The Media Education Association’s latest conference took place at the BFI on 4th February. It was a huge success drawing in 100 delegates with over half of them teachers wanting to work with film in their classrooms. Simon Oatley (CEO of Filmworkshop) alongside Cary Bazalgette (Ex hd of BFI Education) presented to a group of teachers helping them build animation into their curriculum. Cary started with three basic principles:
Films are texts – and an important part of our culture
Films have a distinctive and complex “language” that children learn from a very early age.
When they start school, children’s “film learning” is likely to be ahead of their “book learning”
She then followed with some techniques and methods of working with film in the classroom and how this would impact on literacy.
Simon then took the audience through the practical issues involved with making animation with young people. With his 15 years of experience he has developed a variety of tested routes and he helped the teachers think through planning film making, how to start a project, the technology involved and project management.
