My PLE

Hi!
First of all I have to say that I really like the word “environment” because it perfectly gives the idea of the context in which we learn a language. As Sarah wrote, the learning process doesn’t stop when our formal learning is over: learning a language is more than attending a course! That’s why the PLE is very important: it helps people to become aware of what they do to improve their skills, of which tools they use and of the whole environment in which they learn.
I organized my PLE creating two main groups: my formal education (school) and my informal environment. Each one has four sub-categories: tools, people, where and activities I do.

I hope you enjoy my explanatory video! (I'm becoming a YouTube addicted!)

You can find it in YouTube: search for "PLE" and then click on "date added". You will find my presentation called "PLE presentation" by pasqstef.

Stefania

Criteria

photo by Tony

Hi Girls,

I think that there should be some criteria to establish whether a site – and its information – is good or not. This is true, not only for virtual documents, but also for real ones.
Of course, with paper books it’s easier because you know the author and the publisher and you can check their credentials and some reviews. But what about web sites?
Most of the times you don’t even know the author. I think that we should apply many criteria:

- you should find the home page of your document and see who is the responsible for that web site. For example: you are searching for “Baudelaire” for your thesis. You find three different sites written by a person fond of literature, by a French Academy of Literature and by a group of students who published their work in a blog. Does it make any difference?
- You should take into consideration the date of birth of the site. I mean, web sites open and close so easily, how could you rely on a site which might be no longer there in a few days?
- You should use Google (or any other search engine). Having said that Google has many limits, it works as a sort of filter.
- You should check in del.icio.us. You can’t only rely on peer rating but it can help you to see the degree of approval of a wide public. I mean, if many people bookmark a site, there must be a reason!
- You should check if the site is updated or not. Thanks to feeds you can easily do that.

All these criteria should work together: only the combination of all of them will give, as a result, a good site. Hopefully!

…15 minutes later …

I read all the documents provided by Sarah. The universities pointed out more or less the same criteria I mentioned before. However, I’d like to cite some of their remarks:
- Is there a reference list or bibliography of corroborative evidence? This is quite important because you can see the sources of the information you found.
- Is the author or contact person listed with addresses (street, e-mail)? This is an indication of reliability. If there are some problems you can contact a physical person.
- Is this information unique or has it been copied? Good observation, but it’s quite difficult to find it out if the site doesn’t mention the sources.
- Is anything being sold? As a consequence, which is the purpose of the site?

Well, I realized that to establish some good criteria is a very demanding task. I’m curious to know your impressions.
Stefania

YouTube

YouTube is a sort of data bank where people can share their videos. In my opinion, the consequences of this tool are quite obvious:

- fourteen-year-old teenagers beat disabled children and put the video on the net.
- Everyone can make a video by using a mobile phone and can cause harm to somebody’s reputation. And what about privacy?

As you can see, I’m a little sceptical about this tool. Of course it can be useful for us, but its nature isn’t educational; I think that videos should be filtered in some ways.
Having said that, I think that YouTube could be a very useful tool for our English language learning. Here you are my observations:
- students can find English videos in order to improve their listening skills
- even students could prepare educational videos to share with other people
- teachers could prepare tutorial video to help not only their students but also the whole community
- in the future, teachers could run academic courses by sharing their videos in YouTube! (Do you think it’s possible?)

Personally I think that online education will be the future. Learning online is very different from a traditional classroom experience. It’s a “student-centred” process where the teacher is a sort of “moderator” that helps students to take part in the work and encourages them. In this picture of a possible future situation, multimedia and technological tools are fundamental. As I wrote before, YouTube could be exploited in many ways. In short, the word key in YouTube is “sharing” and this is the great potentiality we should exploit.

I’m looking forward to reading your replies
Stefania

p.s. I hope you enjoyed my video. It’s too funny!

Have fun!

