Broadband!!!!

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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!

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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

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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

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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?

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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