The 7th annual Northeast Media Literacy Conference

Friday, April 3, 2009
The Bishop Center - University of Connecticut - Storrs, Connecticut

UPDATE - 3/24/2009 List of Workshops Now Available - UPDATE

UPDATE - 1/25/2009 Conference Registration Now Available - UPDATE

"Rethinking Media Literacy Priorities in a Changing Information Age"

We are proud to announce our two outstanding keynote speakers:

Melinda Hemmelgarn – well-known health-nutritionist, columnist, lecturer, television host and producer of “Food Sleuths”, and strong advocate for using media literacy to help combat obesity in young people

“Feast or Famine: A Fork in the Road -- How Media Literacy Can Take Us Down the Sustainable Path”

Media messages deliver illusions of choice and delusions of food safety in the face of climate change, global water shortage, environmental destruction and chronic disease. What's missing? Critical thinking. Media literacy -- as applied to food, agriculture and environmental messages -- exposes green-washing, reveals unintended consequences, and identifies the critical questions necessary to become "good" food citizens, empowered grass-roots advocates, and policy change agents.

Lou Golden – President of Junior Achievement of Southwest New England serving 32,500 children a year and Chair of the Connecticut Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.

“Financial Responsibility Starts in Kindergarten: A Media Literacy Priority”

Many current national and personal economic problems can be traced back over the past decade or so to mismanagement and misconceptions of basic economic and financial realities on the part of both old and young. A lack of financial understanding and responsibility seem to begin in early childhood, continue through the teenage years, and into adulthood, as most citizens have been prodded, in part by the media, to overwish, overreach, and overspend usually limited financial resources, with a too-easy buy now/pay later habit with too-easy credit and credit card use. Many citizens have had trouble distinguishing between needs and wants. Increasingly, it has become clear that financial education and responsibility need to begin in the early years of childhood, beginning even in kindergarten.

 

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Thomas B. Goodkind, Coordinator
Northeast Media Literacy Conference 2009
Neag School of Education
249 Glenbrook Road, U-2033
Storrs, Connecticut 06269-2033
Tel. (860) 486-0290 / Fax (860) 486-0280
Email: t.goodkind@uconn.edu