(Cross posted at MyDD)

This weekend, I participated in the Action Coalition in Media Education Summit in Burlington VT. We spend a lot of time complaining about the media, yet what do we do about it? This is a group of educators that are really doing something about the media.

The first plenary speaker was Diane Wilson, author of An Unreasonable Woman and co-founder of Code Pink. If you haven’t read her book, you really should. The first evening ended with a viewing of The Ad and the Ego. Everyone who comments on Ad Watches, should really watch this video. It has changed my thinking a lot about where political advertisements should be going. When I get a chance to decompress and to watch the movie a few more times, I hope to put up more concrete suggestions.

I attended a session on the portrayal of gifted girls in the media. This is an issue that is close to my heart and I wrote a personal blog entry about this.

On Saturday Morning, Jerome Armstrong was a keynote speaker, talking about Crashing the Gate. Of course I hope and expect everyone has already read the book, and perhaps even heard Jerome and/or Markos talk about it. His talk was one of the few intersections between the media educators world and the blogging world, and we need to see much more of that.

At lunch time, I spoke on a panel, Beyond the Dean Scream. Kate O’Connor, Zephyr Teachout, Tom Hughes, Amanda Michel, and myself spoke about experiences of the Dean campaign and what it means for future campaigns as well as for media education. You can listen to an audio of our talk.

The conference ended up with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! delivering a great closing plenary session, and a viewing of Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale.

It was a great conference. I came away with a lot of ideas that I hope to expand upon in coming blog posts. I encourage everyone concerned with media reform to get involved with the Action Coalition in Media Education and other media education organizations.