Merry Christmas...again!

Have a look at this video...It's amazing!

Merry Christmas to you!

Martina

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Martina

Do you like karaoke?

Hi, girls!
Last week we spoke about how tools -like YouTube- could help us in our language learning. We all pointed out that YouTube is often used for stupid purposes and for this reason some of us were sceptic about its usefulness for language learning. Well, I think that it depends on how you use it. In fact YouTube is a wide source for us!
Have a look at what I found. I like this song sooo much! I like its melody and the guitar. Do you like karaoke? Well, let's sing!

Cheers,
Martina ;-)

How to learn languages for free!

Hi, girls!
I was surfing the Net this morning and I run into Alexandra Peron's blog, one of the girls who attended the course last semester. She added a video from YouTube which is really really helpful for us and for our language learning.
I went to YouTube, I found the video and now I'd like to share it with you all. It gives helpful suggestions about how we can learn languages for free. Look at it!

Martina

My personal learning experience

[Photo by Google Images]

Hi, girls!

This week we’re supposed to reflect on our personal learning experience, also called PLE. As Sarah pointed out on Wednesday, each person has his/her personal learning style. That’s because not everybody learn in the same way and like the same things: for example, someone could learn from doing, others from listening to sounds, others from reading. For this reason, it’s important to reflect on our learning languages.

So, the question is: HOW YOU LEARN? I thought about it for a while. I analyzed my personal experience and I chose to divide it into 4 categories (here you can find the final mindmap of my PLE):

• Formal learning. We all did –and still do- this kind of experience, because the school is a kind of home from home for young people. The first time I got in touch with foreign languages was during the last two years at Primary School. From then on, my life as a student was a continuous stream of lessons, courses, homework, texts and final exams. I attended two private courses as well and I finally got two certifications: The First Certificate of English and the B1 Zertifikat Deutsch.
• Tools. When you study you need some tools. As for foreign languages, the typical tools you can use are dictionaries, books, movies and tv programs. Recently we’re discovering a new tool, that is Web 2.0. I had no idea of its potentialities…Step by step, I’m discovering a new world. If you can use it properly, you can have an entire world into your hands.
• Travelling. Travels are very important if you study foreign languages, not only because you can speak the language you study, but also because you’re in touch with the culture of that country. Leaning a language from a textbook is quite different from experiencing it on your skin.
• People. People I met in my life played an important role in my learning experience. Obviously I learned a lot from my teachers, but also from my peers both at school and at university. The constant interaction with them, as well as peer’s reviews and teacher’s feedbacks, helped me a lot in improving my skills, pushing me to do all my best. My working experiences were important too. While I worked as a shop assistant – I sold mobile phones- I met many foreigners, and I spoke English and sometimes Spanish with them. In order to do that, I had to learn some new vocabulary, because I didn’t know anything about mobile phones in English. But the most important working experience for my language learning was when I worked as an hostess in an international medical congress in Venice. The official language was English (of course!), so I had to speak English all the time. It was very hard because I worked in the reception and I always was in touch with people attending the congress.
  

At the moment, we’re still students, so we still have the possibility of improving our language learning. There will be problems when we’ll take our degree, because if you don’t exercise the language, you’ll unlearn it. We should find some tools which could help us in the future. It could be hard to do, because when you work you don’t have so much time to spare, but we should strain ourselves if we don’t want to loose all the things we learned so far. And after all…You can’t do anything without any effort!

Martina

What a wonderful world - Louis Armstrong

I found two moving videos in YouTube, both playing the wonderful song by Louis Armstrong "What a wonderful world". You already know how much I like this song (it's the title of my blog)and I couldn't resist sharing these videos with you all.

