticed a lack of transparency in how algorithms work amongst the teens. They said that youth came to the focus groups that considered algorithms to be their friends and their attitudes shifted. (I wondered about this fear-based change, and another person in the audience whom I respect tremendously asked a question about it; they answered that they felt the new attitude was more expansive an understanding of algorithms and that their organization was approaching it from a privacy perspective.)
3) We played the first phase of this game. Each phase has two rounds: the experimental round, a discussion of what was used in the experimental round, then a second round, followed by a debrief between phases. The phases are popularity, monetization, and machine learning. Game "play" is loosely based on the game Mastermind.
CEMP Conversations 6 (11:45 am PST)
Creating Professional Learning Communities for Media Literacy Education
Summary (taken from program):With the growing awareness of the need for media education comes also an increased demand for professional development for educators. While many approaches to professional development exist around the world, media literacy education often includes perspectives that reflect its interdisciplinary nature, at the intersection of education and communication. Accordingly, the content, format, structure, delivery and target audiences may vary. Effective professional development is situational and contextual, reflecting the institutional structures of both primary education and higher education.
In this panel discussion, we gather a group of experts from Europe and the United States to explore these questions: Why is a community of learners important for media education? How is a community of learners cultivated through PD efforts? What kinds of content, format, and delivery models are most effective? What insights have emerged from navigating the institutional structures of primary and higher education to advance learning communities for media literacy education? What are the most significant challenges still to be overcome in fostering a community of learners?
3 Key Points:
1) Yonty is a co-directory of the Media Education Lab and he says professional development is the big push, because in Illinois, where they've recently added legislation insisting on media literacy in the curriculum, there is a single sentence that insists of PD but no funding allocated to it.
2) Their group experimented with different models, such as hybrid, in-person for a full week, and varied ways to work online.
3) The interesting thing is that teachers said they preferred face to face training but when it was offered, they would complain they had no time to attend.
Media Artifacts:
Keynote - Media Literacy in a World of AI: Here, Now, Next (2:00 pm PST)
Summary (taken from program):What does it look like to think critically about ‘media’ in an era of global online platforms and chatbots that can write an essay? What is at stake for the generation born into a world of social media? What chance do they have to shape the mediasphere today? Why does it matter?
3 Key Points:
1) Mark Surman, from Mozilla, based the theme of his talk on the 30th anniversity of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. He peppered his talk with Chomsky quotes that are still relevant. Media is about power in democracies and propaganda is the tool to democracy as the bludgeon is a tool in dictatorships.
2) We need to question the frame more often, so the focus was on the text and context (and if we want people to be engaged critically, it has to be about creating media, critical reading and production).
3) Mark talked about his path, via punk, activist TV, and noted that media literacy is still about power and activism is not about winning but about chipping away at power to make a balance. (He notes that 5 US companies are the richest and control the most things = Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta/Facebook - so these companies are the curators, bigger thant the NY Times, bigger than Exxon, bigger than Delta, and even bigger than Disney which owns so much).
Media Artifacts:
MES Panel 13 (3:15 pm PST)
Truth and Ethics in Social Media: Youth Perception and Educational Influence of Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
Summary (taken from program): We will report on some early findings from a large-scale, international research project based in Spain that seeks to explore the cultural and educational roles of Influencers and their fan communities within frames of digital citizenship and media education. In particular, the research explores activities of prosumers (or emirecs), particularly those who have risen to the status of social media influencer, and end users, on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. The project seeks to uncover perceptions of media, truth and ethics from these social media sites, alongside a broader understanding of modes of interaction and communication, as well as typologies and profiles of young people in social networks and other "affinity spaces" on the Internet. The work has involved surveys, interviews, focus groups and discourse analysis. Some of our early findings include a risk of depersonalization in social networks; an awareness of the unreliability of information (and need to verify); the understanding of the potential to influence others; the general absence of ethical frameworks; and a consciousness of some educational impact. For the most part, young people agree upon some basic realities of social media: that they contain controversial information, often lacking objectivity; that they respond to economic, political, and propagandistic interests; that they are alternative to the traditional media, providing first-hand information; and that they are forums of personal and group expression. A major lynchpin is trust and how that is earned and appraised by end users, often through relationships but also through aspirational ties to figures such as Influencers.
