The wings of my thoughts

Waiting for the summer to come...a reflection on the Skype exchange

2008-05-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

photo by marirs

I would never think I would enjoy this experience so much. At the beginning I must confess that I was really nervous: my American peer and I didn’t know each other, so it was not always easy to keep the conversation going and avoid embarrassing silences! However, when I started skyping in larger groups, the conversation was livelier and more stimulating and there was a very friendly atmosphere that made me feel comfortable and at my ease. I felt free to talk about anything with my American peers. To be honest, both of us were more interested in talking about our hobbies and everyday life than about the death penalty and the problem of immigration, but even when we did so most of the times they seemed eager to cooperate and to say their opinion. One thing that surprised me was the easiness with which they expressed their political preference: in Italy this is often a “taboo” we prefer to avoid while talking with someone we don’t know, while for them it was not a problem to say that they agreed or disagreed with one candidate or the other. I also noticed that all of them knew Berlusconi, but they had no idea of who Romano Prodi is! It sounded weird to me, given that in Italy mass media usually transmit a lot of information about American politics. Evidently, in the US there is a different system of information and a different degree of knowledge about what is going on in the rest of the world.

As I already thought, I had the confirmation that life in a university campus is completely different from the kind of experiences we associate to university in Italy. First of all, for the American students it was absolutely normal to spend months far away from home to study and in this way they learn faster what being autonomous and independent means. Secondly, American universities seem to be very stimulating places to live in: they are attended by people not only from all over the United States, but from all over the world as well! In this way, I think it’s easier to broaden your horizons and to grow up without prejudices.

The exchange was also very useful from a linguistic point of view: we chose quite a difficult topic to develop, the death penalty, which compelled us to enlarge our vocabulary and to learn expressions and constructions we didn’t know before, such as to deter, death row inmate, to sentence and so on. Of course I had the chance to improve my listening and speaking skills as well and to learn to maintain my concentration focused on what was said since I was supposed to give a constant feedback to my interlocutor.
To summarize I hope to keep in touch with the American students and maybe to meet some of them when they come to Bologna next September!

Debated issues...

2008-04-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

photo by luisa brehm

Another Skype exchange, another American partner! This week I’ve talked with Artem, with whom I’ll be working on the final project during the next month. After the usual problems with the headphones and the starting of a conference (Alessandra and Sara were supposed to talk with us as well), we decided that the topic of our research will be death penalty: it won’t be an easy issue to deal with, but I think it’s a very interesting and challenging choice. This project will hopefully help us to understand the reason why in some American States this kind of sentence is still used although the international community strongly ask for its abolition. We could also compare the American reality with the Italian judicial system. In our country death penalty was substituted long ago with the “ergastolo”, that is life imprisonment; however, the period of confinement has been recently reduced to some twenty years, a kind of punishment that a larger and larger part of Italian public opinion doesn’t consider sufficient for people guilty of heinous crimes. So, what’s the best solution? Is it something in between? We’ll see.
My group and I spent the rest of the time discussing another much debated topic: immigration. Artem comes from Ukraine, so we asked him if he feels that his everyday life is affected by his different origins. He explained to us that he doesn’t consider himself an immigrant because he’ll be staying in the USA just for four years to complete his studies and then he’ll come back home; beside, American universities are sort of “melting pots”, taking in people from all over the world, therefore in such an intercultural environment he certainly doesn’t run the risk of feeling a stranger.

However, he said that the American society tends to treat immigrants in different ways according to their nationality and – above all – to their financial conditions: as I wrote in the forum, Artem acknowledged that people coming from Europe are usually far better accepted than immigrants from Latin America and other poor countries. This happens for two main reasons. The first one is that while Europeans generally move to the USA with a legal permission to work and study in the country, Mexicans, Porto Ricans, Jamaicans, Filipinos flee from the conditions of extreme poverty they experience in their homelands, ignoring American immigration policy and crossing the frontier illegally. Secondly, Artem reminded us that people who struggle everyday to eat and survive are ready to work even for very low salaries, thus becoming way more competitive than their American colleagues. Therefore, they are accused of stealing American people’s job and for this they are excluded from social life and compelled to live in very closed congregations relegated in certain areas of the cities. We shouldn’t forget that Italian immigrants in the USA experienced this kind of “ghettoization” as well: “Little Italy” was the Italian neighbourhood in New York. By the way, Artem said that the situation has changed over the last decades and now Italians are no longer associated just with “pizza” and “mafia”, but with commitment and high quality as well thanks to their hard work. I hope that the other ethnic groups will go through the same kind of social transformation as well in the near future.

What do we know about immigration?

2008-04-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

photo by celikins

Last year I took the exam of “Geografia della popolazione”: if you’re interested in the issue of immigration I strongly recommend it to you because it offers a complete picture of the situation in Italy and abroad. As we all know, we could talk about it for hours, listing the different points of view, but here I’ll try to be concise and to sketch just some few points of the problem.
For many years, Italy was a country of emigrants: up to the end of the second world war millions of Italians fled from the desperate economic situation of their motherland, looking for better conditions of life in Germany, France and even overseas, in the United States. Then, in 1947 the Marshall Plan was introduced in the European countries belonging to the Western sphere of influence in order to restore their struggling economies and this provided the trigger of a new virtuous circle. In the following years, Italy entered the era of the so called “economic boom”, characterized by a large expansion of job and consumptions. As a consequence, by the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, our country (that before was merely a land of passage on the way to richer European countries) became - and still is - one of the targets of a new flow of immigration. However, this more recent phenomenon is completely different from the migratory waves of the first half of the twentieth century for at least two main reasons.
1 - The new immigrants don’t come from either our European neighbours or from the poorer regions of Italy, but from North Africa, East Europe, Asia, Latin America. This people bring with them ways of living that are completely different from ours and this often leads to a “clash of cultures” that can even become very violent when fear, prejudice and intolerance merge together.
2 - While in the past there was a predominance of “pull factors”, now the “push factors” prevail. This means that when our grandparents migrated to the United States in the interwar period they managed to find a job quite easily because countries like that had already reached the full employment and need foreign workers to fill the vacancies. In this way, little by little, those people got integrated in the new society by showing the natives that they had come to work hard and nothing more. Nowadays, Italy is very far from reaching full employment and immigrants either are employed in those sectors of the market of job that Italians reject (such as cleaning, working in factory, taking care of old people…), or they fall in the net of criminality, thus contributing to increase the hate towards foreigners in our society. Most of the times, people who get ready to leave their poor village in Senegal or in Romania know very well that life won’t be easy in Italy, but they come all the same because of the “push factors” that operate in their countries: famine, diseases, lack of job, dictatorial regimes and so on.
As you can see, the situation is not easy at all. In my dreams, a fairer judicial system punishes the foreigners who are guilty of a crime and allows those who work honestly and respect the laws of our country (who are the majority, although newspapers and Tv don’t talk about them everyday) to live in peace with the rest of the community, without being afraid that their children are beaten at school by some stupid bully. Multiculturalism IS POSSIBLE, but it must be promoted by the State and by the public institutions, otherwise another wave of racism will force us all to shut ourselves into our houses for fear of the "other".
Of course, the issue is by far more complex than what I wrote…

Elections again...

