My impressions of my new experience with feed aggregators

“Oh no, we have to explore another new tool!!! Last time it took me sooooooooooo long to understand how del.icio.us works. Hopefully, it will be easier this time! Ok, it seems not that difficult…I think I am able to follow Sarah’s explanation…?!?! Nooooooooo, what the hell does feed aggregator mean?!?!”.

Above I wrote down the thoughts that entered my mind last Tuesday, when we started to talk about bloglines. It was not easy to understand how del.icio.us works, and now, that we finally became more or less accustomed to use it, we have to explore a new tool. Do not misunderstand me, I really like the fact that we learn many useful things during our English course but I was a little worried that I may not understand immediately how bloglines works. However, this time it was not that difficult, because we managed to explore the tool during lesson and Sarah’s explanation was very clear.

My computer knowledge is improving day by day and I am very happy about that. Discovering bloglines this week was great! It is a very useful and practical instrument: you do not have to go to your favorite websites and check them out everyday but you get informed when new information is added. Websites which are regularly updated offer the possibility to subscribe to their site and consequently news aggregators visit the site and collect new information for you. This way you save time and energy. Moreover, bloglines offers the possibility to create playlists, that is, to give the blogs and websites you saved a ordered structure.

I subscribed to various sites, such as National Geographic, Delicious, Rolling Stone, etc. and I added all of my peers’ blogs. One interesting site I subscribed is The New York Times; if you subscribe you will be able to choose from a huge list the topics that interest you. Finally, I enjoyed exploring bloglines and it was easier than last time:-).

Susanne

Photo source

Social bookmarking

According to wikipedia social bookmarking is “a web-based service to share Internet bookmarks”. The word “share” has a central importance in this definition: people collect internet addresses, that they find interesting and share these links. This way, it is possible to build up a list of useful links about one topic and to collaborate with a group of people with the same interests.

To be honest, I have to say that until last Monday, I did not know what social bookmarks are. However, as the purpose of our English course for this week is to start social bookmarking, I had a look at the del.icio.us website searching for information and I discovered that social bookmarking is a useful tool in order to filter information on the Internet. The Internet is full of websites on very different topics and it is possible to find information about almost everything one can think of. If you do not really know what you are looking for you risk to go mad:-/. Therefore, every additional help a part from search engines (which everybody knows how to use) is important and facilitates searches.

Finally, I managed to create my own list of bookmarks:-). I used the search engine google to find websites of interest which involve the topic of language learning and writing. Obviously, I had to read a lot of boring stuff before I came across some websites that really interested me. I chose the most interesting sites and wrote brief summary of these pages. Now, my list is ready and I share my bookmarks online:-)).

I really appreciated the bookmarks my classmates chose: some of them are very useful for students who study English as a second language. Below, I will list some of the most interesting links.
-Tania, Elena and Ilaria suggested one site that shows common errors in English and is useful because the student becomes aware of the primary difficulties in learning English.
-Alessandra T. and Alexandra saved the pages Englishpage.com and VOANews.com to their bookmarks. These sites provide lisenting resources to help advanced English learners to improve their English.
-Martina came across one site that particularly interested me. I like the online etymology dictionary as I love to investigate where the words come from.
-Moreover, Alida suggested the website englishclub.com, that provide lots of materials and suggestions to learn and teach English.
-A funny way of discovering and learning about the differences between American and British English is the American's guide to speaking British I found in Elena's bookmarks.
-Alessandra P. saved the Gossary of ideomatic English Expressions to her bookmarks wich might be helpful for English learners when they come accross ideomatic expressions while reading other people's blogs, for example.
My classmates discovered other useful websites which deal with writing. These websites are very interesting because they can be helpful when I have to write my thesis, on my blog but also my curriculum vitae. Erica suggested a website wich provides CV samples and tips about how to write a good CV, Viola found a site which can help you to improve your public speaking skills, and Ilaria discovered a page that can help you to improve your writing skills.

Finally, sharing bookmarks online is very useful and, as you can see, thanks to social bookmarking I came across very interesting and useful webpages! I want to thank all my classmates for the great job they did!:-) It is great to share information:-))

Susanne

Photo Source

Reflective Blogging 2

Alternative Energy Sources

First of all, I realized that last week, I talked about reflective blogging, but I did not really explain what I meant and what it is, so I will do it now:-).

Our English course is devided into two parts. One course is about bloginng and the blogsphere and in the other we do a Skype exchange with students from the Tulane University, New Orleans. Normally, we attend one course during the fist semester and the other one during the second semester. As I was studying in Madrid last semester I could not attend the English course in Padua and that is precisely the reason why I am attending both of the courses this semester:-).

In the Skype Exchange course Sarah (our English teacher) asked us to write, each week, about our experiences, thoughts and about what we have learned in class on our blog. This activity is called 'reflective blogging' and I will do it regularly:-)! I like this task, because we are supposed to write freely and not to worry that much about grammar and spelling (that is always good news for the student, isn't it?):-))

The topic we deal with this week, is alternative energy. I always thought that I was quite well informed about that issue but when I started to look for information in the net, I realized that there were quite a lot of things that I did not know. There are a lot of alternative energy resources. I was surprised about how many organizations are doing research in order to improve the existing renewable energy sources and to discover new ones. Even tides are used to produce energy! As fossil fuels become more and more expensive it is necessary to find alternatives.