3 Key Points:
1) Michael Hoeschsmann represented a team of four presenters and 60 researchers, mainly in Spain and Latin America, to share their investigations into online influencers and followers; he notes that North Americans try not to label stuff but the Spaniards were fine in describing some of the things they looked into as "morally reproachable".
2) Michael talked about EMIRECS as a suitable replacement portmanteau for PROSUMER (note: when I interviewed Michael for a Mediacy podcast, I was rather befuddled with this term but now I understand) and the experience of SUBSUMPTION (how influencers lose a bit of themselves within social media).
3) Even critically aware followers don't have the strategies to limit screen time, and educators surveyed underestimated their abilitity to address online influencer and follower culture. Their group is developing the COMPROMETIC model (combining media literacy and ICT within teachers' education programs).
MES Panel 13 (3:15 pm PST)
Self-Writing as a Digital and Media Competence in a Technological and Social Environment
Summary (taken from program): This communication aims to present self-writing (SW) as a way to build relationships between the individual and his/her technological and social environment created by social networks. SW is intended as a set of practices designed to create and broadcast contents concerning the individual and his/her digital identity which Georges (2010) defines as tri-dimensional. It will explain how SW can be understood as a digital media competence and how this understanding modifies the definition of media literacy. The presentation will comment the results of a PhD thesis based on an inductive and comprehensive approach designed to understand how SW practices can lead to the definition of a media and digital competence, regarded as an ability “to create and spread someone’s own media productions, individually or in a group, by adopting the languages and technical processes implied by those productions using, if needed, the help of the right person” (Fastrez & De Smedt, 2012) (own translation). The analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with people (aged between 18 and 45) undergoing life changes reveals that: (1) people take into account specific social and individual norms linked to SW activities; (2) social groups play an important role in these activities; (3) the activities related to SW are specific to individuals as well as to platforms; (4) the audience influences SW (social environment) and, ultimately, (5) individuals’ digital identity. These results (which document SW activities and how digital identity evolves in social and technological environments) bring new insights to the media education framework.
Fastrez, P., & De Smedt, T. (2012). Une description matricielle des compétences en littératie médiatique. In La littératie médiatique multimodale. De nouvelles approches en lecture-écriture à l’école et hors de l’école (p. 45-60). Presses de l’Université du Québec.
Georges, F. (2010). Identités virtuelles : Les profils utilisateur du web 2.0. Questions théoriques.
3 Key Points:
1) Digital identities via online self-writing are created by ego, others, and the platforms used. This project involved iterative research that interviewed different groups of people during different phases.
2) It takes time to shape one's digital identity, because one must follow norms created by others, expose self to sanctions, and the "rules" of what to do and not do are never explicitly taught/shared. They can shape and create new norms within those structures (e.g. vloggers who choose not to show their actual faces online - this point came as a result of a question from the audience).
3) Digital identities change over time and over online platforms. Digital identity management is a challenge because there's a juggling of what you want to show, what should be shown, and the goal of not embarrassing your future self. (I asked a question about parents posting on behalf of their children and Esther and Anne-Sophie noted that fathers do a better job than mothers in moderating their posts of their children because mothers feel that since their bodies managed the pregnancy that they had rights to share more.)
MES Panel 13 (3:15 pm PST)
It is time for Media Education to address NFT Scams
Summary (taken from program): NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have been around since 2017, however only in March 2021 they became a worldwide sensation following the highly publicized sale of NFT art collage by the artist known as Beeple for $69,3mln. Following that, hundreds of thousands NFTs were traded with celebrities, artists and corporations participating in the NFT craze. The main idea behind NFTs is that they are digital collectibles that function as a proof of ownership, but not of copyright.
