“I am writing to confess that our school just can't get enough of you.  As we draft plans for next year’s media literacy, we are hoping we might be able to convince you to come lead the introduction for our annual media education program yet again.  Every year, for five years, your presentation lays such a critical foundation and gets the whole community fired up and ready for more.  Would you come and do the same type of thing again.”

"Having never seen you, my staff was a little nervous, and I was hoping that you would be good. My team was pleasantly surprised to see all 400 kids give you a standing ovation. High school students just don't do that these days."  

 “Thank you for the training you did with our students. I am amazed that one person could do a seven-hour prevention workshop with 250 high school students and receive a standing ovation at the end.  The student evaluations compliment your high energy, embracing not only the content, but your manner.  Many students said you were the first adult who talked with them about drugs, smoking, violence and sex without being condescending or making them feel threatened or offended. And, your day-long presentation to over 150 community adults the next day was equally well received. Thank you again.”

[Many more testimonials and names and reference contacts available on request.]     

Presentation topics include:

Let’s Do Media Education (standard refined,entertaining, educational and motivaltional multimedia talk which can be targeted toward any group)

Classroom Media Literacy: What the Research says Works

Learning to Love Citizenship: Civics on Steroids

Understanding Media: The Nuances the Media Do no Tell

The New Censor is not a Strutting Dictator

Skills for a New Media Age

Health, Wealth and Success with Media Literacy

Media Monopoly Affects Us All: Taking the Blinders Off

How to Learn About Culture, Save the World, and Have Fun.

Reversing Addiction in Our Mediated Culture

Media Literacy for Health

Teaching Media Issues in an Era of Globalism

In the last 15 years, Bob has delivered over 1,000 multimedia presentations, workshops, in-services and keynotes for more than 50,000 people, nationally and internationally. He is known for his scholarly, yet inspirational approach to teaching skills, issues and solutions.  His fast-paced multimedia presentations are motivational, informative, and fun.

What can Bob McCannon do for you?

Speaker: Bob has keynoted at over 200 education, media, history, health, social studies, communication and technology conferences. His multimedia shows are so engaging, informative and entertaining that many groups outside the media field ask him to speak. He speaks on dozens of media-related subjects. Contact Bob for topics and references. Here Bob keynotes a conference.

Workshops: Bob is a naturally gifted teacher who has succeeded at MS, HS and graduate school. He has run hundreds of workshops. Over 1060 people have taken his intensive four-day trainings which are limited to 30.

He has done workshops in 45 states, from Seattle to San Francisco to Tampa to Burlington and in many other countries. Contact him for topics and references. Here he is pictured with Jane Fonda, who took his two-day workshop. He has done five events for Jane's group.

Presentations: Bob has done thousands of presentations--everything from Rotary clubs to school assemblies for all grades. He has been to many organizations, groups and schools repeatedly, working, for example, with the American Academy of Pediatrics dozens of times.

Only 33 presenters were invited to the 2005 Free Press Conference in St. Louis which attracted 2500 media reformers. Despite Bob’s bad case of the flu, Bob and Rob Williams’s “Apathy into Activism” talk was ranked 2rd by the attendees. Bob's portion of the talk can be heard in the video section of this website labeled "Free Press plenary: Apathy into Activism: two of ten
suggestions."

Bob has held kids enthralled after their principals warned him that the kids were "uncontrollable." Here Bob keynotes in Birmingham.

Bob has been invited to Anchorage five times. Contact Bob for topics and references.

Bob has been invited to NYC eleven times. Contact Bob for topics and references.

Who is Bob McCannon?

Bob McCannon is a teacher with a wife, (Shariesse), son (Brandon), daughter-in-law (Ali), granddaughter (Alynna), and two terriers (Minnie and Amee).

Bob took over the New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP) in 1993 with the help of an exclusive private school, Albuquerque Academy and the aid of veteran newscaster, Hugh Downs and his daughter, Deidre. Below, Bob and Hugh appear at the Taos Talking Picture Festival.

NMMLP had no employees, no reputation, no products and was broke. By working seven days/week, developing and selling innovative and effective curricula, NMMLP became a leader in the media literacy field.

By becoming a popular speaker who donated his honoraria (over $500,000) to NMMLP and bringing in over a million dollars in grants, Bob built NMMLP into the most successful state media literacy project in the country. When he retired from NMMLP in 2005, it had eight employees, high sales and $800,000 in cash reserves.

In 2005, for his efforts (and thirty years at Academy), Bob retired with a sabbatical, which he has put to use thinking, researching, writing and working on his golf game.  However, as Bob says, “I miss teaching,” so he has come out of retirement and become a consultant. “Make no mistake,” Bob says, “the routine of staying in eighty hotels a year is over, but I am enjoying going to a few places and events that seem to be fun and/or exceptionally worthwhile.”

Bob has given thousands of presentations, keynotes, workshops, in-services, and assemblies--nationally and internationally. He has been in the richest and the poorest schools in the world. His presentations are entertaining, powerful, scholarly, motivational and “real” multimedia, i.e., he does not read PowerPoint to you. Bob’s “shows” make critically important media-related issues, especially democracy, financial literacy and health, understandable and motivational.

In 2002 Bob co-founded a unique national media education organization, the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME), and he is Co-President of ACME which can be found at www.acmecoalition.org.

Utilizing more than a decade of groundbreaking curricular development and research, ACME is one of the foremost media education projects in the U.S.  ACME emphasizes systemic media reform, inspiring education for democracy and individual activism. At the same time, ACME refuses to accept money from the Big Media cartel.

Bob has taught history, advertising and media in middle school, high school and graduate school. He emphasizes aspects of the media which are seldom mentioned in the mainstream media. Most students, citizens and academics find Bob’s information fascinating. To give you some idea of his range, Bob has done over a hundred assemblies for elementary students and dozens of workshops for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Between 1993 and 2005, over 1,060 volunteers took Bob’s intensive four-day NMMLP “catalyst” workshops (limited to thirty attendees) in New Mexico and other states. Bob taught the majority of these seminars by himself. They taught how to successfully approach many media issues, including democracy, science and math, health, gender, success, complexity, and self-esteem. He has spent 30 years developing a set of skills and a methodology which can be applied to every medium of communication.

While Bob’s many nationally recognized media literacy curricula and resources include over twenty audio CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs and videos, Bob is foremost a teacher with a unique gift for creating a bond with audiences of all kinds. He speaks to liberal groups, conservative groups and many groups who just want an interesting show on an important topic. As Bob says, "Media education is too important to be labeled, and the more we can spread the activist message, the better it will be for our families and our democracy."

Perhaps, most of all, Bob is a human being who cares.