Media teachers gathered in London on the weekend on June 13th and 14th for the Media Education Association's latest conference.

The Don't Panic event gave teachers the opportunity to talk about the challenges facing media teachers in a fast changing world as well as attend workshops designed to reduce the stress levels a little!

The event began in central London on Friday with a session led by John Dyer of the British Board of Film Classification. He talked about the work the BBFC does with schools and gave delegates the opportunity to classify some film clips using the BBFC's guidelines.

On Saturday morning, delegates gathered at City & Islington Sixth Form for the main events of the weekend. The conference opened with a keynote speech from Professor David Buckingham who spoke about some of the issues surrounding definitions of media literacy, particularly the role of media literacy in an era in which government advocates "self care" and responsibilisation. He expressed concerns over the possibility that media literacy could be seen as a prophylactic and diluted by a government with an agenda. He gave the example of the Byron Review - an initiative he noted was launched without a moral panic and resulted in a watered down version of media literacy in the form of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety. Professor Buckingham said understanding the commerical nature of contemporary media is absolutely essential to media literacy but warned about the dangers of media literacy becoming a hostage to fortune.

The second keynote speech was delivered by Jackie Marsh, of the University of Sheffield, who spoke about the effect of technological developments on young children. She presented research into the way young children engage with different types of contemporary media such as social networking site Club Penguin. She highlighted the ways in which such sites help development and considered the implications of this work for approaches to the development of critical media literacy.

A series of workshops, including teaching videogames in the classroom, editing for complete beginners, managing the Creative and Media Diploma and classroom animation, enabled delegates to find out more about contemporary issues in media education.

Delegates were also surprised by a visit from film and television producer Tony Garnett, who has agreed to become a patron of the Media Education Association. Tony is a well known figure in British television and has worked on productions such as Kes and Cathy Come Home.