My personal learning environment

This week we were asked to develop a mindmap of our Personal Learning Environment (PLE). Sarah quoted different definitions of it and explained us that there is no general agreement on a standard definition.
Generally speaking, a PLE indicates the way we learn, how and where we collect information and organize it.

It took me a lot to think about my PLE and how to arrange it. I decided to outline it using Word and then to scan it. I changed the layout and the type size in order to make it more readable once posted on this blog. I used also different colours for the lines of each branch to make my PLE clearer.

My Personal Leaning Environment has four branches, and the main categories are then sub-divided in several parts. First of all, I pointed out where I learn; I can find information and elaborate it on the Web or in the real world (that is, on paper, but also in everyday interactions with people).

Another branch is about how I gather information; this happens when I read, listen to or watch something. These activities can take place in a formal or an informal context of learning. The former is strictly connected with my university experience and refers to the tools that I consider expressly devoted to the language learning: textbooks, essays, dictionaries, grammars, courses at university, conferences and seminars. The second context refers to the tools that I use in my everyday life that contribute to my language learning, even if I don’t conceive them as official and conventional; they consist in songs, books that I read in my free time, TV programs, videos, newspaper articles and magazines, websites, podcasts, forums, blogs, chat rooms, e-mails, conversations with foreigners that can take place also when travelling abroad.

Another important branch of my PLE consists in the activity of storing and organizing information that I gathered. First of all, I try to keep in mind new words and grammatical rules; since it’s inevitable that I forget some pieces of information, I often make outlines, which I consider very helpful in order to improve my visual memory. When I attend lessons at university or when I read something interesting, I usually take notes to fix pieces of information and making them available when I need to read them again. For the same reason, I sometimes record TV programmes, songs, videos and podcasts, or I copy or photocopy some parts of texts. Thanks to Sarah, I recently learned how to store URLs on the Web using Bloglines and Del.icio.us. I think that feed aggregators and the activity of social bookmarking are really useful for my language learning, and in general to retrieve and save information.

The last branch of my PLE deals with the activity of formulating and expressing information, which is strictly tied up with the previous ones. It’s the last step of my learning process, and I consider it very useful since I’m forced to think about what I’ve previously learnt and then arrange and connect information. When I want to express some concept or my ideas, I deeply think about them and I communicate them by speaking or writing (using a computer or on paper).

I hope you enjoyed reading through my PLE. What about you?

Veronica

Judging online sources

photo by Swiv

There is a huge number of sources you can use choose from when you have to write a text. You can decide to use paper sources (such as: books, reviews, journals, essays, reports, articles, pamphlets, etc.), or online ones (websites). Judging sources can be very difficult and time-demanding, but it’s indispensable if you want your text to be reliable.

When I started searching materials for my thesis I preferred using paper sources since I thought that they were more reliable than the online ones. Anyone can publish anything he/she wants to on the web and there is often no way of checking or verifying what has been divulged. However, I soon changed my mind since not all online material is bad; there are a lot of interesting and reliable sites on the web and I used them as sources of my paper.

I never stop to be amazed by the huge amount of websites and information available on the Web; you just have to write a word in the apposite bar and the search engine will find all the websites that contain that word. However, search engines like Google show both relevant and irrelevant sites. In order to narrow down you researches you can be more specific when writing the key words, or you can do advanced searches (in this way, you can find for examples many academic files by eminent professors). You can also use other useful online tools, such as Del.icio.us; after having registered to this website, you can look for sites and read how people commented them. As you can read in the tips from the University of Essex, you can use also meta-search engines (like Mamma) and specialized search engines (such as Google Scholbar), which can help you to quickly find what you are looking for.

Reading through the Pardue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and the San Diego State University websites, I noticed that there are several criteria to use in order to judge the sources of information, both online or not. I must admit that I’ve used them almost always, since my supervisor clearly explained them to me when I was writing my thesis.

First of all, I always need to have clear in mind what is the subject of my paper and what I need to search for; then I have to decide where I could find what I need. This criteria are clearly stated in the Pardue (Owl): “You will need to make decisions about what to search for, where to look, and once you've found material on your topic, whether to use it in your paper."

Then I pay attention to the author of the text; if I don’t know him/her, I try to find out what he/she wrote, his/her profession and career. Sometimes it may be a bit difficult and time-demanding to find the author of an online text. It is often very important to look at the publisher or the producer of the text.

Then I read the preface and the table of content, in order to find out why the author decided to write his/her work and to what audience he/she aimed to refer. The table of content gives also a quick overview of the main points discussed in the text.

When you are searching for a website the URL can be very important since the domain can inform you about the organization that hosts the website. If the URL ends in .org the organization is no-profit; if it ends in .com the site belongs to a commercial organization, while if it ends in .edu or .ac it concerns an educational authority.

I always check the publication date, especially when I search for online sources. I try to notice when the website was created and its last update, since it’s very important to use current information.

Finally, I read through the bibliography in order to see if the material the author used is valuable or not. In the bibliography I can find further sources that I can use to broaden my research.

I found particularly useful and interesting the following five questions published by the Monash University's online library tutorial:

-Who is responsible for the site - is there a name and contact address?

-What is its rationale - is it endorsing a particular viewpoint to the exclusion of other views?

-Is there a reference list or bibliography of corroborative evidence?

-Is there a date when the site was last updated - how long ago did this happen?

-Does the site seem to be permanent or part of a permanent organisation?

Veronica

Uno, dos, tres...

Hi!

Would you like to know something more about me? