We are 3 months away from the 2017 Conference! Have you registered yet?   Early Bird Registration is open! Don't wait another day to register and book your lodging! Early bird rates end April 21! For more information about rates and lodging, click here. 

The conference website is live. Bookmark it and stay up to date with everything conference related. You can check out the speaker list here. It keeps growing every day! We will be posting a general schedule soon and the full program will be available at the end of April. 

Don't forget to submit nominations to the 2017 Awards.  Nominations are being accepted in the following categories:
 
Elizabeth Thoman Service Award
Media Literacy Research Award
Media Literacy Teacher Award
Media Literate Media Award
 
Visit our awards page on the conference website for more information. For any questions or comments about the NAMLE 2017 Awards, please contact Awards Chair Amy Jensen at [email protected].

I am excited to announce two new members of our Student
Leadership Council, Nneka Gigi and Alexis Romero.  Nneka is a visual artist and  doctoral student studying curriculum development and design at the University at Buffalo. You can read her full bio here. Alexis is a graduate student at Sacred Heart University, pursing a M.A. degree in Media Literacy with an emphasis in Social Justice. You can find her full  bio  here .  We are excited to have more up and coming media literacy practitioners on the team. Welcome, Nneka and Alexis!


Speaking of students, I've been working with some Brooklyn College students on an independent study. As part of their work, I'm having them write personal essays on various topics related to media literacy. When I 
received the first one, I realized that it was worth sharing so I've 
decided to intitiate a new website feature entitled "Student Voice Blog." The first blog post is written by Jermaine Fletcher, a dynamic and intelligent student I had the pleasure of teaching last semester. He writes about the movie Moonlight and what it meant to him as a gay black man. Take a moment to read this powerful piece about representation and identity. 

I also wanted to share with you some other items that have come across my desk recently that I thought would be of interest to you or your students (or both!).

Don't miss the deadline for this year's What's Your Story? Contest! Students ages 13 or over and currently enrolled in school (middle school, high-school, K-12, college, university, film school) are invited to submit entries for this year's theme, "If you could change one thing about the internet, what would you change?"  Submission deadline is April 11. To find out more, click here. 

Stranger in my Own Country is the first in a series of studies from the Democracy Fund Voice seeking to better understand the factors that are motivating nativism, racism, and other cultural anxieties among the American electorate. A slideshow presentation of the findings is available to download or you can check out their fact sheet on key findings.All information can be found here. 

New Day Films is offering NAMLE partners and members a special discount!  New Day Films is a distribution cooperative of independent filmmakers.   Their collection is made up of films on social justice issues that cover timely subjects such as Immigration, Sociology, LGBTQ and Women's Studies, Disabilities, Mental Health, Environment, Aging, Ethnic Studies and much more.  For your University, Library, school or organization, please go to their website and enter the following code: NAML15 for a 15% discount on all titles.  Discount ends on May 31, 2017.

As always, reach out to me with questions or comments. And, of course, stay tuned for lots more conference information coming soon!
Michelle Ciulla Lipkin's signature   Michelle Ciulla Lipkin
Executive Director  [email protected] @ciullalipkin @medialiteracyed


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