2008-04-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

photo from ilmartino

This time my Skype exchange was briefer than usual, what a pity! Leah was absent, so Sarah asked Cristina and me to contact Marigny. I was eager to know another American student, but unfortunately when we started our conversation my two mates couldn’t hear me! I spent more than half an hour trying to solve the problem and I managed to join Cristina and Marigny when there were only fifteen minutes left.
Although brief, our chat was interesting all the same. The main issue was political elections again: we explained Marigny that in Italy there is a very large number of parties and each of them has its own candidate to premiership; however, only the Popolo delle libertà and the Partito Democratico seem to have a concrete chance to win right now because they form a coalition with other political groups and they have a nation-wide net of offices and groups of support that let people know their programmes. By the way, vote wasting is a constant issue in Italy: the main parties generally fail to receive a high percentage of votes because people have the possibility to choose among many (maybe too many…) other possibilities, therefore the winner cannot count on a solid majority in the Camera and the Senato. This, in turn, means that whatever faction is elected, it will find many difficulties in ruling the country and passing new bills because the Government’s decisions could be easily rejected by the two legislative organs.
As I wrote in the Wiki, we also talked about how people decide who to vote: in America, as well as in Italy, many electors don't even know the programmes of their candidates because they are too difficult to understand; they choose on the basis of either the political preference of their family, or the charisma of this or that politician, or the possibility to identify themselves with his/her life, personality and aims. For example, as Leah had already told me, it seems that Obama is more charismatic than Hillary and his successful career let black people hope that they too can defeat racism and discrimination and get the position they deserve in the society. In the same way, in our country people who have started an activity on their own feel to be better represented by Berlusconi, who followed a path which was similar to theirs; however, the other side of the electorate thinks that he’s too ironic and self-confident and prefer to choose someone more reliable and down-to-earth.
I also told the girls that a couple of days ago I watched the ad of the Partito Socialista, which alludes to the fact that Jesus was a socialist as well. I’m not judging the political contents of this party, but I think that mixing politics and religions is quite anachronistic nowadays…

Well, just a handful of hours and we will know the results…

Final paper.... :-S

2008-04-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, the time has come to start thinking about another paper and it seems yesterday that I submitted the first one!!! This time our paper won't be a reflection on what we've done so far, but a comparison between American and Italian way of living. What aspect of this two cultures am I more interested in? Although it may seem quite banal, I would say education: last semester's exchange with American students from Albany and the chat with Chiara Olivi confirmed me that the whole American educational system is very different from the Italian one and it might be interesting to descover the way in which a different school path influences the preparation and the cultural awareness of the students in the two countries. Are American and Italian students equally competitive in the world of work or are the ones more prepared and successful than the others? Are there some elements that Italy could "copy" from the American system and viceversa? I'll start thinking about it...

Chatting, laughing, discussing

2008-04-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I missed the Skype exchange because I had to take an exam, so this time I was eager to talk with Leah again! My friend Marta joined us as well: she is in the group that has been doing an exchange with Polish students from Poznan, but since many of my classmates were absent last Wednesday she offered to help us.
At the beginning we had some problems with the programme: Marta seemed not to be able to join the conversation and when she finally did I couldn’t hear her and Leah any longer! What a mess!!! Thanks to Sarah’s help, at last we managed to start our chat, which was even more pleasant than the first one: Marta and Leah introduced themselves to each other and then we talked about our Easter holidays and Leah’s spring break. We found out that Marta travelled to America a couple of weeks ago and visited New York and Philadelphia. This was a useful springboard to begin a discussion on national stereotypes that basically confirmed what had already emerged from the Cultura questionnaire: we said that when we think about the United States images of endless, wide roads, huge skyscrapers and beautiful top models immediately come to our minds; Leah, on the other hand, usually associates our country with breathtaking landscapes, Milan fashion shows and food! We ended up by comparing our alimentary habits: what we eat for breakfast; if we usually eat out or at home; whether in the USA people who are allergic to gluten can count on the State paying for the gluten-free products they need (like in Italy); if the general assumption that Americans only eat junk food while Italians stuff them with tons of pizza and spaghetti everyday is well-founded or not…
We would have gone on for hours if Leah hadn’t remembered us that the topic of our conversation was supposed to be politics! She completely wrongfooted us with a very simple question: “Girls, could you please explain me the political situation of your country?” Oh, my gosh!!! Mart and I look at each other, speechless: where could we start from? First of all, we tried to explain that Romano Prodi’s government collapsed because it failed to obtain the trust by both the Camera and the Senato and this opened the way to a new electoral campaign. Leah asked us what we knew about Berlusconi (Sarah was right, he is famous all over the world!) and we gave a very neutral answer in order not to influence her opinion: we said that he is a clever self-made man, who managed to become a very successful executive and then to enter politics; many people appreciate this qualities of his, but others think that he hasn’t always been completely honest and that he must have many skeletons in his cupboard. We also added, however, that this time making up our minds and decide who to vote for will be very hard: left wing and right wing governments continue to succeed each other, but none of them seems to be able to effect important changes in the situation of our country and therefore people is very disillusioned by politics.
Leah is going to vote as well (and for the first time in her life!). She was very critical about the usefulness of the media struggle between Hillary and Obhama: she explained us that while at the beginning the two leaders’ supporters respected each other recognizing that they were all on the same side, now each faction overtly hates the other and it is entirely possible that in November the supporters of the loser will prefer to vote for Mc Cain rather than giving their vote to the winner. America has its own problems as well, therefore!
As I said, the chat was really amusing and involving: in three it was easier to keep the conversation going and to confront our different points of view, so I hope to have another Italian “Skype-mate” the next time as well!

photos from flickr

I don't want to be a goldfish in its little pond!

