Bob McCannon

At the time of our taping, Bob McCannon was Executive Director of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP), the largest and most successful independent, activist media literacy project in the United States. Mr. McCannon has delivered over hundreds of presentations, workshops, in-services and keynotes for thousands of people across the country. He is now retired from the NMMLP.

He is known for his educational and inspirational approach to teaching skills needed to successfully address media issues such as addiction, violence, technological education, parenting, reading skills, self-esteem, productivity, motivation, cynicism, news, democracy, compulsive consumption, debt and stereotyping. He pioneered his “hypermedia” approach to Socratic dialogue in the 1980’s, when multimedia software matured, and he consulted widely for Apple Computer. He led Albuquerque Academy into a position of technological excellence.

Mr. McCannon has trained more than 615 volunteer “catalysts” (people who train others) in intensive four-day workshops. He has taught media education at the elementary, middle, high school and graduate levels. He has developed a variety of nationally-recognized media literacy curricula and resources, including the video Just Do Media Literacy and the CD-ROMs Understanding Media, (recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Center for Substance Abuse Prevention), Reversing Addiction, and Media Literacy for Health.

Mr. McCannon received his Bachelor’s degree in History from Rollins College and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Education at the University of New Mexico. He has also studied at the Harvard University Graduate Institute and the New York University School of Communication.

The New Mexico Media Literacy Project is a unique public/private partnership dedicated to empowering parents and children to overcome deception and censorship in today’s high-powered global media system. NMMLP is an outreach project of Albuquerque Academy, one of the best private schools (grades 6-12) in the world. NMMLP is supported by the NM Dept. of Education, NM Dept. of Health, the McCune Foundation, and other public and private donors. In order to preserve its independence, NMMLP is one of the few media literacy organizations that accepts no funding from the media industry.