What's good and what's bad in the Web

[Photo by Google Images]

Hi, girls!
This week we aren’t supposed to learn new tools, but to reflect on how we judge the huge amount of information we find in the Net. We experienced the Net’s vastness in these two months. In our e-tivities, we were always surprised at the difficulty we found in choosing podcasts, websites, videos and blogs, just because there were too many of them!
Hopefully, we’ll soon begin writing our thesis and the Web will be maybe the main source we’ll use. Now the obvious question is: how can we judge the right source for us? I mean, we should understand what could be useful and what not. Before reading the websites Sarah suggested, I wanted to reflect on what I usually do when I have to find a piece of information in the Web. I thought about my recent experience, when I had to write my final dissertation to take my first degree. I must admit I found many difficulties because it was the first time I did a bibliographical research. I didn’t know where to start. The problem was that the Spanish author I had to write about wasn’t so famous in Italy, so there weren’t many books about him in the libraries. My only solution was the Web. I was quite lucky because there’s the website of his foundation, where I could find many useful links to other sources, always related to his works and life. But the difficulty here was to decide what kind of information I needed. Basically, I searched for documents written by academic writers but what I evaluated at most was the content. I wondered if the content could deal with the topic of my dissertation and that was all.
But reading the websites Sarah suggested, I found out that my evaluating skills were rather inadequate. My main problem is that my skills at computer are basic and I still haven’t found my feet with search engines: I simply open Google, type some keywords and then visit the first two or three sites that appears (I’ve always thought they should be the most relevant!). I knew there was the possibility of doing an advanced research, specifying what kind of information I wanted, but I didn’t know the domain names I was supposed to use. Now I discovered that if I need –for example- a website run by a government agency, I should type .gov. Then I didn’t know that specialized search engines existed: I had a look at Google scholar, a search engine aimed at academics, and then I found Google book, a search engine which only searches for books. I also tried the meta-search engine called Mamma. It’s the “mother of all search engines” and searches “other search engines and give you the most relevant returns from each” (to read the whole article, click here). I tried typing “Francisco Ayala” -the Spanish author about whom I should write my theses- both in Google and in Mamma. I was rather surprised when I saw the results of my search: I had more than 2 millions of returns by Google, while by Mamma I had only 33 returns!
I never thought that there could be so many things to take into consideration to evaluate a Web source. It could be really time demanding but I think that it’s the only solution if we want to get out of the huge amount of information avaiable in the Web!

See you next week!

Have a nice week end!

Martina

Tech problems are always with me!

[Photo by Google Images]

Hi, girls!

I'm terrible sorry but I couldn't post my e-tivity in time because of...Guess what? TECH PROBLEMS! I had to install the modem by myself. At first, the broadband seemed to function yesterday but then I couldn't navigate many websites...The broadband didn't work! Anyway, today everything seems all right...I don't know why, but it's all right! So, now I'll work on our e-tivity and I'll post it in the afternoon.

Sorry for all these troubles. I hope things will better from now on!

Thanks very much for your patience.

Kisses,

Martina

Broadband!!!!

[Photo by Google Images]

Hi, girls!
Finally, I have broadband at home! Now, things'll be easier and FASTER! Great, now I'm living in the 21th century! :-)))
I just wanted to share with you my happiness...
Bye!
Martina

YouTube? YouLearn!