2008-03-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

image from Google images

Easter holidays: this is the right moment not only to stuff ourselves with chocolate (delicious!!!), but also to pause and reflect. Last semester we thought about our learning process and listed in our PLE the tools and situations that helped us to improve our language skills. This time the scope of our reflection is wider: we are asked to assess our intercultural competence by using the YOGA form.
We all know that “multiculturalism”, “cultural mediation” and “cultural hybridisation” have become key words in the contemporary society: after the abolition of frontiers within the European Union and with the beginning of massive migrations of people towards the rich countries of the North of the world, the concept of “nation” as one only ethnic group has been substituted by the idea that a country holds people belonging to different cultures, who want to maintain their traditions. In such a context, we cannot pretend that nothing has changed and that we don’t need to learn how to cope with an environment in continuous transformation. Intercultural competence is, therefore, one of the skills we have to enhance in order to communicate successfully not only across nation borders, but even within our local reality. As it is said in the article written by Alvino E. Fantini, the development of the ability to analyse other people’s way of living and behaving can be extremely useful to have a deeper awareness of our own culture as well. I particularly liked the expression “looking out is looking in”: increasing our knowledge of what life is like outside our small pond is a way to have a more critical view on our own society. Thinking that the best way to do things is our own is an unforgivable mistake resulting from ignorance, a mistake that can produce very serious consequences, such as racism and prejudice; however, we can avoid committing it by open our eyes and look at other peoples with impartiality, ready to learn what diversity can teach us.
Is there a way to assess our intercultural competence? Yes, there is and it is a form called YOGA (an acronym which stands for Your Objectives, Guidelines and Assessment form). It is divided into five main areas, the same “dimensions” that, according to scholars, form part of intercultural competence: awareness, attitude, skills, knowledge and language proficiency. Each of them is further divided into four levels, describing the degree of knowledge of a foreign culture that a person may have as a result of his/her experiences: educational traveller, sojourner, professional, and intercultural/multicultural specialist. Given that I’ve never been abroad for long periods of time, I could only answer the questions of the first level; notwithstanding it, I found the test very interesting and stimulating. What impressed me the most was the fact that it also evaluates the level of awareness of the mechanisms of communication and the attitude shown by the learner in the process of interaction with other cultures. These are very important factors that influence the effectiveness and the success of communication and the questions contained in the form enabled me to reflect about my way of dealing with this part of my intercultural competence. For example, I realized that I’m not always aware of the way in which I’m viewed by members of the host culture, but I usually try to fill in this gap by learning as much as possible from their language, their habits and traditions in order to be perceived as part of their community. Then, I noticed that I need to develop my skills in the field of “knowledge”: the knowledge of the essential norms and taboos (greetings, dress, behaviour etc.) of the host culture can be very useful if I want to adapt myself to a completely new environment.

To conclude, the YOGA form reminded me that I have to focus my efforts not only on the enhancement of my language skills, but also on the development of my intercultural competence. I don’t want to be just a goldfish in its little pond: I want to swim in the sea of multiculturalism.

Happy Easter to all of you!

2008-03-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

Beyond television

2008-03-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

image from notna

This week our American partners are enjoying their spring-break so there was no Skype exchange last Wednesday :( By the way, we can use the time at our disposal to discuss on the wiki and to find an interesting question about America and the way of living of its inhabitants. It seems a very easy task, but I'm pretty confused: there is so much I would like to know about a country that I started dreaming of when I was just a child and watched Superman’s unbelievable adventures on the TV. Yes, the TV. In spite of the coming of the Internet, a very powerful technology that has revolutionized the whole concept of “communication” by providing a way to know everything happening in the world, I think that television still remains the most influential of all the tools of knowledge. Why? Because it is something that everybody can use easily, whenever they want, without the need to read the directions; something that posses an infinite range of strategies to let a message pass and spread; most of all, something that has become part of our own culture and has accompanied us everyday since we were babies. For those of us who don’t have the chance to spend part of their time travelling around the world, television is also their eye on reality: using a remote control, you can dive in the depth of the ocean to discover beautiful submarine landscape and just a moment later you are walking in a fashion house in Los Angeles, wondering whether Brooke and Ridge will get married for the third time or not. TV series and films offer us portrays of American life, but is this reality? Are American men as lazy and slovenly as Homer Simpson? Are all Californian girls blonde, rich and spoilt? Is life in a university campus all about parties, brotherhoods and initiation rites? I don’t think so, yet I have to recognize that my idea of America is partially influenced by the stereotypes I learn from television. Reading my friends’ answers to the questionnaires on the Cultura website, I could observe that many of them share the same idea of what life is like in the USA and this is another proof of the way in which TV programmes are able to handle our opinions and expectations about the other. Therefore, I think it could be interesting to ask Dickinson students if they watch the same programmes and if TV really reflects their own life. As one of the members of my group pointed out, it would be interesting to know if shows and films influence the way in which Americans view Italians as well and, if so, what aspects of Italian culture are emphasized. I’m sure that both of us, our American colleagues and we Italian students, would discover to look at each other through glasses made of prejudices and commonplaces that this exchange can help us to remove. The meeting with Chiara Olivi is a clear example of what I’m talking about: in my opinion, she’s a very nice and outgoing girl, devoted to her studies and eager to know everything she can about the world, just like anyone of us. We have to abandon old preconceptions and be ready to recognize that reality has many more shades and facets than what TV let us perceive.

It was breathtaking but...I want to do it again!!!!

2008-03-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

images by longdemon_vr

Here I am, the day after…Well, honestly, guys, I was afraid I would have not survived to tell it anybody, but I did and now I want to say that the first Skype exchange was absolutely AMAZING!!! My hands still shake if I think of it!
Let’s start from the beginning. Last week Sarah asked us if we preferred to participate to either an exchange with American students from Dickinson or a similar project with students living in Poland. In the first case, we were supposed to use Skype to communicate in real time with our partners for an hour or so; given that they have been studying Italian for a couple of years, we would have to speak both English and Italian during the conversation, as if it was a sort of tandem learning. In the second case, the two groups would communicate by writing their comments on a wiki and a forum, using English as Lingua Franca to compare Italian and Polish culture with the Anglo-Saxon culture. I was torn between the two opportunities: they were both very interesting, but the second one suited better my timetable…Most of all, I was afraid I was not up to the task of chatting with an American girl or boy for so long! I always get nervous when I have to speak English, I try to smooth my pronunciation and I forget what I wanted to say and vice versa. “I'll be so tense and worried”, I thought while I was trying to decide, “that I won’t be able to open my mouth and say a word!!!” Then I remember one of the complaints that I wrote in my mid-term paper: “I never have the chance to speak English and I feel that my oral skills are not improving”. I had no excuse: the opportunity that I was looking for was right there in front of me, I just needed to raise my hand to grab it and so…I did it!

Last Wednesday I talked with Leah Barreras and it was really thrilling! After introducing ourselves, we started talking about everything that came to our minds: Leah is nineteen, she moved from New Mexico to Pennsylvania to study History at the University of Dickinson and next year she’s going to come to Italy, in Bologna, to improve her knowledge of Italian. I tried to give her a description of our course, the subjects we study, my plans for the next future…So, without even realizing it, I was speaking English! It was unbelievable! And Leah seemed to understand what I was trying to say (even more unbelievable!) We also talked about the education system in our countries and our experiences at university: she was astonished when I told her that some of our courses are attended by hundreds of students and that in the same day we have to move around Padua to reach the place in which the lesson is held! Things seem to be more organized in America, according to Leah’s words: young people have to write an essay and an application form to get into university, classes are very small, students have free and easy access to the Internet and can often rely on the economic support of the State to finance their studies. The conversation was becoming fascinating and I felt sorry when we had to quit because the time was over!

