2025 Call for Proposals

Location: Virtual
Dates: July 11 – 12, 2025
Submissions Deadline: December 2nd, 2024, 11:59 p.m. PST

About NAMLE’s Conference

Sometimes, the media landscape can feel like it’s changing too quickly to keep pace. Social media and artificial intelligence generated new ways to access information, which thus required new ways to analyze and evaluate it. These new media environments have empowered more people to create media and act on it—for better and worse. Educators, students, and community members often need help determining which approaches and strategies will work in schools and society. NAMLE is here to bring people together in community to help cultivate a more informed public.

As the preeminent professional development conference for media literacy education in the United States, NAMLE’s conference prepares educators to implement media literacy in various settings. Educators of all grades and content areas will find sessions that share wise teaching practices, engaging learning activities, and educational digital media. Participants can also connect with other educators across shared content areas or educational contexts.

Conference sessions will cover a variety of professional development needs, including:

• Foundational content knowledge around core media literacy concepts
• Expert sessions from experienced teachers on how to teach media literacy
• Teacher-led modeling and discussion of specific ways students learn and practice media literacy skills
• Approaches to media literacy integration, assessment, and evaluation

Call for Proposals 

NAMLE encourages educators and practitioners to submit proposals that support media literacy education in both traditional classrooms and non-traditional learning environments. Proposals will be given special consideration if they (1) provide an innovative format that prioritizes attendee engagement, (2) embrace student-led inquiry and practice, and (3) reflect diverse, equitable, and inclusive practices. With proper attribution, presenters may submit presentation proposals that demonstrate how they have contextualized existing tools and/or approaches for their specific learning environment, and learner needs in one of the following areas:

• Teacher practice and pedagogy: Effective and innovative strategies for teaching media literacy concepts and skills in the classroom. 
• Student learning and practice: Engaging lessons, activities, and assessments to help students become more media literate.
• Media literacy content knowledge: Content-specific sessions dedicated to further understanding the core concepts of media literacy. 
• Assessment: Tools, artifacts, strategies, or methods for assessing media literacy skills development in the classroom.
• Technology, tools, and resources: Innovative materials, technology, tools, and/or exploration of specific curriculum or source material.
• Research: Priority will be given to research presentations that provide specific teacher resources for how the research informs classroom practice. Research with the following focus will be given priority:
  • Pre-kindergarten through higher education
  • Classroom or teaching focus
  • Research that directly involves classrooms, educators and pedagogy, or students.

Formats

All presentations will be 45 minutes in length. Priority will be given to proposals that allot time for attendee engagement, discussion, Q&A, or general participation. 

Potential formats might include:

• Individual/joint presentation: A traditional format in which 1-2 individuals lead the presentation. 
• Roundtable: 3-5 participants who each contribute their expertise.
• Moderated panel discussions: A panel of 2-3 individuals and a moderator provide insight, discussion, and expertise on a specific topic or issue in media literacy education.
• Classroom and student demonstration: A session that models classroom teaching and activities directly. 
• Train the trainer model: Provides educators/practitioners with the tools and knowledge to then teach other teachers/practitioners in their community.

How to Submit

Before You Submit Your Proposal… 

Please make note of the following before completing your proposal submission online: 

We will be collecting information about your presenters/authors and session with your proposal submission. 

To avoid losing your work, we highly recommend composing your proposal in a document and then pasting it into the online application. 

Information you will need to collect for your online proposal submission:

• Biographical information for ALL Presenters/Authors:
  • First and Last Name
  • Full Name and Pronouns
  • Affiliation
  • Title/Role
  • Email address
  • Biography (250 characters)
  • Primary focus in media literacy
  • Primary audience/setting
• Session information
  • Title of session (175 characters)
  • Type of session (individual/joint, round table, panel, demonstration, train the trainer)
  • Brief description of the session (500 characters)
  • Describe the tools and strategies to engage your audience
  • Describe the benefit to educators
  • Focus area of presentation
  • Subject area focus
  • Target audience
  • Level of knowledge required to understand your presentation (beginner, intermediate, expert)

Submission Review Process & Timeline

All applicants will be notified if their proposal is accepted in the spring of 2025. 

Presenter Attendance 
Presenters must accept or reject the invitation to present at the conference by responding by email ([email protected]) within two weeks of notification of acceptance. Presenters who do not accept their invitation within two weeks will be removed from the program. Once a presenter has accepted the invitation to present, they are responsible for registering and submitting the reduced speaker conference registration fee of $75. This fee includes full access to the online conference platform, both days of programming, and all recordings.