Photo by Google Images

Well girls, here we are at last! This week we explored the last tool we needed for our English course. Hopefully, working on Web 2.0 will be easier and faster from now on. I must admit that the tools we explored in the last seven weeks helped me a lot. I was rather sceptical at first, but it was due to the fact that I had skeleton technological skills! This new adventure turned to be very interesting in the end.
But now, let’s talk about YouTube. The young boy or girl who never heard about YouTube, please raise his/her hands! It’s quite impossible… Even I knew what it was! We all know that it’s maybe the most popular website young people use at most. Unfortunately, I can’t use it as often as I’d like to, because I still haven’t got broadband and I can’t look at the videos from Internet. But now things will be different: I should have the broadband into three or four days, GREAT! However, for the moment I should manage the best on my SLOW computer.
I think that many young boys use YouTube just for fun. Not to mention all those who use it for exhibitionism- let’s think about the episodes of bullying or about the most recent crime news. But YouTube- like any other communication tool- could turn out to be an extremely useful tool, if used with some intelligence. For example, it could be a way to improve our language learning: you can listen to videos in foreign language and exercise your skills having fun. And we all know that when you have fun, you learn more and faster! A friend of mine is using videos from YouTube to write her thesis. She has to study them to point out language differences in Spanish dialects… This is a perfect example of how many resources you can find here. Obviously, this is not the only reason why YouTube’s a good resource. I think that it can also be useful to keep you abreast of the most relevant issues, to keep your mind open, considering cultural differences and different points of view. Let’s think about the video about the i-rak we saw last Wednesday… It was illuminating, wasn’t it? It satirized Bush’s policy in such a keen way! I’d like seeing more videos from Mad-Tv. If I found more interesting videos, I’ll let you know!
Just another thing before going…I chose to add this video to my blog because I love it. It’ll explain you the title of my blog “Somewhere over the rainbow”; it’s the video of the song, my favourite song. This is the text (if you want to learn more about the singer, read about it in Wikipedia)... I hope you'll like it!

"Somewhere over the rainbow

Way up high

And the dreams that you dreamed of

Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow

Blue birds fly

And the dreams that you dreamed of

Dreams really do come true

Someday I'll wish upon a star

Wake up where the clouds are far behind me

Where trouble melts like lemon drops

High above the chimney tops thats where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly

And the dream that you dare to,why, oh why can't I?

Well I see trees of green and

Red roses too,

I'll watch them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Well I see skies of blue and I see clouds of white

And the brightness of day

I like the dark and I think to myself

What a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces of people passing by

I see friends shaking hands

Saying, "How do you do?"They're really saying, I...I love you

I hear babies cry and I watch them grow,

They'll learn much more

Than we'll know

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Someday I'll wish upon a star,

Wake up where the clouds are far behind me

Where trouble melts like lemon drops

High above the chimney top that's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high

And the dream that you dare to, why, oh why can't I? "

Podcasts: the world will always follow you in your iPod

Photo by Google images

Hi, girls!

First of all, I’d like to thank you for your patience. As you well know, I haven’t got the broadband at home, so these technological e-tivities can be a problem for me. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only problem this week: I was supposed to go to the lab B today, but I’m ill! It’s nothing serious but enough to be out of use. I went to a friend of mine this morning to search for podcasts, I hope I did a good work.

Well, let’s talk about podcasts. I had already heard about these word before last Wednesday. I’ve got iTunes in my computer and I saw the word “podcast” there more than once. But I had no idea of what could it mean. I must admit I didn’t strive to understand what it was, always for my being in fear of technology. Recently my boyfriend gave me an iPod (technology is dogging me!). I was flabbergasted when I realized that I could see photos from it! Try to image what my surprise was when I discovered I could even upload podcasts into my iPod…It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? I had never thought about the possibility of listening to news and programs from my portable MP3 player “whenever and wherever you want”, like Sarah said. It could be a useful chance to improve our language skills but I’ve something to complain about the “wherever you want”. I don’t know your situation, but listening to –and understanding- something in English requires me a lot of concentration. I fear that if I’d listen to an English podcast lesson anywhere -let’s say in the train, I could even forget getting off!

Sarah was right: the number of podcasts you can find online is countless! This morning I spent more than two hours searching for interesting podcasts in the Web. The search was less easy than I thought: I ran into a lot of useless podcasts and not all of the interesting ones had RSS feed. This could mean that they aren’t updated regularly but I saved one of them as well, just because it seem to be useful. It's Free Classic Audiobooks. You can download classic audio books, like for example The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. You can choose to download the MP3 version, that you can listen from Windows Media Player, or the M4B, in case you prefer upload the file into your iPod.

