Media professionals and educators to scale the summit

David Swan
Monday, 04 July 2011 16:06

Your IT - Entertainment

The inaugural Screen Futures Summit is expected to attract delegates from around Australia and the globe, with more than eighty confirmed sessions and a strong line-up of international and local speakers.

 

Designed primarily for industry professionals and educators, the four-day summit will be held between July 9 and 12 across three inner-city Melbourne locations: ACMI, Melbourne Town Hall and RMIT.

Screen Futures will explore the rapidly changing media environment, particularly the ways in which key industries - film, television, video games and publishing - are being shaken to their core by the online revolution.

The summit will also explore how new technologies are impacting and changing the education sector.

The rise of digital media, combined with the ever-increasing presence of devices such as iPads, is enabling teachers and students to become more engaged both within and beyond the physical classroom.

Summit Chair Sue Turnbull says she is delighted with the response the summit has received to date, "Once we announced the theme, we received more than 100 proposals from academics, researchers, teachers and industry professionals interested in hosting sessions. It's clear that this is a critical topic for those in the education and media sectors."

International guests include David Buckingham and Alfred Hermida, with more names to be announced.

David Buckingham is a celebrated UK academic whose work focuses on media education and the ways in which children and young people interact with digital media. He has recently completed research into everyday uses of video production technology as well as young people's responses to sexual content in the media.

Canadian academic Alfred Hermida worked as a BBC journalist for fifteen years, and was part of the team that launched the fist BBC news website in 1997. He believes the internet presents a range of challenges and opportunities for journalism, and that the wealth of material online means journalists have to strive harder to attract and keep readers.

Summit Director John Nicoll has been busy putting the program together, and believes the event promises to be both eclectic and highly stimulating. '"ere is an extraordinary range of sessions, including the big themes one might expect,' he notes. 'Jock Given and Ian Collie will be heading a panel on the future of television, and Karen Pearlman and Mike Jones from the Australian Film Television and Radio School will be talking about the challenge to traditional methods of film production in Australia and new online alternatives.'

Nicoll adds, "there is also an intriguing range of specialty sessions - Nathan Anderson, for example, will be making a comparative analysis of the narrative structures in World of Warcraft and the TV soap Neighbours."

Peter Tapp of Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) notes that "Screen Futures is for anyone involved in the media and education industries. Teachers should find the program particularly compelling, with sessions including Brian Chau's 'Reading on the move: digital publishing in the tablet world', Mile McHugh's 'Creating and editing video to and from mobile digital devices', Shawn Taggart's 'The iPad in Education' and many more."

People interested in more information and bookings can find them here.