While a lot of things can be sold as an NFT, its market is mostly associated with the art world. NFTs were supposed to protect digital art and support ordinary artists, while allowing them to bypass traditional gate-keeping systems such as galleries. However, in practice NFTs did not accomplish such. Instead, what NFTs are is a scam, designed to trick people into investing in cryptocurrencies and making those who are already wealthy even more rich.
The current research argues that NFTs in their current form are a scam that is largely facilitated through traditional and social media. This research discusses financial, artistic and ecological harm NFTs and cryptocurrencies bring, and appeals to include NFTs and larger cryptocurrency discourse into media education for supporting the development of digital media literacy and critical outlook.
Overall, the research urges media education not to dismiss NFTs as just a one-time Internet trend and look behind its façade to see the scam that uses the media to spread misinformation and trick people.
3 Key Points:
1) NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have been around since 2017. The big craze lasted for half a year but they are still present and people still trade and invest in them. (e.g. Donald Trump recently sold his NFT collection).
2) NFTs are just a market for cryptocurrencies; it does not secure ownership and can often be based on stolen art. It's a scam but because it's such an abstract concept, ponzi schemes developed. Because celebrities also talked about and promoted NFTs positively in the media, this led to an increase in crypto currency value.
3) To combat this sort of thing, we need to take a critical attitude towards media messages and ask who is sharing the story and for what purpose. There's a danger in abstraction and celebrity endorsements, especially in advertisements to children and teens, makes them possible dupes.
MES Panel 13 (3:15 pm PST)
Reconceptualizing Gather as a Social Studies Classroom Laboratory
Summary (taken from program): How might virtual students, separated physically from each other and in relative seclusion from the outside environment, understand social studies big concepts which focus on community and the significance of place? Minecraft has already proven to be a successful tool for curricular integration but has several limitations and challenges that prevent its use in certain circumstances. Difficulties related to platform agnosticism, cost, and familiarity meant that it was important to consider a different tool. Diana Maliszewski will describe how she repurposed Gather (also known as Gather Town), a web-conferencing software originally designed for remote office workers, for use with her virtual social studies students. Using McLuhan’s “through and about media” teaching approach, Maliszewski mobilized Gather to facilitate student exploration of ideas central to specific expectations and themes addressing heritage, identity, people and environments, as well as the disciplinary thinking concepts: significance, cause/consequence, continuity/change, patterns/trends, interrelationships, and perspective. The learning community addressed the “about media” portion of their learning in their reflections on possible attributes and capabilities of the “game”.
The teacher purposefully provided scant prior information about Gather’s digital world so that students negotiated meanings of their subject content within the digital environment. They used their mental schema (both of virtual game worlds and of actual communities) to make sense of Gather’s capacity for constructing versions of reality, with social and political implications. Post-play, post-experience reflection prompts helped students make connections to, and understand, many of the overall and specific learning goals for Media Literacy and Social Studies.
3 Key Points:
1) (Bias alert! Another presentation I did. This was based on a paper I've written that will hopefully get published.) Diana's influences include Marshall McLuhan, Neil Andersen, Michael Dezuanni, and the GamingEdus (a group that included Liam O'Donnell, Denise Colby, Jen Apgar, and Andrew Forgrave). She prefers games based learning over gamification. She also prefers authentic commercial games over prescribed, didactic edu-games.
2) Because her students were already overly familiar with Minecraft (even though it is a near-perfect playing, teaching and learning environment) and because of other tech issues, she used a tool that office workers online use for virtual meetings as an unfamiliar place/space for students to explore ideas related to the social studies themes of identity and community. She had 3 case studies and her Grade 5-6 first group worked most successfully (and the Grade 3 group had the least amount of success).
3) Technically, this isn't part of my talk, but after the Q&A was done, I had a few extra questions to answer and I spent some great time talking with Allan Fox from Bournemouth University in the UK. For his PhD, he developed a "game that was not a game" (which is why he attended my talk, because I had a similar bent) for mixers to learn their craft in a less-stressful environment. He used Unity for the "game" design and the OBS (Open Broadcasts Software, which is free) to create different scenes, camera angles, and so on.