Generally speaking (and it is not my intention to offend anybody) in Italy, people do not worry too much about environment. From the last skype exchange, I learned that in the US it is quite the same. I am really looking forward to the next skype exchange and talk about renewable energies and see if there are differences in attitude. The exchange is a great opportunity to become more culturally aware, reflect upon the differences and similarities.

In class we talked about cultural awareness, cultural competece and stereoptypes. I would like to talk about stereotypes with the Tulane students. I think it is interesting to know how people who come form a different cultural background see and judge our culter. Obviously, stereotypes are only a generalization and nothing more than a possible starting point. They do not tell us anything about the "real" culture of a country. Therefore, I cannot wait to talk to my American peers!!

Susanne

P.S. I took this picture two month ago in Spain near Madrid:-)

Reflective Blogging

Skype Exchange

As I did not have my own blog before, this is my first reflective blogging. I really enjoyed the skype-exchange with the students of the Tulane university of New Orleans. Last time, I talked to a very nice girl and she knew a lot of things about recycling. She told me that most of the people in the United States do not make the effort and do not take the time to separate their garbage. After the hurricane government put all the garbage and material in an open space in the outskirts of the town and this is not really a save place.

Personally, she recycles when she can, but it is not always possible, for example there is no way to recycle plastic at university. She said that people’s attitude towards recycling is different in the north and south: generally, in the north more people recycle than in the south.

However, we also talked about other things… She told me that she is from South Carolina and that she has been studying in New Orleans for two years. She studies psychology and is doing this Italian course because next year she would like to study in Florence. She asked me some information about Italy and in particular Florence and we started talking about the differences between Italian cities and cities in the United States. We realized that our idea of distance is completely (!) different. I told her that Padova is quite far away from the capital Rome, that is it takes more than four hours to go there and she started laughing and said that is she wanted to go to the capital she had to take the plane and, even so, it is a very long journey.

I enjoyed the exchange because I had the opportunity to speak in English (unfortunately my exchange mate did not want to speak in Italian) and I learned a lot about recycling in the States. It is a great opportunity to compare two cultures and to enrich one’s cultural knowledge. Unfortunately, last Monday I had to go to another lesson but I am looking forward to the next exchange!

My Blog Experience

My blog experience

First of all, I have to admit that I am not what one would call a blog expert. Six month ago, I did not even know what a blog exactly was. Fortunately, my brother is a computer freak and every now and then he brings me up to date on the situation in the computer world. Unfortunately, we do not meet very often as he is studying abroad and unfortunately he is not very patient but I have to say that since I am willing to learn and improve the situation is getting better and he shows me a lot of things.

Everybody knows that Internet is an enormous network which allows us to connect with computers all over the world, do research, publish articles, book flights, etc. However, I did not expect to find within this huge network an immense amount of blogs. During the last two weeks I learned a lot of new things about blogs and blogging.

I realized that there are a lot of people who regularly write things, in order to share information and help other people not to get lost in the net. In fact, as blogs are structured in an interactive way, they often contain useful links and can be more helpful than search engines if one is looking for information on a particular topic. Moreover, almost all blogs not only contain text, but also pictures, comments, multimedia files, etc.

The topics vary very much from one blog to another; it is possible to find movie blogs, travel blogs, music blogs, gossip blogs, etc. Some of the blogs are more personal than others. In order not to get lost in the blogsphere it is important to select information using search engines or having a look at the tags that describe the blogs. Every blog is structured in a different way and language and style depend on the author and the readership he/she is writing for. Moreover, every blog has its own rules but there are general rules, which one should follow when writing a blog.

I think it is a good idea to use the blogsphere in order to improve our English. Most blogs are written in colloquial English, the way people talk in everyday life. At university, we are supposed to read many books in English, we study grammatical aspects of the language and are taught how to write in a correct way. To know these things is, without doubt, important but in order to communicate in English speaking countries, one has to know the slang and the expressions people use, otherwise it is very difficult to be able to follow a conversation between native speakers.

Finally, I have to say that this blog experience is useful for both, language learning and in improving my computer skills.

Photo source

Welcome

Hi everyone!

Welcome to My Never-Never Land! This is my very first blog experience and I hope to become soon a blog expertJ. I really like writing and I would like to share some of my life and university experiences with you.

I called this blog Never-Never Land because I am a habitual daydreamer:-)! When I have a moment to rest a little I like to imagine stories; my mind often wanders to other things and I loose track of what I was doing. This may be the reason why I like writing and I love reading. However, it does not mean that I am living in a fantasy world. I simply enjoy to let my imagination go walkabout. I admire children’s imagination and I think that we should not loose this fascinating ability.

In My Never-Never Land everybody has the right of citizenship. Absolute freedom of speech and political freedom reign in this place. It is a peaceful place where people are invited to exchange ideas and opinions and to share their knowledge without any distinction between poor and rich, black and white, tall and small, left and right. Everybody has the opportunity to be what he wants to be.

I hope you like traveling just as much as I do because I would like to invite you on a virtual journey through My Never-Never Land! I hope you discover a lot of interesting an pleasant things. As this is the first time I create a blog, I obviously will accept your suggestions as well as any kind of criticism:-).

Have a nice trip!!

Susanne

My blog includes "Reflective Blogging" Posts: as I was not in Italy last semester I am doing the skype exchange this semester.

Photo Source