Madame, shut up

Madame, shut up
Originally uploaded by DrJoanne.

This is so gross I had to share.
See the discussion on Flickr by clicking on the photo.

Gimme some sugar

Gimme some sugar
Originally uploaded by DrJoanne.

Hope she cleans her teeth afterwards.

Image meme

Have joined in this as otherwise I feel like a party pooper - seeing as I have seen it everywhere else.
(Hope you don't think I am being too conformist.)

Place where I was brought up:


Where I live now:



My name:

(Oh dear)

My grandmother's name:



My favourite drink:



My favourite food:



Favourite smell (at the moment):




That's it. Haven't got a fave song at the mo.

Gender and literacy

Am supposed to be trying to write a paper for Gender and Education but cannot force myself as am so much more interested in digital culture stuff these days.
Have seen though that the Nat literacy Trust have improved their site and this page looks handy.

Am enjoying rereading this though which helped Guy and I decide to do our autoethnographic work.

Jedi mind trick

Go here and be afraid, very afraid.

Thanks to Miles for the info.

Sheffield botanical gardens

The gardens in Sheffield have had a LOT of money spent on them in the last couple of years and I think has been worth it.
On my visit yesterday I saw so many people chilling out and enjoying the lovely scenery..

Check it out...



This guy was one of many who sat reading.



This birdlike flower was in the glasshouse.



This caught my eye .. thought it was some kind of plant at first.

These were very lush.




And I got these for the star not star group.



I took about ten photos of this little scene but kept missing the moment when the squirrel ate from her hand.



Unlike Anya I have been relaxing!!

Wish I were here

I should be really ... it has all been a terrible mistake not to be.
Mind you look how early some people had to get up ...

Sonia was there doing her stuff. She is a good speaker - we asked her to come to Sheffield a couple of years ago and she was lovely.
Recently we were both part of this. I have found her work invaluable in helping to give my stuff some credibility in terms of facts and figures. But she is not just numbers of course and the interviews she and her team have done will doubtless be used by so many working in the field of teen online activity. (Mind you am branching out at the moment since I began this whole autoethnographic stuff. I have been looking at adults online too.But then again, online affinities are usually intergenerational so it is hard to be too focused on a narrow age group.)

Dmitri looks interesting too and he is also at the conference in NYC.

There is a session called 'Teen girls on screen' today that I would adore going to - especially the paper 'it's not easy being mean' by Melissa Lenos. I like feisty girls and hearing about feisty girls' stuff is exciting.
And in another session Alsion Butler is talking about 'Technique and Devotion: Teen girls make meaning of representation.'
How exciting is that? Or 'Reinscribing heterosexuality in Buffy?'(Rebecca Hains)

Anyway just looking through this huge programme makes me understand what is meant by 'conferences are bigger in the states'.

But still, I guess as with burgers, you only have the same amount of time to consume each item.
And in London this week we have this.
But I think I already said that.

Big Brother is in the UK

Oooh it was so exciting last night seeing them all arrive. I could not spot the winner at all.

I will be bringing people any juicy uptodate news as it happens, filtering out the boredom for you so that you only have to call in here. Obviously I will also be reading the tabloids for the summer period in order that I can triangulate the data given by housemates - and also save you having to go to the newsagents too.

I will be letting you know how I vote each week (and so far I want Lesley out as she entered the house wearing a porno nurse's uniform)

Obviously I really think there is

Something about Mary.

I think that the something may be her aura.

have to go .. BB about to start....


And before you start moaning ... I cannot be serious all the time. If it's boring stuff you want, then go here.

Gurl wide web

You should check it out here.

Don't worry you are allowed to browse without being a member. The first chapter of Girl wide web is about this site so I thought I'd check it out.

When I read the chapter I did not realise what a strongly commercial site it is; the book does explain this but I fogot, in fact, even while I was reading. maybe I forgot since the chapter focuses so strongly on the girls' voices rather than that of the host which seems to be Girl Cosmo.
Here are Grisso and Weiss talking about the site:

'...we see a troubling paradox on gURL.com. ... When girls stray too far, speak too explicitly, or express excessive agency, they are quickly reined in, reminded by other members of the community that certain larger societal expectations must still be met ....message s of patriarchy, androcentrism, and heteronormativity .... inevitably intrude into the constructed world of gURL.com'

(page 45)

It is all a bit depressing actually, but ...

Check it out and see what you think.


Perhaps I'll do a girlie post tomorrow for light relief.
But in the meantime, check out these LEGS!

Social AND Cultural forms of capital

Yep. I got them all today.

Rock on.