I read that the topic of our next chat will be the comparison between Italian and American elections, very challenging! I hope I have the vocabulary necessary to say something sensible!

A baby-woman

2008-03-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

photo by birthday24

I'm a little bit late but it doesn't matter, I just want to write few lines to say that I'm now 24! Yes, last Sunday I celebrated my birthday! The party was great, but I feel a little bit weird: if I think of me now, I've got the impression that I'm not so different from the young girl who attended high school five long years ago, with her pen-case full of colorful pencils to write her thoughts in her friends' diaries. I'm still eager to be thoughtless and spend a wonderful time with my friends, talking and laughing and screaming and playing...Then I try to look better and everything is clearer: although I often don't realize it, I've grown up and I'm no longer the same. I'm more mature and reflexive, I think about my future and I rely more and more on myself to overcome the little obstacles of my everyday life.

So, I'm almost a woman, but, as you can read in the photo I chose, I don't forget the naive and crazy part of me. It is still a fundamental part of my personality and, who knows, maybe I will be a joker even in my eighties!!!

Freerice: an ambitious goal

2008-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

all pictures by Google images

Are you looking for an original way to assess the wideness of your vocabulary? And are you interested in helping poor people who have to fight against famine day after day? Strange but true, now you can combine this two interests of yours just with a click!!! Surfing the Net I ran into a very interesting website called FreeRice: it is a sort of quiz, in which you can choose among four options the correct definition of the word you read on the screen, but each time you give the right answer you donate a handful of grains of rice to the people living in the developing countries. I think it's a wonderful idea!!! I was afraid that it could be the umpteenth fraud, so I visited the website carefully and I discovered that this game is part of the United Nations World Food Program. FreeRice was launched just few months ago, in October 2007, but since then almost 20 billions of grains have already been donated to feed people from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Uganda and many other countries in which hunger is still a major problem. Please, take a moment to watch this video and understand the importance of this project!

Here are the answers to some of the questions you may have about FreeRice taken directly for the website:
"If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 20 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.
Does FreeRice make any money from this?
No, it does not. FreeRice runs the site at no profit.
Who distributes the donated rice?
The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.

Will the rice I donate make a difference?
The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. To a mother or father watching a loved child die in their arms from hunger, the rice you donate is more precious than anything in the world."

And don't forget that learning new vocabulary can have inimaginable benefits for us who are supposed to use languages for our job as well!!! So what can I say? Have fun saving people, but watch out: words are not so easy as you may think...:-D

Exams scare me!

2008-02-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

picture by Google images

I chose this picture because I found it quite realistic and perfectly suitable to this period of the year, don't you think so? I apologize for having abandoned my beloved blog for a while, but exams have started and the time to devote to this pleasant activity is not much... By the way, this morning I have taken the exam of "Letteratura inglese contemporanea": the program of the course was really interesting and dealt with the literature produced in English language by black people living in the former colonies of the British empire. The exam was oral, so it was a good opportunity to practice my oral skills once again - and it's never enough!!! I was SOOOOO NERVOUS, guys, you can't imagine! I was literally trembling when the teacher asked me the first question, but, luckily, I knew the answer: the more I talked, the more my self-confidence increased and at last I passed the exam! I'm very happy right now, but I know that there are still many other tests to come for all of us, so...broke our legs, guys!!!

It's ice skating time!

2008-01-11T02:45:00.001-08:00

photo by Goolge images

Guess who has brand new ice skates???? Yes, it's me! The course has just started and I decided to attend it again to learn something more about this fascinating sport (and to show off when I go skating with my friends on the weekends!!! ;-] ). The teachers suggested that it was time for us to wear something more similar to real skates than the old "ski boot-like" skates that you can borrow at the ice rink, so now you can see me dancing on ice as I was fleet-footed! Of course, my style has immediately improved... If you want to have just an idea of what I can do now, have a look at this video...

video from youtube

Well, I hope you didn't believe a single word of what I said!!! The new ice skates hurt really bad! I know that I have to use them as much as I can so that the leather will soften a little bit and it will fit the form of my feet, but in the meanwhile the result is more or less this....

photo by protoflux

Ooooooooohhhh, the snow!

2008-01-03T04:59:00.000-08:00

Video from YouTube

At last it is snowing!!! So let's sing with Frank Sinatra!!!

Let It Snow

Oh the weather outside is frightful,

But the fire is so delightful,

And since we've no place to go,

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.

It doesn't show signs of stopping,

And I've bought some corn for popping,

The lights are turned way down low,

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.

When we finally kiss goodnight,

How I'll hate going out in the storm.

But if you'll really hold me tight,

All the way home I'll be warm.

The fire is slowly dying,

And, my dear, we're still good-bying,

But as long as you love me so,

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.

All the best, folks!!

2008-01-03T04:40:00.000-08:00

image from Virgilio Images

My Christmas tree

2007-12-27T03:06:00.000-08:00

Did I tell you that I absolutely love decorating the Christmas tree? Well, this is the result of my efforts!! Do you like it?? :-)

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!

2007-12-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

Video by devilishduck

I know that I've already talked about Charlie Brown and my passion for the Peanuts' band, but I just couldn't help adding this video too: its simplicity really moved me! :'-) Charlie Borwn is trying to organize a show to celebrate Christmas, but it seems that nobody knows what this holiday is all about: his friends are only interested in gifts, parties and food and cannot feel the real meaning of this holy day. A little, ailing tree will help them all to remember that Christmas is much more than that: it is an occasion to realize what life has given us and to let our loved ones feel our affection for them.

Mr Bean's Christmas party

2007-12-27T01:20:00.000-08:00

Video by asmonaco6

Yesterday afternoon I was lying on my couch and watching TV - trying to recover from the Christmas nosh-up - when I came across one of the exhilarant episodes of "Mr Bean's saga"! If you like his speechless humour, have a look at this video! A suggestion: do not imitate the way he prepares the turkey...:-)

Get ready for Christmas!!!!

2007-12-08T15:18:00.000-08:00

image from Virgilio images

Have you ever watched "Nightmare before Christmas"? Well, this is the right moment!!! You won't regret it, it's amazing!!!

Congratulations!!!!!!

2007-12-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

This is my friend Chiara, who took her degree in Economia internazionale last week! Because she is often ill (poor her!), we realized her fancy dress by sticking medicine boxes to an overall that Alberto's mom found in the hospital where she works.

But have a look at this second photo down here: she looked awesome at the party she organized to celebrate this moment!! Congratulations Chiara, I love you so much!

