Re: [-empyre-] Media Arts education

[Judy Malloy <judymalloy@judymalloy.net>]

Dear list,

I want to apologize for not participating so much in the past few days.  
I have a deadline and will be busy for a few more days.  Next week I'll answer 
a few more questions.

I'd also like to note that based on experience I have found
that it not productive to respond to posters who 
keep raising questions that I believe I have already answered.
I understand that they may believe that their questions 
haven't been answered, but I work hard both on my 
own work and on the work I do promoting the field, so I like
to chose where I spend my energy. I'd like to think of my visit
here as a pleasurable  experience in which information is shared!

One thing I have been thinking about in response to Isabel's
questions about  education, is that in some countries,
there is a big difference between now and the time when 
many of the women in the book started. Many of the women in this
book have gone on to become teachers in the field and 
their experiences in developing their work that is shared in
this book is of great interest, I believe, to future 
practitioners.

Now more and  more colleges and universities are incorporating new media arts
into the curriculum and I think this has made a big difference both 
in the acceptance and understanding of the field and  in making working in this area
more accessible.

Conversely, as Isabel points out, there are many countries in which
media education is very difficult to get, especially for women. 
In her paper in the book. Martha Burkle Bonecchi discusses recommendations
that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing
and she notes that among other things the platform stressed the urgent need for 
further education, training and employment for women.  Among Martha's 
recommendations for improving this situation is to form online networks such
as this one.

She writes:

"Women do naturally networking, and the making up of nets is precisely this.
What we have to do is to improve the networking, to build strategies so that we
would be able to be more present, to have more impact all around the world.
Mexican women have to be ready to form part of politics in order to be able 
to face the telecommunications challenge, to build cyberspace as a place for each
and every one of them"

As a longtime veteran of using online communications systems,
I'd like to compliment empyre on the amount of activity and discourse.
This is not always easy to achieve.

Best,
Judy