The other sites I chose are the following:

• The Podcast Directory. I chose it because here you can find a huge number (thousand and thousand!) of podcasts ordered by categories -entertainment, society and culture, religion and philosophy, and many others. Then, each category is divided still further. You can choose to subscribe to the category you’re interested in; for example I subscribed to Learning and Instruction (more than 2000 podcasts!).
• LibriVox. It's another way to listen to audiobooks. It could be very relaxing, especially if the narrator has a melodiuos voice. If you subscribe to this feed, you'd receive a chapter three times a week, until the book is finished. A book in serial form directly in your iPod or computer...isn't it great?
• OpenCulture. It's one of the first sites I found in de.licio.us, so you probably know it. It's a podcast collection where you can find foreign language lessons, not only in English, but also in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Danish, German, Duch, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish and many others. As regards English learning, some useful podcasts are those of Business English and English as a Second Language Podcast. They're read slowly and clearly in order to let the listener understand as well as possible.
• CNN podcasting. Here you'll find podcast from CNN. They're ordered by topic, title and main podcasts. I subscribed to CNN News Update : if you download these podcasts, you'll listen to the main American news and to the news from all over the world.

I hope these suggestions are useful for you!

SUS (see you soon)!

Martina

Sorry, I'll be late

[Photo by Google Images]

Hi, girls!

I'm so sorry, but I won't be able to finish e-tivity 6 in time, because of force majeure! I haven't got the broadband at home, so it's impossible for me choosing, listening to and dowloading the podcasts I need. I tried to solve the problem and I went to the labs in Maldura. Unfortunately, I couldn't use them because there were other lessons. So, the only solution for me is working on my post on Monday afternoon: Sarah reserved lab B for us, so I'll go there.

I apologize for causing difficulties to you! I'll post my e-tivity within Monday afternoon, I promise!

Thanks for your understanding! :-)

I'm looking forward to read your posts!

Martina

Social bookmarking: a new way of sharing on the Web

Photo by Google Images

Hi, everybody!
Last Wednesday I couldn’t attend our weekly lesson in the lab, so I read the instructions for the e-tivity 5 from home. When I read that our next e-tivity would have involved another Web technology, I smiled. Do you remember the very final lines in my post about feed aggregators? I wrote: “How many unknown worlds will I discover from now on?”. Only a week have passed since then and…what a surprise! Here we have another new technology! Great, isn’t it? Yes, it is this time! I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m so optimistic, when I was scared of any new technology just a week ago. Well, you know, I feel more confident now; I understood that I need to learn a lot before sleeping soundly in my bed. There’re so many interesting things in this wide and unknown world of Web 2.0! From now on, I want to have a positive attitude towards Web 2.0 because it isn’t so hard in the end and it can even be entertaining! So…I’ll pull my socks up!

Now, let’s talk about social bookmarking. It’s pointless saying that I never heard about this word before Wednesday (I know, I still lived in the Stone Age!). I usually stored my favourite websites on my computer and used them for my purposes; I had no idea there could be a way to share them with others. It was a del.icio.us surprise discovering that a way to share websites existed! Because this is the main aim of this technology: let you store and share your favourite websites with other people simply using the Web. The person who invented it was a wizard! But sharing isn’t the only advantage of this technology: it can even be a way to help you in “filtering the overload of information on the Internet”, as Sarah said. When you search for a website you can see how many people have already saved it. Of course, the more people saved it the more useful that website is; in this way, you don’t need to spend hours and hours navigating in vain.

I spent a lot of time navigating in del.icio.us, searching for useful websites for our language learning. I found very interesting and useful websites, above all regarding English learning. What impressed me at most were the websites about English pronunciation, such as for example the one by the University of Iowa and the Free Online Pronunciation Guide. They’re extremely useful and easy to use. Nowadays, you only need a computer and an Internet connection and you’ve got almost the entire world in your room! When I had a look at the websites my peers found, I realized how useful this technology can be: they stored websites which I didn’t found in spite of my three hours long navigating! So, I can use them without problems and -above all- without spending more time searching for them. For example, both Giovanna and Sara stores a websites called Common errors in English; it provides a thorough list of the errors native and non-native speakers can do. They deal with vocabulary, verb tenses, prepositions and much more. For each error you find a simple and clear explanation. It's definitely useful, isn't it? Marta found a great website as well: it's an Internet Slang Dictionary. There you can find the most used slang words in alphabetical order. since I should improve my colloquial English, I'll use it for sure! Elena stored a very interesting website, which hopefully can help me in improving my listening skills. It's called Randall's ELS Cyber Listening Lab: there are a lot of listenings and related exercises which help you in the comprehension. The site even provides the correct answers to the quiz and their explications.