My PLE

2007-12-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

photo by loosetooth

Now that we’ve become little wizards in informatics, it’s time to enlarge our vocabulary as well: the unknown word of this week is…PLE!!! What on earth is a PLE? Do you eat it??? I read carefully e-tivity 9 and I cleared up the mystery: PLE is an acronym that stands for Personal Language Environment, that is "a combination of the formal and informal tools and processes we use to gather information, reflect on it and do something with it, which is essentially what we mean when we talk about learning"(Martin, 2007). Sarah explained that our own blogs are examples of PLEs, but she immediately added that a PLE is not something material and tangible: it’s a concept, an idea. It’s a “space” that each one develops according to his personal cognitive style, in which he finds everything he needs to develop and practise his language skills. Whether it is a blog, a website, a diary or a chat, it doesn’t matter: actually, it can be all four of them or none of them and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an object. Imagine it as the way you exploit the world to keep your language competences up-to-date, the way you use the environment as your private “language gym”. Have you ever thought about your learning process in these terms? Honestly, I tend to spend more time on doing things than on reflecting on how and why I do them; by the way, this activity could be an opportunity to sum up how we have organized the study of foreign languages so far, given that the end of our journey is not too far away. The years spent on school desks have almost gone: the training is over and we have to be aware of the level we have achieved to find our way in the world of job. A mind map can help us to draw a complete picture of our current situation and to understand how to strengthen our weak points in the next future.

Clicking here you can see the mind map of my PLE: making it was not so easy, I had to recall the learning strategies I’ve adopted so far and I’m pretty sure I forgot a lot of interesting hints. There are four main areas: “university”, “hobbies”, “personal experiences” and “certifications”.

I preferred to divide the first one into “traditional learning” and “technological tools”: it is a distinction that has become evident in relatively recent times, more or less since the last year of high school. Little by little, the means of communication and the new technologies have acquired a more and more important role in the teaching of languages, offering the learners the chance to keep on practising on their own by doing something they like (listening to CDs, watching videos, chatting, surfing the Web…). However, Web 2.0 & co. haven’t completely substituted books, grammar rules and exercises: they are still essential to lay the foundations of a solid knowledge that then can be put to the test on the Net.
Technology can be used in the spare time as well: for example, I’ve learnt lately that a feed aggregator like Bloglines can provide me the latest news from my favourite websites and online magazines. Everything can be useful to make you more and more confident in the use of languages: have you ever read the labels written in different languages on perfumes and shampoos??? Well, I always do! It’s quite odd, I know, but in this way I learnt that the English word for ”latte detergente” was cleansing milk :-) As my knowledge increased, I discovered that many things I was used to do in Italian could be done in a foreign language as well: by watching films and doing crosswords I can keep on learning without even realizing it.
Personal experiences are divided from hobbies: they are the occasions in which I could exploit my knowledge directly “on the field” (travels and little jobs).
The competences acquired in the ways mentioned above were evaluated: in the last year of high school I got the First Certificate of English, then I took private lessons of French and Arabic and I attended a summer course of Spanish; I had to take an exam at the end of each course to get a certification assessing my level of language knowledge. These experiences helped me to get used to the frightening moment of the test and to focus on the aspects of my preparation that needed to be improved. Over the “Laurea triennale”, I also developed my Language Portfolio, which is a sort of summary of the path I followed in the study of languages and contains some pieces of writing as an example of the level that I’ve achieved.
Then I added two more links: yesterday and tomorrow. Sarah said that our PLE is something that we create and change constantly, according to our age, the environment in which we live and our needs. For this reason, I decided to reflect upon the way I learnt languages in the past and the strategies I will use in the future. As you can see, when I was younger the learning process was based mainly on entertaining activities, a good technique to make children learn something new and unknown in a pleasant way. Next to the word “tomorrow” I put the icon of a bomb because I still can’t foreseen what the future has in store for me: I really hope I will have the chance to exploit what I’ve learnt so far and to speak the languages I’ve studied (and maybe some more!) everyday to keep my knowledge “fit”! By the way, I feel confident and I’m sure I will continue to improve my language skills whatever job I will happen to do. Why? The answer is the element that appears in all the areas of my mind map: CURIOSITY. I’ve always devoted myself to the study of languages simply for curiosity’s sake, it’s not a burden for me because I know that what I learn enables me to express what I think better and better. This is my passion and I know it will last forever.

Valuable or not valuable? That is the question!

2007-11-28T12:33:00.001-08:00

photo by Google images

The evaluation of sources: it’s a “boiling issue” all of us have had to cope with several times in his/her scholastic career. Sarah definitely hit the bull’s eye: the reliability and the trustworthiness of our master thesis will greatly depend on the consistency of the material we will collect and on which we will base our line of reasoning. Therefore, it’s vitally important being prepared to judge carefully what we happen to read, not to run the risk of including poor and incoherent information.
I read the tips given in the three websites Sarah suggested and I found them extremely clear and useful: they were undoubtedly written by people who experienced themselves the difficult “struggle” against rubbish news! I use such a term because for me the search for reliable sources can be compared to a real fight to the death, especially if you decide to surf the Net: to type the keywords and to start the search engine is to open Pandora’s box! You are literally overwhelmed by thousands, even millions of answers to your question and you necessarily have to find a way to identify what is really worth reading.
While looking for more information about this topic, I came across another remarkable website (Module 3 Evaluating) containing smart guidelines not to get lost in the “tsunami” of suggestions and links the Internet offers you. By and large, it says the same things as the sites I previously mentioned, but it also highlights the importance of checking the last part of the url (“top level domain name”) of the pages you would like to visit. Sarah, too, pointed out this criterion of selection in class and it is the first strategy I adopt when I judge online sources: the information you can get from a website run by government agencies (.gov), non-profit organizations (.org) or education institutions (.edu or .ac.uk.) is certainly more valuable than the news you can spot in essay banks, blogs, chat rooms and personal webpages. In this cases, as the article from the University of Essex clearly explains, “you know nothing about who the authors are, or what authority they have for expressing a view on the subject”. If you want your work to be serious and taken into consideration by the people who will read it, you can’t refer to what an unknown, sometimes even anonymous, author has written on his page: the website could contain just his opinion, groundless conjectures he developed on his own. Then, your teacher could think that adding to the bibliography of your thesis the url of chat rooms and blogs is not very professional!
The main problem is that looking for valid and useful news is always tiring and time-demanding. In the past we used to turn over the pages of piles of books to carry out our works of research: it took a lot of time, but at least we knew (or we hoped!) that the authors were experts in the field; many of them had written other articles, essays, books, so we had the guarantee that what we read were thoughtful reflections and theories. Now books have become old-fashioned, everything you are looking for is on the Web: it is true, but we also learnt that the right way to follow is often hidden among many dead paths. Finding it demands time and people are not willing to waste hours and hours to make sure of the validity of the information Google has first displayed on their screen. In the website I mentioned above there is an interesting survey about the way people carry out their research: you can answer yourself the questions and then check the results. The data are stricking, I report them here:
- to start a research paper the 66% of people look for websites;
- the 48% spend less than five minutes to select the source;
- to determine if information is factual the 47% simply assume that what they read is probably true.
This is why bad written and unreliable essays are so common and plagiarism is such a current issue.
In order to screen the list of returns search engines give you, using specialized search engines could be a good idea: I tried myself Mamma (what a nice name!) and it greatly reduces the number of links you can check by providing only the most relevant returns from the other search engines it searches.
Once you have checked if the website and his/her author are really trustworthy, there is one more question you should ask yourself: when was the page last updated? As you can read in the article from Purdue' Online Writing Lab, “some information becomes dated when new research is available, but other older sources of information can be quite sound 50 or 100 years later”. It is important to keep in our mind what kind of information we need to decide if a piece of writing is outdated or not (in respect of this matter, the website I suggested you was last updated in 2003, but you can still answer the survey, so the results are reliable!).
This long process is another clear proof that the Internet can make our life easier, but in order to use it properly we have to resort to our criticism and to accept the fact that we have to spend some of our precious time.

