Links The Media Education Association is the subject association for anyone who teaches about the media at any level of schooling and further education, whether as a specialist subject or as part of the mainstream curriculum. I am the Chair, and hope to help it become a key player in ensuring the quality, status and impact of media education in the UK. If you teach media in England, you should join! The Case for Global Film, a blog run by Roy Stafford and colleagues, is a great way to keep up to date with new world cinema titles and intelligent discussion about them Jim Barratt's blog Bigger Picture Research is an absolutely indispensable source of information about research and statistics about the film industry, together with an amzing list of links and no-nonsense commentaries that make you think twice about accepting statistics-based industry hype. MediaEd is a very useful site for advice about media teaching at all ages, especially the practical aspects. It also hosts information about the BFI's Reframing Literacy initiative. Cineclub is a brilliant initiative which has developed filmmaking by children and young people without public funding and without offering hit-and-run projects which leave both kids and teachers frustrated: it deserves to be better known and more widely used. Film Education has been developing low-cost and free resources, training and viewing experiences for schoolchildren for 25 years. The English and Media Centre is another long-established organisation with a fantastic trak record in te production of resources and training for media education. Tim Brook's Digital Glue blog is an invaluable source of ideas and advice on filmmaking, especially using open-source software. A teacher with a huge amount of experience in primary schools, Tim is also dedicated to the concept of film as a central part of modern literacy, not just a special treat. The Charter for Media Literacy holds out the possibility of consensus around agreed key features of media literacy, rather than the competing definitions which abound at present and which confuse policy-makers no end. Be internationalist: sign the Charter at this, its European site, not at the go-it-alone UK site, and join in the debates with collegaues around the world. First Light Movies provides funding and online advice for children and young people making their own films. The British Film Institute Education Department has been an important part of my professional life and I still visit its pages regularly for both up to date and archive infomation. bfiwatch keeps an eye on the doings of the BFI and how they affect the academic world in particular. Frank W. Baker's Media Literacy Clearinghouse is a very useful compendium (US-oriented) of material and links on media literacy. My former colleague and friend Marysia Lachowicz runs an amazingly prolific photography blog where you can always find intriguing images and often some witty comments as well.
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