Day-long conference April 3 will highlight media literacy

A one-day conference, “Rethinking Media Literacy Priorities in a Changing Information Age,” will take place at the Bishop Center in Storrs on Friday, April 3, from 8:45 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Northeast Media Literacy Conference is designed for teachers, health care professionals, counselors and prevention specialists, media leaders, parents, and others interested in exploring the great impact of today’s mass media upon children and youth.

Conference presenters and participants will focus on several of the new media literacies, including health literacy and financial literacy, in light of current economic and social concerns.

Keynote speakers include Melinda Hemmlegarn, health nutritionist and television host, who is a strong advocate for using media literacy to help combat obesity in young people; and Lou Golden, chair of the Connecticut Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.

Hemmlegarn will discuss how media literacy – as applied to food, agriculture and environmental messages – can expose green-washing, reveal unintended consequences, and identify the critical questions necessary to become “good” food citizens, grass-roots advocates, and agents of policy change.

Golden will discuss how many current national and personal economic problems can be traced back to mismanagement and misconceptions of basic economic and financial realities, and will explain why financial education and responsibility need to begin in early childhood.

The conference also includes 20 workshops on key media literacy-related areas.

For more information, go to http://www.education.uconn.edu/conferences/medialit or call 860-486-3231.

The event is presented by the Neag School of Education, the Action Coalition for Media Education and the National Association for Media Literacy Education.