2020 AGM President's Report

An interesting start with the position of President being contested at the AGM for the first time in decades.  With a tied vote (although we should have had a copy of our constitution on hand).  Hal decided to withdraw his nomination and took up the role of Vice President. I addressed this at our first meeting expressing disappointment in the hijacking of the process.  I would gladly step aside for an Executive member who had some committee experience with SAAME.

Despite this start the Executive for 2019 maintained its injection of new blood and a sense of renewal and revitalisation was maintained at least for the first half of the year.  The organising of a conference began in earnest with Harry acting as the Convener.  Planned to time coincide the Global MIL Week in October, unfortunately it was decided that we had insufficient resources to properly run this and the plan was abandoned.  It did however bring SAAME into a closer relationship with Educators SA (CEASA).

Again we relied on email, the monthly radio program and increasingly our Facebook page for communicating with members.  With our website went offline much time was spent looking at alternatives along with re-branding SAAME.  No agreement was reached regarding a new design for a logo but in the meanwhile Tim offered to build and host a new website.  The domain name ‘saame.com.au’ was secured and SAAME once again has an internet presence.  I acknowledge Tim's work in doing this.  The M.E.E.T. site maintained our social media presence.  This change in the way in which teacher organise themselves and the way professional development now operates, continued to impact on our membership renewals and needs to be urgently addressed in 2020.

SAAME's activity in professional development continued in 2019 with a particular focus on UNESCO's Global Media & Information Literacy Week held in October.  Once again this event was listed on the official UNESCO GMIL Week site and was the only Australian activity for the week but attendence was low.  At the Educators SA Literacy & Numeracy Festival we held a workshop highlighting MIL during the literacy focus day.  We hope to hold another GMIL event in 2020 and to lobby for greater recognition of MIL in our education system.

SAAME's collaboration with the other Arts Associations on an Education Department / Educators SA initiative called, ‘Arts Inspire’ came to fruition.  The focus on this Department funded project was to identify ‘talented’ students in our areas and explore ways to develop their abilities further.  This successful conference was held on Friday afternoon June 14 and the following Saturday.  We suggested Henry Thong for a panel hosted by BtN's Amelia Moseley which turned out to be a highlight of the event.  Karen and I presented some workshops on the Saturday.

SAAME also achieved the following:

• Offered members a free screening of ‘Stan & Ollie’.
• Maintained our Facebook group, MEET (Media Educators Engaging Together) and its membership has increased to 11.  This site notifies members of events such as Exec meetings, etc.
• Continued to broadcast Media Moves each month of 5PBA-FM with sponsorship from Valley View Secondary School.

Our Executive operated with more meetings than last year, using a variety of venues including the new Education Support Hub at Hindmarsh, EDC, the ABC and Channel 44.  The meetings held formed a quorum and continued to conduct the Association's business.  A big thank you to Tim for filling the role of Secretary so ably.

Thank you to all the Executive members of the committee last year for their ongoing help, support, and friendship.  Unfortunately several have indicated that they will be unable to be on Executive in 2020 and this means we need to atract some new members or operate with reduced members.