YouTube rocks!!!

2007-11-23T01:01:00.000-08:00

What an exciting and stimulating universe I’ve been losing for years “thanks to” my slow speed Internet connection! My friends often send me e-mails containing the url of a video from YouTube and they describe it as the funniest and oddest and craziest thing that they have ever seen in their whole life…and I’ve never been able to watch one of them!!! Poor me!!! It’s really frustrating not to have the proper tools to take advantage of all these new opportunities to learn English online. Unfortunately, changes seem to happen very slowly in my family: I’ve been begging for broadband for months, but there are still no traces of it in my house. By the way, I didn't give in: what we watched on Wednesday aroused my curiosity, so I managed to go to an Internet point to surf the Net a little bit. What did I find out? Well, if you thought that in YouTube you can only find freaky videos to impress your friends, you definitely need to broaden your horizons, otherwise you could miss the chance to exploit what this technology can really offer you. For example, in TeacherTube, you can find an unlimited collection of materials that people from all over the world uploaded with the most different aims: helping other people to overcome a problem in the learning process, bearing their witness about the usefulness of a teaching method, explaining the latest discovery they made in their works of research. You know, what impresses me the most each time I use the Internet is the unbelievable amount of people ready to spend some of their time simply to place something they consider somehow useful at others’ disposal: social bookmarking, Wikipedia, podcasts, the blogosphere and now YouTube are very striking examples of how people can benefit from communicating and sharing.
Yet, as we all should know by now, there is also the other side of the coin: since everybody can have access to these tools, they can easily become a means to spread something that is not worth watching at all. I’m clearly using a euphemism now: recently, the Internet has become sadly known as an example of how men can turn technologies into something we have to worry about (let’s think about the websites in which paedophiles entice children or the videos showing episodes of guys bullying at school). We cannot ignore what is going on: our criticism is fundamental to make wise use of the Web and its resources.

I decided to add a couple of videos to my blog.

Video from spastik0827
The first one is just to make you laugh and to let you know something more about me: it is a short extract from an episode of “Will and Grace” and it represents the kind of series I prefer. I can’t help splitting my sides with laughter when I listen to Jack’s quips and I believe it could be a relaxing and pleasant way to get in touch with contemporary English.

Video from MadridTeacher
The second one gave me the chance to put myself in a teacher’s shoes. The speaker, who has been teaching English for a long time both to children and to adults lists the main obstacles to EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learning: students don’t have time enough to seriously devote themselves to their homework; they can hardly accept difficulties; they soon get tired of the tasks they are asked to do; they don’t want to talk in class. Therefore, teachers always have to find new ways to incite them into taking part in the activities and have to take into consideration their personality not to hurt them…what an effort! It made me smile because I have to admit that Stephen says the naked truth: we students are sometimes a very demanding audience, but I think we can also reward a teacher’s devotion with our hard work. What’s your opinion?

Do you podcast???

2007-11-17T15:26:00.000-08:00

photo by Google images

Here we have another brand-new technology that makes me feel like I had lived in a cavern up to now: podcasts! Actually, I had already heard about them before Sarah explained the meaning of this word last Wednesday and I thought – how naïve I am - I knew everything which was worth knowing… “Podcast” is a term created by joining the words “iPod” and “broadcast”: basically, an audio broadcast is converted to an mp3 file so it can be downloaded and played back in your own computer or in a music player, such as the iPod (you can find the exact definition on Pcmag encyclopedia, but I knew it before reading it, I swear!). By the way, I believed that podcasts contained only music and that they offer people the advantage of listening to their favourite songs wherever they were, simply bringing with them that magical “matchbox” and earphones. This was all I knew about podcasts and I must admit it was enough to leave me dumbfounded…! I just couldn’t imagine that this tool could be used to multiply the occasions to practice English! I should have foreseen it, though: since I started my scholastic career, the technologies at the learner’s disposal have kept on changing and improving and I’m quite sure that iPods will be soon substituted by something even more time-saving and futurist! Audiocassettes and videocassettes are just a vague recollection by now: today CDs and DVDs lord it, they are used in every school to allow students to get in touch with spoken language. But they have to watch out: podcasts are at the gates! By downloading free mp3 files, you can collect on your pc, mobile phone, digital player the broadcasts you prefer and find useful to keep your listening skills in form! On the train, walking down the street or on the bus you can listen to, for example, BBC news. It’s impressive, isn’t it??
On Wednesday I also discovered that, thanks to RSS technology, podcasts are available as news feeds as well! So if you find a website that offers the kind of listening exercises you are interested in, not only can you bookmark it in del.icio.us to retrieve it more easily, but also you can save its url in your feed aggregator and any update will be automatically sent you! It seems to me as if the tesserae of a mosaic are going to in their place: feed aggregators, del.icio.us, podcasts…everything squares!
I started surfing the Net full of hopes but after a short while I was overcome by despair: the world of podcasts is even wider than the blogosphere…and more chaotic as well! I can’t even remember how many websites I visited to find something that was really worth suggesting, but most of the times I got disappointed: either they were rubbish or they didn’t publish RSS feed, so I couldn’t save them in Bloglines! Here you have the three websites that impressed me the most:
1) podcasting news: it is the directory with the largest number of links that I found. I surfed around it for a while and I think it has quite good an organization. On the right, you immediately find a list of sub-directories that you can click if you already have an idea of what you’re looking for; scrolling the page down, there are links that enable you to take part in various fora and articles containing useful information both for neo-podcasters and for advanced users. On the left, other links lead you to some funny podcasts that you can listen to if you have some free time. The website is organized as a blog, so everyone can add his/her podcasts to the lists or post a comment on one of the articles.

2) Englishpod: this is a very interesting website for those people who are a bit clumsy in everyday conversation (like I am!). As we all know, in our over-crowded classes there isn’t much time to practice speaking and we tend to ignore those social rules that are the basis for communication for English people. We are worried about getting the meaning across and don’t pay attention to the shades of that meaning. What would we do if we had to say something unpleasant to somebody? Would we just say “I’m sorry, honey, the skirt you’ve just bought is simply awful”? Well, I don’t think so!! In this website there are some useful tips to learn how to use language in everyday situations: you can listen to podcasts that show you how to be polite and diplomatic, how to present a project of yours to a public, how to use modals in Business English to communicate your ideas and make other people accept it. Interesting and original.