About Podcasts

A podcast is an audio file you can download and listen to even if you are offline on your MP3 portable music player! As far as I’m concerned I find podcasts amazing because thanks to this technology you can have contacts with the whole world. I mean, you can watch the news, listen to conferences or lectures, listen to programmes… Moreover, podcasting enables people to express their thoughts: everybody can make a podcast and put it online. Finally, I think that it could be a good technology for blind people. For example, I visited some websites where there was the oral version of many novels. What do you think? I think it’s just wonderful!
Of course, our purpose is to improve our English skills so I think that podcasting can help us for different reasons:
- there are educational sites which offer a wide range of exercises you can do (listening + comprehension activities)
- you can find original materials. I like measuring against “real English/ American” materials because I see if I can understand or not and where my weak points are (too fast? Vocabulary? Grammar structures?)
- you can improve your listening and speaking skills staying at home!
It has been quite difficult to choose the three websites and I browsed the net a lot. I didn’t imagine there were so many things! Here you are my selection:

http://www.eslpod.com/website/index.php

It’s an educational site. English second language speakers are the target audience.
It’s very well-organized. In the main page you will find the latest podcasts. Here you are an example:

Latest Podcasts

FRIDAY - NOVEMBER 16, 2007
ESL Podcast 321 – Buying a Jacket or Coat

Download Podcast
When it gets cold, you need to get a warm coat. Go shopping for one in English in this episode.
Tags: Shopping

As you can see you can listen to it online or download it and there’s the learning guide bottom.
In the learning guide you will find the transcriptions, some additional explanations and tips on improving your English.

http://edition.cnn.com/services/podcasting/

This site offers the possibility to listen to CNN podcasts and programmes. On the main page you can find a short introduction where all the podcasts available are introduced. This is not an educational site so everything you find here come from the CNN newsroom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/

The site offers a wide range of programmes you can download for free that might be useful for English learners. It’s very handy: all you have to do is to choose your favourite radio station.
There’s a special section which I recommend to you: Editor's podcast picks.
Here it’s just one of the podcasts you can choose:
Africa Today
Podcast
• BBC World Service
• Programme Highlights
• Typical Duration: 15 Mins.
• Latest Episode: Fri, 16 Nov 2007
• Available to all listeners
The latest African news and analysis from the BBC African news and Current Affairs...

Thanks to this schedule you can have all the information you need to choose the podcasts you prefer!

I’m looking forward to know what do you think of podcasts, and let me know what do you think of my choices.
Stefania

What a del.icio.us thing!

Hi girls!
Once again, I discovered new things! Well, I find bookmarking wonderful. You can bookmark everything you want so that you can store your favourite web sites and don’t loose them in the “virtual chaos” of the web. However, the most amazing thing is the social part of bookmarking and the fact you store all the materials online so that you can access them from anywhere. Bookmarking allows you to share the sites you found with a group of people (the network). I like this mutual exchange very much: other people can benefit from your work and you can discover some new relevant resources from the others.
As to the technical part of the task I watched the videos and the tutorial and I read all the instructions carefully. Finally I had no problems in using del.icio.us. The mechanism is more or less always the same: all you have to do is to register with a username and password, then log in and start clicking around to see how the whole stuff works!
Well, let’s talk about a sore point! In my opinion, the most demanding part of the task was to find out some relevant web sites to bookmark. I had to browse the net a lot in order to choose some good material; I don’t like spending so much time online (neither my parents who pay the telephone bill). I know there are the labs but I’m not always in Padua and I find working at home easier.
Among the 20 web sites bookmarked by my friends I focus my attention on:
- the NPR web site bookmarked by Giovanna
- “how to do a thesis” bookmarked by Alessia
- the dictionary of English slang bookmarked by Roby
- the site on vocabulary bookmarked by Caterina
I find Giovanna’s site really interesting because you can practice your listening and improve your pronunciation through authentic documents. In the websites I found, most of the documents were exercises expressly created for educational purposes. Moreover, I saw there are many things you can listen to (in some cases there are even the transcriptions): programs, songs, stories… Nice site!
The site bookmarked by Alessia is very useful. It gives good pieces of advice in order to prepare properly a thesis and to learn how to dissert it. The site is really well organized and clear: there are some “instructions” that help the student from the beginning to the end step by step. Finally there are some links to other useful websites devoted to this subject. I only visited the site about how to write a thesis statement but I’m going to visit the others too.
As to the dictionary of English slang and colloquialisms, I find it very handy because you can check the expressions and see the context in which they’re used. Since my problem is to write in a too formal way, I think I’m going to look the new words up in this dictionary!
Last but not least, I really enjoyed doing the activities in the Learning Vocabulary site bookmarked by Caterina. There are lots of things you can do: crosswords, quizzes and so on. Some of them are too simple maybe because there are some sections devoted to children.
I’m looking forward to know the choices of the remaining members of the group! If you want to reply to my message, just write, I’ll be glad to answer!
Stefania

del.icio.us

HI EVERYBODY!
If you want to add me in your network in del.icio.us my user name is: stefy84.
I couldn't use the same user name because it was already in use!
Hope this help
Stefania

Using Bloglines

Even though I wasn’t in the lab on Wednesday, I had no problems in doing the task… Actually, it took me 20 minutes to read the instructions and to watch the video, but then I understood what I was supposed to do!
I find feeds and feed aggregators very useful. You receive a notification on your computer if the blogs you subscribed to have been updated, instead of surfing the net and see if there are new posts.
I created a playlist too but I haven’t understood the utility yet. Can you help me? :-)
At the present time these are my first impressions, maybe I should add something later – after having used these technologies for some time.