Media Artifacts:
Brain Break / Barry's Wander (4:45 pm PST)
Summary: If you are keeping track, I attended 9 sessions and presented 2 sessions on Saturday. That is a pretty intense workload / thought-load. I needed, to borrow my daughter's recently adopted phrase, to "touch grass". Originally, Joanna from Chicago and I were going to return to the Fleuvog store to look around. I couldn't find Joanna but Neil and Carol kindly accompanied me on this journey. I have to give a big shout-out to Rocco at the Vancouver store for giving me a brief history of the shoe brand AND letting me try one three different pairs of shoes. [In case a rich person with lots of money and nothing to spend it on is reading this blog post, I wore a pair of Derby Swirls (size 6.5, from the Seventh Heaven collection), a Barnett Biblio (size 7, from the Eastend "family of shoes"), and a Chakra (size 6, from the Soultalk "family")]. At first, I didn't understand the appeal of these very expensive and unusual looking shoes. However, I was fascinated with the passionate community that has developed around them and found them very comfortable to wear - even the heels, which is a minor miracle for me!
Media Artifacts:
Closing Plenary (7:00 pm PST)
Summary (taken from program): Antonio Lopez and Lissa Solip led the discussion
3 Key Points:
1) Lissa said she found this conference was like a microcosm of her career path, with media as an ecosystem and art making as a methodology that helps form knowledge; young people are the public intellectuals. We need that visceralization that was mentioned in the opening keynote, either because our senses are dulled, or contradictorily, because our senses are flooded. We can turn to the young people for the solution is there (the "youth hope industrial complex"). It is grounded in hope and based in collegial practice.
2) Antonio shared some personal stories of getting into media literacy via the punk movement, and his immune system collapsing near his "Jesus year" and a pilgrimage he took around that time ("you are walking the road but actually the road is walking you") that led him to move from journalism to teaching, and then academia. He stated that it was radical and risky to base this conference on edu-cologies, (heck, when he talked on this a few years ago, only 2 people showed up to hear him) but that it helped to think aspirationally, and he used a McLuhan tetrad to try and unpack the word edu-cologies.
3) The crowd-source definitions included (under the Improves category): transdisciplinary movemement, diversity, a regard for multiple forms of communication, co-learners, egalitarianism / (under the Retrieves category): holism, enhances collaborations, co-production of knowledge, asking youth for their opinions a sign of progress / (under the Obsoletes category): hierarchy of teachers over students, ignorance, denial (can't claim you don't know about climate change or media), anthrocentric world view / (under the Reverses category): toolified, youth hope, burden on people doing work, because too amorphous (no definition so can't be absorbed), too self-referential, eco-fascism, effort seen as doing something good instead of a step in doing so (greenwashing), words not actions (trivialization), resistance and a move back to basics because it's too messy
Media Artifacts:
Name Drop:
These are some of the people that I met, or listened to present, or chatted with, that I really hope to continue staying in touch with after the conference. Please do not be offended if I left your name off this list - there were a LOT of people I interacted with
Manisha Pathak-Shelat (from India)
Joe Burima (from Calgary, AB Canada)
Scott DeJong (from Montreal QB Canada)
Karen Ambrose (from Milwaukee, WI USA)
Amanda Levido (from Australia)
Michael Dezuanni (from Australia) = Karen said I'm a "fan girl" and she's not wrong!
Hyeon-Seon Jeong (from Korea)
Joanna Marshall (from Chicago, IL USA)
Anne-Sophie Collard (from Belgium)
Noah Golden (from Long Beach, CA USA) = Noah, tell those filmmakers I loved their work!
Roxana Morduchowicz (from Argentina) = I will ask my students that question!
Carolyn Wilson (from Toronto, ON Canada)
Alan Fox (from United Kingdom)
Yonty Friesem (from Chicago, IL USA)
Paulo Granata (from Toronto, ON Canada)
Michael Hoechsmann (from Orillia, ON Canada) = I promise I'm not stalking you!
Tessa Jolls (from Malibu, CA USA)
Antonio Lopez (from Italy)
Vitor Tome (from Portugal)
... and, as always, thank you to Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus. Without you, AML would not be what it was and what it is.