3) English stories: it’s a website that people keen on “soap operas” MUST bookmark! Here you can find podcasts containing the episodes of a story, “Missing person”: every week you will receive the following part, but it is always interrupted at the most awkward moment, so curiosity and suspense grow week by week! In the page there is also the transcription of each audio file: I think it is a good way to check your level of comprehension. Don’t be scared if you read that the website is thought for advanced learners of English: I listened to one of the episodes and the speaker reads the text in a very clear voice and quite slowly; maybe you could need to look up some words in the dictionary. Don’t miss the chance to visit it and enjoy yourself!
I found the link to the last website in a page that has no RSS feed: learn-on-the-go. However, I suggest you to go to it all the same because it’s a starting point where you can find many interesting websites that I’m sure you will appreciate.

That’s all for now!

I'm sorry, I'll be late...

2007-11-17T12:33:00.001-08:00

photo by Google images

I'm sorry, girls, I won't be able to complete e-tivity 6 until Monday afternoon... The reason? Well, guess what? I still don't have broadband, so for me it is impossible to play the podcasts I would like to suggest you! Martina and I tried to go to the Lab last Thursday, but we were not lucky: they were closed. The only thing we can do is going back there on Monday: Sarah reserved Lab B for us, so I'll listen to the audiofiles and send my post on my blog by the evening. I apologize for compelling you to write your comments at the last moment!

Elena

Another "del.icio.us" surprise from the Web

2007-11-10T09:49:00.001-08:00

photo by google images

I can’t even express in words my growing astonishment, so maybe the picture you see on the left can help you to imagine my expression during the whole of Wednesday lesson! I still have difficulties in realizing how many things that I couldn’t even think of do exist out there! When I say “out there” I mean in the Web: the more the weeks pass, the more it seems to me that the Internet is actually a top hat and we are becoming some sort of “techno-conjurers” able to pull a rabbit (and the whole farm!) out of it!! This time the new “trick” has a very nice name: “del.icio.us”, and it is for real! Let’s try to summarize in few words how this innovation works.
First of all, as you can read in Wikipedia, it is an example of what is called social bookmarking: ”In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share”. Maybe you are thinking that there’s nothing new: one of the first things you learn when you start surfing the Web is to bookmark your favourite websites so that you can have them at hand whenever you need. However, those pages are saved in your own pc, so what happens if you use a different computer and you don’t remember their url? You will have to look for them by using a search engine, wasting a lot of time, and finally you’ll give it up. Well, that will no longer happen if you subscribe to del.icio.us: you simply have to save the websites you find remarkable in the area “your favorites”, tag them with some keywords that can remind you their content and you’ll always find your way back to them wherever you are! What a brilliant idea!
But the best is yet to come! As Sarah explained us, your bookmarks are public and not only do you share them with the other subscribers, but they share theirs with you as well; this means that if you need to know more about a topic, you can visit the websites that other people consider interesting. I think it is an amazing advantage: instead of checking the thousands of pages Google would list (many of which are often completely useless and unsuitable), you limit your search to those websites that have already caught other users’ attention. In sum, the best of the best! You can also create your own network, that is a list of the people whose suggestions you are more interested in, so that you can easily check their bookmarks. Simply unbelievable, isn’t it? :-o

photo by pdonaghy

I had the proof that this new tool does work when I tried to have a look at what my friends had saved as their favorites. Compliments, girls, you all did a great job! I checked some of your suggestions and immediately understood the power of sharing! I noticed that many of us saved a link to an on-line dictionary: they could seem a bit old-fashioned compared to what we have been learning for about a month, but they are irreplaceable! The Free Dictionary Giovanna found also has special sections to look for medical, legal or financial terms; it contains a Thesaurus and many others interesting information such as “the quotation of the day”, “this day in history”, “today’s birthday” and so on. And what about the irreverent Slang Dictionary and Translator? My brother bought it for curiosity’s sake, but now that I found it on line, I don’t need to steal it to him, thanks Marta! Get ready, girls, from now on I could write in my messages something like “l8r”: I’ve just discovered that it means “see you later”, how cool! I invite you all to visit My language exchange too: as Sara explains in her description, it is a community where the members help each other to learn and practise a language. You draw the profile of the partner you need and the community will find a person corresponding to your description, it is a sort of virtual tandem learning! If you need to improve your listening and speaking skills, you can click on “voice chat”: there you will find a link to download Skype or Paltalk and enter the challenging world of face to face communication! I think I will definitely add this website to my favorites! I will also include Classic Short Stories, one of the websites that Martina saved: it provides a long list of short stories that can help us to rediscover the pleasure of reading. It includes not only English authors’ works, but also Spanish, Russian, French writers’ texts and the link “Bibliography” enables you to find more information about them. I think this page is very well done and useful for a literary thesis.
Oh my goddess, another interminable post! I’m sorry, there was so much to say…
CUIC (see you in class)

Halloween: are you for or against?

2007-11-04T03:20:00.001-08:00

This discussion happens at the right moment: I talked about this festivity with a friend of mine few days ago and we wondered when it began to get a footing in Italy and why it was introduced in our country although it clearly belongs to the Anglo-Saxon tradition. We don’t even know what the word “Halloween” means and nevertheless we are ready to carve tons of pumpkins and dress up as devils or witches to celebrate “the night of the spirits”. It doesn’t make sense, does it?
While I’m writing these lines, I can’t help thinking of Linus, one of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. When I was younger I didn’t lose one single episode of their exhilarant adventures and thanks to them I got to know about Halloween: Snoopy, Peppermint Patty, Lucy and all the other members of that gang went door by door asking ”Trick or treat?” and received candy, gum, apples, cookies, popcorn balls, and even money from their neighbours (Charlie Brown always got a rock, it was hilarious!!!). Linus didn’t accompany them: he spent the whole night sitting in the middle of the “the most sincere pumpkin patch of the town” and wait for the “Great Pumpkin” to come and bring him happiness and gifts. Of course his hopes were regularly disappointed! Well, I wish I were part of that group and enjoyed myself like that every October 31st, but up to some years ago there was no such tradition in Italy: on November 1st people used to visit the loved ones they had lost to pray and keep in touch with them, no mention was made of ghosts, monsters and horror films.

photos by google images

I don’t know how it happened or who decided to “import” witches and wizards from the USA, but now everything has changed and if you have exhausted the chocolate and sweets supplies, on Halloween evening your house could become the target of hordes of angry children! I’m joking, but I’m afraid that our culture has welcomed this festivity simply because it is another occasion to spend money going to parties, buying gadgets and hiring videocassettes and DVDs. Last Monday we discussed what the word “culture” means and many of our definitions contained the terms “history”, “traditions”, “habits”: Halloween is an expression of American culture because it's a festivity rooted in the past of that country; although I’m one of those who look forward to wearing a witch hat and having fun with her friends, I have to acknowledge that the Italian version of “Trick or treat?” is just a rough copy of the original festivity. I think that the attempt to spread one country’s habits for economical purposes makes us lose the capacity of seeing and appreciating the beauty in the difference.

