DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

Really great yesterday going into one of my research schools and seeing a teacher working wth his class on the critical lieracies project. Fantastic to see the kids so into it and working so hard. They have a formular PEE - make a POINT, provide the EVIDENCE, and give an EXPLANATION. And they are learning to ask questions to help them unpick the ideologies within texts.

Lovely to see the notices round Mark’s classroom and to see someone so talented and clever in action. The kids were really getting so much out of what was going on. RESPECT is a key thing in that place:

Ths was the text for the starter activity:

the kids were well into it and loving looking at the ‘rip off ad’ at the top of the page. they were really interested in discussing the business side and I think maybe that is a direction to take up next.

Or maybe Mark will be interested in looking at streetart and asking questions about that using a critical literacy frame….

Whose voices do we hear on the street?
What is streetart trying to do?
Where is the power?

Look at this pupil’s folder:

Do you think it belongs to a girl or a boy? (Why do you think that? Who is the folder aimed to please? What is it trying to do? What does it assume about the audience?)

Next I went to a City Learning Centre and heard Judy Robertson from Glasgow Caledonian University talking about developing kids’ storytelling skills through computer game design. She gets kids making ther own pc games and then looks at ways in which teachers can build on the skills the kids are developing.
She uses Never winternights. which I am going to buy and have a go.

Interesting that out of the 8 people who attended the seminar, one was a teacher advisor; one was me; one was the person who arranged it; two were PhD students; then there were three teachers. Two of the teachers said they did not think they would be able to use the ideas; one was already trying it at an after school club. This is going to be a long struggle to get people to be brave enough to use this stuff in school and to see that not all skills are listed on the National Curriculum. It is so hard for teachers these days as they hae to justify everything they do in terms of hitting pre-set targets - set by a givernment interested in developing literacy of the past century, but using technology from the current one.

In the meantime … I am going to watch BB tonight. All eyes are watching….

OK we need some images on the MA pages. Shall we use some/ all / any of these?

The images are numbered for you convenience so you can comment:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

So please get voting now …..

We keep getting interesting deliveries.

(Actually our postman is looking very dashing these days in his shorts … so I am glad we keep getting parcels which require him to knock on the door.)

But anyway. The other day our postman carefully passed us this fragile parcel from Franck de Las Mercedes, who we met in New York.

This is a box, containing …
Eell … .
Erm.
Peace.

This is Franck’s website here . Just as a tempatation here is a quote from the site:

“The Priority Boxes” project is an art series that seeks to provoke thought, to make people reconsider their ability to influence change, to interrupt the daily grind and to question their own priorities.

Each box is the canvas for a unique abstract painting and is dedicated with a personal “Fragile:….” message. Some are random and some are directly based on Franck’s response to the person who asks for one, but you never know what you’ll get, until you receive it.

So it is art; artefacts that travel. Passed carefully from hand to hand. You can buy a T shirt to support the project which is intended to help people gain an understanding of fragility and trust.

We will be meeting Franck again in NYC very soon as we had such a great time in May we have to go back….

Trois tetes and I went to Burton on Trent today (by train). At the station we made the acquaintance of a lively set of nuns.

Once in B upon T we had a coffee before meeting Andrew and Mary to celebrate the end of Mary’s chemo therapy. (Hooray)

TT with his wooden spoon. (He is my number one.)

I have not been blogging.
But I have not been watching BB or the football either.

Have been very busy and left you all to your own devices. Back from study leave after four hedonistic months of Flickr and blogging. Bound to make it hard settling back to work.

Critical Literacies Project has had a nice boost with a one day meeting last week. And today met the wonderful Mark again to discuss his bit of the work. He works here and has got the kids actually understanding what critical literacy is and using it to deconstruct the school as text. Yes. He has. He is well into it and has also agreed to work with me on introducing blogging and Flickr to his classes next year. I can’t wait now to go into school and visit again next Wednesday.

Have also been catching up with another project here where I have been looking with teachers at gender dynamics in classrooms and their impact on teaching and learning. We report to the full staff next Tuesday so that’s always a bit scary. (They don’t want to have their time wasted by nonsense.)

Also am preparing for giving a paper here - gonna be mainly about Flickr.

Play and Creativity online: A look at ways in which informal online connections enable learning and creativity. Drawing on research looking at a range of online activities, this paper will look at similarities and differences in the ways in which online activities are helping individuals to learn from others through their activities and liaisons. It looks at ways in which learning often happens through the exploration of content and through interpersonal connections, in unplanned and spontaneous ways.

THANK GOD I said something vague in the abstract. I have a few ideas I am gonna use:
probably the can project; a six word story; the travelling wig game; and something else.

Will use some play theory stuff including things from Avant game. And also from this new book by by Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott.

So that’s it.

Am back on theblog ….

So what do the people of Sheffield do?

they go down to the city centre and walk into the fountains in the Peace gardens .

Amongst all the football fans in their England strips (etc) was the most amazing scene. I saw a group of Muslim women, one of whom was filming their friend like this:

People around her were pretty much absorbed in what THEY were doing:

(Look at that kid on the left!!!) And then out they came again:

Frankly I was so hot in my thin skirt and t-shirt I do not know how people manage wearing long robes. It seemed a great idea to me to walk in the fountain … although a bit hard to walk afterwards!!

Cool to see that Prince Charles is happy to involve himself in teacher education.

After all, he should know a lot about it - and he has said that he has an interest in creating

“some kind of teacher training institute”.

Well that’s nice Dr Prince. I will be interested in your views on digital literacies.

(Did you assume there was a syntactical sense in the arrangement of images? Just becasuse they are in proximal relationship, did you assume a semantic connection? If so, that is nothing to do with me. )

(Thanks to TT for the tip off on this development.)

Graffiti Removal - Banksy

Originally uploaded by Alan Bee.

THis is an example of irony.

Then go here

I could do with a break.

Study leave ends on Mnday and I am not finished writing yet … arrrrrrgh..

It seems it was in the 18th century that allotments were first set up in the UK to allow people to grow their own food. In WW2 they became very popular as a way of supplementing food rations. Rationing did not stop in the UK till 1954. The allotment tradition has continued, with many people taking a real pride in their allotments.
It is often the place where the man can escape to … although whole faimilies often work down the allotments. I think people like to grow their own organic food and get in touch with nature. I guess it is an alternative lifestyle thing.
My stroll round allotments yesterday revealed that the areas are clearly under attack, with doors, locks and high hedges being a key feature. A clearer view of each image is on my photostream. Info here

Image created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

PS This reads like a school project (I don’t care.)