Now I don't have any excuses: with all this tools, I must improve my English!

SUT! (i.e. "see you tomorrow"- thanks, Marta!;-) )

Martina

Halloween: should it be an Italian tradition?

Photo taken from Google Images

What Halloween is? Which are its historical and cultural basis? And finally…What Halloween MEANS? I’d like to put these questions to those Italian people who celebrated Halloween on Wednesday night. I’m quite sure that the great majority would not answer the questions. I don’t want to seem a polemic girl, but I firmly believe that if you celebrate something, you have to know what it is and what it means.
Have a look at what the English Wikipedia says about this holiday: it’s observed in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Ireland and in Canada. There are clearly no links with the Italian tradition. So, why should we celebrate it in Italy? I can’t remember the scent of this holiday in my childhood, just because when I was a child Halloween was simply a word that the English teacher taught us. For this reason, even now that I’m grown up, this holiday doesn’t mean nothing to me. I absolutely don’t want to say that Halloween has no meaning in itself, but that it has no meaning in our culture.
And yet, in the last few years, this holiday has been imported in Italy too. My question is: why? Are there cultural reasons behind this? I mean, if it were celebrate by Anglo-Saxon people living in Italy, I wouldn’t have any problem. But the fact is that it isn’t a necessity of some foreigners who don’t want to loose their cultural identity; Italian people celebrate this holiday as it were an Italian one! But the saddest thing is that the main reason why this holiday has been imported is for economic speculation. I read an article taken from Messaggero.it: it says that Halloween is celebrated in Italy, above all because of the great business –sales and parties- which it conveys. Here is an example: according to Codacons, Italian people spent about 255 millions euro this year to celebrate this holiday!
Now, I believe that we should know, accept and share the cultural traditions of the foreigners living in our country. But I can’t accept that a such meaningful holiday -like Halloween- is celebrated by people who don’t know anything about it. Many celebrate it just because someone said that it’s cool!

We have a brain…Let’s use it!

Martina

Feed aggregators: now things will be easier!

Last Wednesday, we had our class in the lab. When I sat down in front of my computer, I was very relax, because I was sure that the worst of my blogging experience was over: I had all the tools to work on blogs! I was completely wrong…Poor fool! Sarah began the lesson with a great smile and told us: “In the last two weeks, you learned something about the Blogosphere and how to create your personal blog…Well, today we’re going to use a new technology! Great, isn’t it?”. I thought: “No! It isn’t great at all! I just found my feet with the blogs, I was so sure that I had all I need to work without any effort… and now I have to churn up all again!”.

I know, I’m always a little too catastrophic in my reactions, but, you know, these new technologies scare me a lot! However, I must admit that I was too exaggerated because feed aggregators turned out to be better that expected. Sarah was right: feed aggregators are a very useful technology and they’ll simplify my work on blogs. You’ve all under your control and you can easily find the new posts in the blogs you’re interested in. At first, I just created a playlist with my group’s blogs, but then I thought that it could be a great opportunity to open my mind to new horizons, so…I grabbed this chance! I subscribed to other blogs, like for example The Guardian , BBC News and CNN. I still didn't have time to read all the feeds, but I'm sure that Marta's right: I definitely want to use this aggregator to compare the news by different online newspaper, just to have a critical approach to the news from the world.

Well, another obstacle has been removed, but… How many unknown “worlds” will I discover from now on? Time will tell! ;-)

See you soon!

Martina

My first two weeks of blogging

Hi, everybody!