In discussing Forms of Capital, (Mmmm hmmm, I know ...) I was able to bulid up my objective capital as I sucked information and ideas from JM and AMB.
At the same time I was accruing social capital by merely being in their presence since JM is a Reader in Education (Ahuh) and AMB is an international triathlete.

My cultural capital increased apace as after a while they took some notice of me and were even in my room!!!

(I had my cake and ate it.)

Well anyway having been inflated by all this capital, up to the stautus of Post-modern Powerpuff girl I went with palpable potency to the next meeting,

in JM's Ka

. -

(More social cap, babes, JM drove ME!!)

AS we left, I took this shot of the intriguing notices, many copies of which were around the building.



We wondered whether the spitting reference realted to the breakfast or the vehicles. But as TT has identified they are operating in a new time zone over there, since round our neck of the woods, Thursday is the 26th.

The social world is accumulated history

What can this mean?

I was wondering whether Bourdieu meant this kind of thing?

I certainly am accumulating a lot of aging stuff - dimply thighs, hairs on my chin, wrinkles, grey hair, long sightedness, more wrinkles. So in this respect I have found Bourdieu resonates very well with my own life experiences.

But what else?

Bourdieu seems to be VERY against Roulette.. And he's very against BOURGEOIS MAN and his double entry accounting. (Does he mean Prince Charles? Or is this the Chancellor of the Exchequor? It is very confusing trying to work out who he means.)

But I am much better off in the shopping section of this paper. It is set in London (the cultural capitol) here we learn about 'the embodied state' (cf The Body Shop); the 'objectified state' (the gadget shop) and then all the other stuff is considerd cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries etc.)

Bourdieu is quite easy really.
I don't know what all the fuss is about.

Respect to the man!!

Sorry

I have been over here re-organising everything from here.
It is taking AGES.

Respect!!!

Yeah right.

Apparently a culture of respect is going to be delivered in schools.
Interesting use of language to describe the easy process of learning and of culture; it is a simple process of donation and receipt I presume.

It is also all associated with hoodies and hoodlums.

(I am not sure this headteacher is going to be popular though.)

I am sick of it I tell you.

I want to see a curriculum which is respectful of learners. (One that values what they value and lets them bring what they know into school. It is all very well for teachers to be nice, but the problem is that they have to work with a curriculum that is out of sync with the world.)
I want to see media coverage that is respectful of the young.
(Unlike this which I talked about here.)

And I want all this idiotic scaremongering to disappear. (Even the nice people on Flickr are scared.)




You've gotta laugh.

Flat Stanley

OK go here.

So sweet.

Have you all read the book?

I used to love it more than my kids I think. here's a site for fans.

Caleb's Mom has asked people on Flickr to take photos of Flat Stanley for her son's school project.
Check it all out here.

So much to write about on this one!!

Hide and show

It was quite strange that when I saw the person on the bench at Sheffield station on Tuesday, I felt drawn to watch and to try and understand.

The shape of the person's body under the clothes suggested to me that this person was uncomfortable with being there, feeling awkward, definitely not wanting to be seen.

Yet I was drawn to watch.

I also thought that when the man with his drink and cigarette sat there, he looked incongruous. At times he turned to look at the figure closely. He leaned in to see.

I hope you don't mind that I took the photo to show you and I have thought about it a lot.

But you cannot see who the figure is at all and I think the photo says something, (but am not sure what.)




The person's identity is protected by the clothing hiding everything; but I think, I feel, the clothing shows things too.

It is strange, as the scene reminded me of this photo I took in the Berlin underground (U Bahn).



When I was in London I was very lucky to receive a gift, which was this:




I have already read quite a lot and it is very good.
It gives a range of narratives about women and their relationships with their clothes, how the clothes affect them and how identity interacts with clothing. It talks about freedoms and restrictions and it talks about how clothing affects their relationship and interactions with others.

But it does not tell me about the burkha.

And I want to know and understand.

Current online faves

1. Bloggers I don't know, such as Proffgrrrl and Bitch PhD
2. Comments on my blog.
3. The Flickr group: Girls eating sandwiches.
4. Freebie films, animations and cartoons like this.
5. Film trailers.
6. BBC news - especially the techno section.
7. Learning stuff from other people.
8. Finding out some people's secrets.
9. Getting papers from people's sites. Like this, this and this.
10. Getting to know new people. Like this too.
11. Sites which save people's lives. And this kind of thing.

STUFF

I am so LUCKY!!!

TT went to Brighton this weekend while I was working my butt off (That's just an expression. I wish I had worked my butt off.) he took loadsa photos such as this one.

