2024 AGM PRESIDENT’S REPORT

On 5 May 2023 the WHO Emergency Committee on COVID-19 recommended that COVID no longer fitted the definition of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).  Mask wearing restrictions were relaxed but schools still faced surges with SA Education Department figures in May show 277 teachers were away from government schools with the virus. These waves continued throughout the year.

The 2023 AGM was once more held online and as our number of actual members remains low; we were still quorate and formed a small Executive.  Nonetheless the year proved to be another quiet year for SAAME.

Again we relied on email, our monthly radio program and our Facebook page for communicating with members.  Few face-to-face Executive meetings were held correlating to the amount of business we had to deal with.

Our professional development activity regarding our established focus on UNESCO's Global Media & Information Literacy Week held in October was once again not run due to the poor responses.  We were hoping that the SA Education Department might have publicized the event.  However this did not happen.

Early in June at the annual reception for Educators hosted by the Governor, I had the opportunity to talk with the Department CEO, Prof Martin Westwell who was interested in putting more South Australian ‘flavour’ into the latest version of the Australian Curriculum.  After giving him some background in MIL, he suggested that I wrote to him with more details.  My subsequent email suggested that the Department could in the first instance support MIL by publicising it and that the Department should sign on as a member of the Global MIL Alliance.  This would make the SA Ed. Department the first jurisdiction in Australia to do so.  Eventually our letter was referred to Meridie Howley (Assistant Director, Curriculum Policy and Standards) who then handed the matter to Andrea Jorgensen, a Policy and Project Officer.  As of late November they were still “reviewing the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance and its offerings.”  We are still waiting to hear of their progress.

Educators SA (CEASA) held their annual World Teachers Day event and associations were allowed to offer an award to one member which in our case was Guy Louanglath who had been made a Life Member at the last AGM.  I also again had the honour of presenting the Adelaide University School of Education’s Best Media Studies pre-service teacher award in November.

During the year, SAAME maintained our Facebook group, MEET (Media Educators Engaging Together) and its membership has increased by to 186.  This site remains a very useful resource for Media teachers.  We continued to broadcast Media Moves each month on 5PBA-FM (sponsored by Valley View Secondary School) and thank you to member Linda Belcher for her regular movie reviews.  We were once more, able to give away free movie passes thanks to Steven Watt from Picture This!

SAAME continues to evolving into an association that offers one-to-one support, resources and a lobby group for more explicit inclusion of Media & Information Literacy programs in our curricula.

Tim ably filled the role of Secretary and maintained our website which included uploading audio files of each Media Moves program.  I thank him for his efforts.

To the Executive members of the outgoing committee, thank you for helping yet again maintain the Association during this changing time.