EDUCATION

  • ON BEING AN “ESTEEMED EXPERT”

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Business Trips, Children's Media Campaign, Children's TV, Education, Politics, The Children's Media Foundation, travel, Uncategorized

    I liked it.

    I liked having all my travel arrangements made for me.

    He could have tried to look pleased to see me.

    He could have tried to look pleased to see me.

     

     

     

     

    I liked getting caught up in a motorcade with blue lights flashing and outriders.  An excellent way to get through Istanbul traffic as long as the the driver pulls back when the outriders start getting twitchy.

    I hope I'm never so important that I need to be reached at any moment.  But useful I suppose if you run out of paper.

    Useful I suppose if you run out of paper.

     

     

    I liked five star  accommodation.

     

    I liked my Turkish Bath.

     

    But who takes calls on the loo?  I hope I’m never that esteemed.

    And if you’ll forgive the unfortunate juxtaposition here, I liked delivering my paper.  If I wasn’t already full enough of my own self importance, they gave me two TWO interpreters: one into Turkish and the other Sign Language.

    My auditorium before everyone arrived.  If only I could flik-flak down this aisle.

    My auditorium before everyone arrived. If only I could flik-flak down this aisle.

     

     

    And published my speech in a REAL BOOK OF CLEVER THINGS BY CLEVER PEOPLE.

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    AND I very much liked getting caught up in the Deputy Prime Minister’s procession when we all went to dinner.  Top Tip: secret service people are not very secret and they don’t make good dinner conversation.

    Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc with Esteemed Experts.

    Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc with Esteemed Experts.

    Another top tip: if you mention politics to a politician, be prepared for facial expressions that can only be described as ‘inscrutable’.  Try as I might, I couldn’t scrute the Deputy Prime Minister.  I later learned I’d been mentioned in despatches and in a good way, but you’d never have scruted that at the time.

     

     

  • 1ST CHILDREN AND MEDIA CONGRESS IN TURKEY

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Children's Media Campaign, Children's stories, Children's TV, Education, Politics, Prix Jeunesse

    I’ve just returned from the 1.Turkiye Cocuk ve Medya Kongresi in Istanbul-not Contantinople.

    Oh look, I tried then to take myself seriously but couldn’t even manage a sentence.

    I did however take the Kongresi seriously.  On behalf of the Children’s Media Foundation, I was invited to speak at this new conference and share some of the lessons we’ve learned in the last few years.

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    Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc opens the Congress.

     

    The Kongresi was set up by the Turkish deputy prime minister to develop a strategy for children and media.

     

    The two day event brought together representatives from across Turkey, adults, children and young people as well as “esteemed overseas experts” (about twenty professors and me) in child development, media studies (and me) and was, from my perspective brilliant.  It was superb having lots of young people involved and at the heart of things.

    And despite the language barriers (some interesting translations – “Our children are so intelligent, so beautiful and so clean” ), there was a fantastic spirit of collaboration and fun.

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    2400 people of all ages attempting to get on stage for a ‘family photo’

    It was disappointing not to see a stronger presence from the Turkish kids’ media industry.  I think they were invited and there were a number of trade stands but the talks, other than mine, Sabrina Unterstell from Prix Jeunesse, and kiwi programme makers Robyn Scott Vincent and Tanya Black were more from the media studies and media literacy POV, with titles such as “Cultural functions of the Cartoons”, and lots of words like pedagogy’, ‘positioning’.  My title was also rather dry – “Children’s Media and Systems Related to Policy Issues”, but never fear, I spiced it up with some jokes and, I have to say quite a lot of triumphalism.  But nobody left my session or fell asleep…

    In essence I explained how the Children’s Media Foundation came to be and what it had achieved.  The jokes and triumphalism weren’t strained or shoehorned in – since 2006, we have done a lot: I was going to list it all but you can read all that stuff over at www.thechildrensmediafoundation.org

    It all went down rather well – there were genuinely interested questions, the moderator Prof. Dr Davut Dursun – head of the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council – said it was “A critical presentation for the congress” and that “Congress should study this [our] model.”  And that the Children’s Media Foundation “served as an example.”   Go us.

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    I had been in two minds about attending – of all the members of the Children’s Media Foundation executive, I have the least experience and the fewest letters after my name.  But I can tell the story of all that we have done and all that we want to do and who can argue with an airhead when she states that ‘children deserve the best media’?  So go me.

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    Volume 2 of Bildriler Kitabi – essays from the Kongressi ISBN-978-975-552-093-3

     Ooh and don’t you love that they made all the adult speakers submit photos of when they were children?

  • TODAY I GET TO SAY “MELLIFLUOUS” BECAUSE…

    AUTHOR: // CATEGORY: Books, Children's Media Campaign, Children's Poetry, Children's stories, Education, Politics

    I’ve just remembered a brilliant thing someone said last Saturday.  Rather fascinated by bees at the moment.  As is everyone apparently.  Hating to follow the herd, I can smugly say that I’m not interested in keeping them because it’s trendy – my big sister inherited a hive and I like being like her.

    Whatever, the lovely ancient apiarist in Stroud market, advised me to wait a few years “When there will be lots of second hand equipment for sale as the herd move on.  First it was chickens…” he said.

    Then he said something else, and this is why I am writing before I forget it and fill my silly head with other chattery nonsense.

    He said, “My primary school teacher taught me to keep bees.”

    “Oh,” I gushed, picturing an Edwardian lady filling her country diary with bee keeping notes and thinking ‘how quaint, he must have grown up with Laurie Lee’.

    The elderly bee keeper clearly knew I was filling my head with bucollocks (that’s rustic nonsense) so added,  “She taught me to read.”

    She taught me to read.