I'm supposed to write some reflections about my first two weeks of blogging. Do you see the photo on the left? Well, it perfectly explains what kind of approach I had with this activity at first!

I knew what a blog was, of course, but I had never used one before. I usually don’t spend a lot of time navigating the internet, especially because I still don’t have the ADSL line at home, so my parents go out of their heads when they recieve the telephone bill! For this reason (and for many others ;-) !), I’ve never developed my technological skills more than what was strictly necessary. So, try to image what my reaction was when I realized I would have to spend many and many and many hours developing my personal blog for the following eight months! Yes! I immediately became sad, worried and angry like the poor Donald Duck you see in the image on the right! So, I must admit that I began my experience on blogs a little mistrustful. But at the same time, I entertained hope because teachers told us that this year course would have been a good opportunity to improve our written and spoken English. And I need to improve a lot my English! I knew that it would have implied a lot of effort, but how can you better without any effort?

Fortunately, after a first moment of disorientation, things have been bettered. I’m gradually finding my feet with blogging and soon I’ll have the ADSL line at home! :) After two weeks, I can say that the idea of blogging is quite good; I’ve seen that it’s a very useful way to share information. For example, thanks to my peers, I’ve discovered a great blog on recipes (thanks, Marta!), I got new information on translation tools, and I visited new web sites on travels, which could be very useful to plan my travel to Scotland. To tell the truth, I sometimes find difficulties in writing my posts and comments: I don’t like writing very much, especially because I spend many time to think about what to say and write: I’m a pedantic “writer”, so I want my thoughts to be expressed very well and I work a lot on my English, which should be as correct as possible. I surely should work more on the time, because I can’t spend the whole afternoon to write few lines… I’ve many others things to study!

As regard the language, I think that blogging could be very useful to improve our English. Until now, the English teachers have insisted on writing skills focusing particularly on formal register and academic writing. I was used to write in a formal way, so now I’m not still able to manage the colloquial written style, but I’m sure we’ll be able to learn it, even because blogging means a constant exercise and exchange of information. I still find difficulties in memorizing new words but I believe that continuing reading and writing every week is a good chance to improve my register. I hope that all this effort will bear fruit!

See you soon!

Bye bye!

Martina

Welcome!

Photo by duffofdean


Hello everybody!

I took a lot of time to choose a photo that could represent something about myself… just one image is not enough to explain one’s personality! However, after a long research through landscapes and dogs, I finally chose this beautiful photo… coloured flowers. Why did I choose it? Well, just because it reflects my inner personality. In my mind, colours are life, and I love them as I deeply love life. I am one of those who can appreciate the little things of everyday life… an unexpected smile, a sun-day, the smells of nature. I really believe that we should be delighted at every day of our staying alive; it is not simple at all, but I try to live following this "philosophy"... and I am happy!

I don’t usually spend a lot of time in internet, because I haven’t the ADSL, so that I cannot visit the most interesting web sites; it would take me a very long time and I have too many things to do in my day! Obviously, the web sites I use daily are those of our university, so… nothing new for anyone of you! :-) You have to know that I have a dream, that is to make a great journey with my university friends, before this our exciting adventure at university comes to an end. So, searching for ideas for our travel, I have found these two amazing web sites; I suggest you to have a look at them.

The first one is http://www.inter-rail.it/ : there you can find very useful information about how an inter-rail travel works and also a detailed list of suggestions about travelling in the various countries.

Then, if you like Scotland, then you should visit http://www.visitscotland.com/it/ . It is the official site of Scotland's National Tourist Board, where you can find extremely useful information about visiting Scotland: accomodation offers, holidays ideas, etc. There is also an interactive map showing Scottish regions and cities, and where you can discover more about a Scottish particular area.

Finally, I often visit http://www.disinformazione.it/ , a web site for those who want to see the "two sides of the coin", that is for those who want to go beyond the official version of the facts. It is a way to keep your mind opened, in order to live as aware men!

I look forward to see you soon!

Bye!

Martina