Thanks Heaven, there is something called "feed aggregator"!

2007-11-03T03:14:00.001-07:00

Well, people, now I know for sure: this English course has been created with the exact purpose of astonishing me week by week! First the surfing of the blogosphere, then the development of a personal blog and now…the discovery of feed aggregators! When Sarah pronounced these words for the first time last Wednesday, I could hardly figure out what she was talking about: the closest thing to a feed aggregator I could think of was the little shelf you can see on the right (I apologize if I didn’t use the right term to define it, but I don’t even know how to call it in Italian!!!). (photo by padday)
Once again, I realized the world has moved forward without telling me: now there is an ingenious technology that enables you to have to hand all the news you are interested in and it is called (guess what?) feed aggregator! I have to admit that at first I was really sceptical about the usefulness of this tool: I mean, to check the aggregator you have to connect to the Internet, so why don’t you simply visit the websites to look for new information? What’s the point of resorting to this complicated (I thought it was!) technology?
Maybe I thought we were still in the Middle Ages, when scholars wasted hours and hours looking up something they hadn’t read before in huge dusty volumes, which probably had not been touched for decades…Well, until last Wednesday my situation was not so dissimilar: I –the scholar of the new millennium :-) – checked my favourite websites each time I needed to learn something new, without even knowing if they had been updated since my last visit; therefore my expectations were often disappointed and after reading all the pages through and clicking all the links I realized that nothing new had been added recently. “Great”, I thought, “I wasted half an hour and I didn’t find anything, I will have to check again tomorrow…how boring!”

photo by somefool

I was sure that I would be condemned to this agony for the rest of my life, but now I have to change my mind: no more afternoons spent surfing pointlessly the Net, the feed aggregator is working for you! You simply have to subscribe to the websites you love the most and the update will be sent you automatically; you don’t even need to look for it scrolling up and down the page because the aggregator selects the new pieces of information and display them on your screen, thus bringing your effort to naught! That’s what I call “smart technology”! What’s more, you can also create your personal playlist and catalogue your subscriptions by category. For example, thanks to my friend Martina’s irreplaceable help, I divided the websites I chose into groups:
- Group B: containing my groupmates’ blogs;
- My friends' blogs: containing other friends’ blogs;
- My interests: containing everything I'm more keen on (recipes, travels...) and some websites where I can find useful information (such as BBC and CNN news, National Geographic).

As you can see, I abandoned my scepticism and I’ve become an “aggregator lover"!

Two weeks have passed...so far so good!

2007-10-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

Another year has just started, but this time what we are asked to do for the English course is something completely new and unexpected: developing our own blog and exchanging our knowledge by web. My first reaction was: "Well, it is going to be a nice challenge!"

I have been studying English for thirteen years and and I have tested myself against the most different tasks: translating and analysing a text, writing a novel, describing my personality and interests, composing an essay on a scientific topic, even creating and recording an advertisment! I didn't think I could get surprised by a totally different approach, but...well, I was wrong! Practising English by using computerized tools with the aim of creating a space of my own: it sounds great! I am not an expert in using the computer, at all, but I have to admit that I have a bent for technology: I am curious by nature and now I have the chance to learn how to use a new programme and what happens when I press this button or that one...that's my bread and butter! I am like a child who needs to know how his toy works: I check every window, click every link, think of how to make my posts look better, so step by step I try to improve my skills in handling the blog and look with satisfaction at the results of my efforts. I have found a funny and stimulating way to express my creativity and for this reason I decided to choose a title like "The wings of my thoughts": even though I feel more confident in using a pen and a piece of paper to write, informatics gives you the opportunity to show what you can do in a very original way, offering your fantasy many creative tools. The web is the "fourth dimension" we all live in, a world-wide community that allows us to reach any place of the planet just with a click; we are supposed to know how to use it not be excluded and this course urges students to exploit this new means of communication.

I also appreciate the possibility to use colloquial English in our posts in the blog: if we spend all the time on translating specialized texts, we run the risk of forgetting the most basic terms of everyday language, those words and expressions that we really need when we go abroad. I hope I will be able to enrich my vocabulary by visiting interesting websites and commenting on them; I also think that the activity of peer revision will be useful to widen my knowledge and to correct my mistakes.

As you can see, I have great expectations for this course! There is only one problem: I tend to be a perfectionist, so I' m VERY SLOW in sending my posts! Shortening the time to carry out the e-tivities will be another of my goals!

Hi, this is me!

2007-10-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Photo by snowdog101

Hi everybody!

I chose the photo of a skating rink because you will see me whirling on ice at the next winter Olympics! Well...maybe in my dreams! :-) However I can assure you that my passion for this sport is real! I started roller-skating when I was only five years old: those graceful and elegant movements and the spectacular acrobatics literally fascinated me and I would dream of flying without any effort like the skaters competing on TV. Okay, I have to acknowledge that at that time another fundamental element influenced my choice: the beautiful dresses, shining with sequins and colourful like petals of flowers!Unfortunately, I had to quit after few years, but last January an advertisement called my attention: a course of iceskating was about to start in a gym not far from my house! I immediately felt the desire to come back on the rink, to fly again, and so I did! Moreover I discovered that a friend of mine too shares my interest and we are determined to continue to train with the aim of becoming a great couple, famous and appreciated all around the world! Who are Maurizio Margaglio and Barbara Fusarpoli?? Of course I am joking, but I do have a lot of fun dancing with my skates and that's all I'm looking for!

I also have other hobbies and one of these is definitely photography! I can't help it, I have to take a picture of everything drawing my attention, anytime, anywhere! I completely agree with the slogan of a famous brand of films: if you don't take a photo, the details of the moments you have enjoyed will quickly fade out and you will keep just a confused image in your mind. I don't want to lose the memory of the things that have meant something to me, so I make them last for ever by taking a photo. Since the beginning of this month I have been attending a course in photography to learn something more about the use of a camera, if you are interested in it check the website of the association:

http://www.fotoantenore.com/

Another website I frequently check is this:
http://www.lettere.unipd.it/

Do you recognize it?? Yes, it is the website of our faculty! Maybe you could think that describing myself as a student is quite banal and expected, but for me it has a particular meaning: this is not only my last year at university, but also the end of my scholastic career, a very long journey started 18 years ago. I won't be a student any longer...how odd! I feel like I am in a period of transition, a part of my life is going to finish and this induces me to reflexionate about what I have done so far and what will be waiting for me behind the door of the future. For this reason I feel nostalgic and thrilled at the same time...but no more dramas! I am determined to enjoy the year that has just started and to live many exciting days with my friends!

Hope to hear from you all soon!

Elena