Aaaaanyways he got me presents!!

These are they!!

The note book is v good there is space for lists to write what you want to buy; what you plan to wear to specific events (e.g. scarey seminars in London) and what is in, what is out. There is even a space to write advice given by friends (yes it is an interactive text.)

As if there were not enough excitement around artifacts, AMB and PC came to my office today with shoes that matched each other in such an uncanny way they had to swop one shoe each. (It was most distracting to be with such well co-ordinated colleagues.)




Amazing stuff.
We girls often find we can unite through artifacts.

Glocal stuff

I am in the middle of a weekend school for the MA in Literacy and Language and as usual we are at the wonderful Ranmoor Hall.
Also as is usual I attended Kate's teaching session and was not disappointed. She was talkng about The Limits of the Local and I was really interested in what she was saying about Appadurai's work; the notion that through localised practices we are able to interpret and reinterpret /translate (my words) globalised discourses to suit our local purposes, is one which I have definitely observed. I have seen this for example in some of the web communities I have been looking at in my research - such as teen discussion boards and on AYME.org.uk site. This is a really useful idea for my work; I want to think more about ways in which the social glue for some online communities is negotiated through this kind of process - a communal re-working of ideas, concepts and discourses to suit the community's needs. This is a bonding experience - a way in which individuals can signal identity and align themselves with a group. It is through this kind of process that the groups are able to signal to each other, in multimodal ways, their allegiance to each other; to signal their shared values and ways of seeing the world, and to signal that they are different from other groups.
So, thanks Kate for moving me on ... and for those of you who want to know more, have a look at Vic Carrington and Allan Luke's work.

Lots to learn today

The little ducklings had to follow their Mum across a busy university car park, dodging danger all the way. They moved obediently in a little group but seemed unable to find where to go ..



I am quite sure the little duckies would not be happy to have their Mum insulted like this:



Of course you need the cultural background to understand that the words 'Your Mum' could be an insult.

Then there was this piece of advertising on Ecclesall Road ..



I checked out this web site and enjoyed not only the transgressive tee shirts, but the associated Maggie is dead site was not half bad either. Not just for the music either. Please ensure you follow some of thelinks for a fully pleasurable smug laugh.

The other site advertised on my photo (above) was this one which is a piece of heavy duty selling ...trying to get you to apply for a particular type of job, Interesing way to lure the punters in - a piece of apparent trash tied to fencing on waste ground ... This is advertising placement which relies on the curious, observance of punters who are 'into' the Internet enough to remember the site name and look it up when they got home. The site is slick yet persistant and requires you to put in your name at the end ... I did not do this, so you will have to explore that yourself..

A different gaze

I was in Leicester for a couple of days as external examiner for a teacher training course ...
The weather was fabulous and the person who showed me round was a geographer ... it was very interesting to be shown around by someone who uses a gaze for Cities that is different to mine.
She taught me I should always be looking up to see the history of buildings ...



I saw Top Hat Terrace is embellished with designs; a representation of the disguises used by Leicesters first Private Detective ...


Interesting multiple identities, which actually all look the same to me really ..

My hotel was in a sumptuous location and I took these photos just yards away from where I was staying ...





And left to my own devices, when I looked upwards at the buildings I saw this other kind of identity marker ...

Watching the detectives

I had to be away a couple of days.

Guess where I went ... this is a clue:




And here is a bigger clue:



But why did I go there?

UK Children Go On line

New report out here

Off you go and read it now...

Springtime is here!!

It is well and truly .....

Spring!!!!

Went for a walk round the sculpture park and saw lots of magic ...

There were the naughty twins who played in the treestump while their Mum tried to cajole them out. This is the sequence of events ...

Number One: Both hemmed in the tree stump - look closely, there are two in there.



Number Two: Only One comes when she is told ...



Number Three: Naughtiest One plays for time



Number Four: She is tempting fate now ... hangng around like this

Number Five: Finally both out

Number Six: Pose for the camera




This is the lambs' little den...





These cuddly little sweeties were basking in the sun too ..



When I looked upwards, stuff was going on there as well ...

a flying bunny.

And Titania was sleeping (shhhsshhh)



Something else weird .. I saw a giant fish and it looked very fed up, stony faced I spose you could say...



(Don't think it was real though).

The gift shop was MARVELLOUS and I got this bag



(I needed it)



(Besides I am helping the world as it is made out of re-cycled stuff.)



(Do you like the red lining?)

And the luxury living went on and on ...



Rosa made this luxury drink from rasperries, oranges, mint and yoghourt. MMMmmmmmm

my scrabble score

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 28. What is your score? Get it here.

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