Feeds

Every class is a surprise!!!How often have we written in our posts that the web is huge?!

Now we are learning how to expoit it efficiently.

This week we got to know with feeds aggregators, in particular bloglines.

I had never heard about aggreagtors and once again it's a revolution for me!

As Steven Bell wrote "news Aggregators:
1. Requires Little Time to Learn
2. Available at No Cost to Faculty
3. Improves Productivity and Efficiency (time on task)
4. The Procedure Itself is Simple and Requires No Real Technology Skill" (taken from http://staff.philau.edu/BellS/rss.htm#one)

We cannot but agree with him!!

Bloglines is an aggregator and collects websites of your interest. However, the most useful aspect is that it informs you when the websites you chose are updated. This is the special feature of aggregators, otherwise there would be no difference between them and bookmarks ;-)

Instead of visiting each single website, you enter your page on bloglines and all you want to know about is there. You feel like the Big Brother! Just one click and you can read and see all the updates in one single page. This is amazing, especially for those websites where information are updates regularly, i.e. newspaper on-line, blogs and the like.

However, there are still many website that don't use RSS feeds (I wanted to add "Die Zeit" and "Der Spiegel" to my "News from the world" playlist, but I couldn't), so I thought that this might be a rather new way of surfing the net!? I hope everybody in the future will know about aggregators, RSS because it is really conveniece. I recommend it to everybody!!

I'm not a computer expert and I'm really glad I'm learning all these "little" tips and tricks because we all know technology is extremely important. However, you have to learn how to exploit it properly if you want to take advantage from it. Every time I find out something new I realize that I'm using my skills and time more efficaciously and consciously. I'm learning how to find and filter sources more easily.

Social bookmarks

This e-tivity was rather challenging for two reasons: first, it took me some time to understand how del.icio.us worked :-). Second, as usual, the web is huge, many websites aren't well structured, some might be dispersive or maybe they turn out to be poor in contents.

Searching the net can be annoying, especially when you can't find what really interests you. del.icio.us really helps restricting the range of possibilities and this is extremely important, in my opinion.

To be honest, I didn't know anything about bookmarks (also because I'm not used to have them even in my personal pc!!) but I found the existence of this system quite intriguing: I can easily log in and find the websites of my interest from any pc! Moreover, I can share my resources and exploit those searched and saved by that somebodyelse! This is an amazing positive aspect of technology!

The web is an immense container and people share any kind of material, information, opinion, etc. There is everything but not everything is good for us! You have just muster patiente and root out the material you need as a virtual bookworm!

What I like the most is the "your network" section. It's our community! I put at somebosyelse's disposal my favourites sites and I can use theirs! This is something I really like!! What is online is public, it's for everybody - otherwise it wouldn't be there ;-) - and sharing information through this system is mutual help!

To help other users tags are fundamental as they give quick acces to websites selected by people who explored the net before us. They basically label sources on the strenght of their content, so that it's likely to read something we are really interested in. Differently, other search engines put together sources "randomly", so long as the website contains at least one tag we suggested.

Many menbers of our community searched for websites about:

• writing a thesis, essays, etc.:
  
• linguistics, such as the right pronunciation of words, variuos differences between AmE and BrE, pitch, accent;
  
• online dictionaries, glossaries, translation, slang and informal English;

The websites I liked the most are:

• How to Write an Essay -- 10 Easy Steps: A Step-by-Step Guide For Students Writing Essays, or For College Instructors Teaching Essay Writing; chosen by Alessandra Peron, because writing has always been a challenging activity. This website guides the "wishful" writer with simple steps. It provides external liks to newspapers; shows how to use certain softwares; gives explanations etc. I like the Practice section.
• Voice of America-Special English; chosen By Alessandra Teso, because we are given the possibility of downloading and listening to audio files.
• English Pronunciation; chosen by Alexandra, Tania (and I), because I think this site is rather techincal but still clear and easy to exploit.
• Free and commercial translations ; chosen by Alida, because it might turn to be useful for a prospective job.Common Errors in English; chosen by Ilaria, Tania (and I) because it provides a very accurate list of words that cause misunderstandings.
• the speech accent archive; chosen by Martina, because I like the section in which one can listen to audio file read by people with different accents. Moreover I like the phonetic transcription provided.
• Internet Article Writing; chosen by Susanne. I liked it becasue papers and internet have different syles and it is worth knowing the difference.
• Sound intelligent, powerful, polished, articulate, and confident; chosen by Viola, because I think that speaking in pubblic isn't always easy. especially for those who are basically shy!
• blog rules; chosen by Erica, because it gives good suggestions fo blogging.
• soundsofenglish; chosen by Erica Bergamin, because I'm interested in pronuonciation. I already knew this website. I think it is useful and I like the layout, too.
  

Some of them concerned difficult topic for learners that are no longer beginners! I appreciate websites useful for writing a thesis, as we are close to our degree. We searched material to help our classmates, too, not only ourselves. It is important to realize that sharing information helps other users, but it facilitates us as well. We save time to read material which is really pertinent!

Elena

After two weeks...

Three, two, one..go!

This is the first post in my blog and I'm quite excited!

After having looked around the web for interesting blogs, I'm creating my own blog and I think this experience won't be limited to the English course. I'll try to update this virtual space and it is actually a good way to keep in touch with everybody feels like joing.

Before starting this course I already knew what blogs are and that they are rather spread in the web. Even a few friends of mine have their own blogs, where they tell what happens in their life, they upload photos, they make reflections about their personal experiences, they quote impressive sentences taken from songs, books. Their blogs are rather personal, there's nothing extremely intellectual or technical, but all their friends contribute and reading the comments posted makes a lot of fun! I like this way of communicating! For this reason I'd like to use this blog in the future, so that everybody can post their comments!

As I really like travelling - even for a couple of days - I'm always looking for new destinations and as there are endless possibilities I often rely on what people I know suggest or I just make an attempt crossing my fingers :-). I would like this blog to become a space where people exhange experiences and destinations. For this aim comments are one of the most positive aspects of blogs. This is the section where surfers really exchange opinions, impressions, suggestions, tips, and even contact the blog's author.

Another aspect I had never considered before is the fact that blogs function as filter. As we all know, the web is huge: it can be extremely useful, if you know how to handle it. However, it might even be a "trap" as you can easily get lost looking for the pieces of information you need. So if one starts searching first for blogs that treat a specific topic, he might limit the sources fournished and it is easier to find the actual topic he wanted. Blogs are a very good medium to exploit somebodyelse's sources. As Sarah said, the web is a network and its greatest potentiality is the fact that everything can be connected. Moreover, I really appreciate the fact that blogs are written in informal language. There is a lot to learn from many of them, for example idiomatic expressions. I already stated this in one comment I wrote: there isn't only one way to learn! It is important for us to speak proper English, but common people use different expressions, different words that might be more difficult for us to understand because we are not used to. Using blogs and the language through which the majority of people communicate leads us closer to the "real world"!
(Photos from http://www.flickr.com)