Trick or treat?

I don’t think Halloween should be banned because it’s just a sort of Carnival. Children don’t mind if it’s an American tradition or not, they just want to have fun.
Of course there is a business beside it but business is everywhere: what about Christmas – the Italian Catholic festivity par excellence?
Halloween has been imported and we can’t do anything about it; instead of complaining we could take advantage of it.
At school, for example, teachers should explain the history beyond Halloween so that a commercial festivity can become a way to know another culture (or some aspects of it).
However, it’s not an Italian tradition and many people think it’s a farce, a desperate attempt of emulation.
As you can see the topic is very controversial, that’s why I decided to carry out an opinion poll. No elusive answers are allowed:
Yes or No, and If you are really really hesitant, I don’t know.

I’m curious to know what do you think… See you on Monday
Stefania

Surfing the net

In these weeks I browsed the net a lot and I came across many blogs! Well, you can find whatever you want: sport, music, television, politics; you have the embarrassment of riches!
Variety is good but at the very beginning I felt bewildered: the blogosphere is a sort of world aside where everything is fast – the time to click on an hyperlink and you are connected with the rest of the world! I was amazed when I found out that maybe blogs are the most updated source of information: they’re daily updated while the daily news are sometimes already outdated!

Another important question I’d like to deal with is the kind of information. Of course there are some official blogs but in general I found that information is treated in unconventional ways. You can hear many voices so that you can build up your own opinion. The most evident case in Italy (maybe not only in Italy) is the one of Bebbe Grillo. However, there are a number of these examples. For instance yesterday I visited an American blog where a girl made some observations about the emergency measures adopted by Bush in California compared with the ones he adopted in Louisiana, interesting, isn’t it?

As to the language I think it’s very informal. In the posts there are no linking adverbial: words flow as in a spoken discourse. Questions are very common because in this way the writer creates the impression that he is talking to the reader. Moreover, writers use colloquial lexis (slang, swearing…) and abbreviations. You can often find exclamations marks, dots and dashes. Far from being a standard, formal written text in blogs there is interactiveness (for example see the hyperlinks) and a sort of shared situation as in a conversation (the blog becomes a meeting place where people can exchange their opinions!).

Finally, the third element I’d like to point out is layout. Blogs are a question of style! You convey a message not only through the contents or through the way you write but also through how you present it! Since the purpose is to catch the audience’s attention, blogs are generally very appealing, colourful and full of images.

Let me know what do you think about it…
Stefania

This is me

photo by w_yvr

Hi everybody!This is me… or better, a representation of me! I’m Stefania!

I chose Emma Bovary, the protagonist of Madame Bovary by Flaubert for a number of reasons. First of all because I love reading, especially French books. Secondly because Gustave Flaubert is one of my favourite writers and I like French literature in general. And finally because I really like Emma and I find that we share some characteristics; specifically I’m a “reveuse” like her.Well - to prevent equivocal interpretations of my personality - I’d like to add that I’ve nothing to do with her insane obsessions and that I’m not going to kill myself with the arsenic during the course!Another salient aspect of my character is the fact I love children! I work in two kindergartens where I “teach” English to five-year-old children. I really have fun working with them because they are always enthusiastic about everything you do!

I recommend you to visit my personal website: http://www.magicoalvis.it/stefania. There is just a short presentation of me (I put the one we wrote for Gillian the first year at university) and some photos.If you are interested in nature, hiking… and stuffs like that, I suggest you to visit the entire site because it’s about our region and all the things you can visit and do!The second site I recommend is: http://www.guardian.co.uk . When I have some free time I like having a look at the main news. You can find not only articles but also interviews and reviews and there is a big archive too which serves as a sort of “historical memory”.

Bye bye Stefania

Welcome

HI EVERYBODY!
WELCOME TO MY NEW BLOG!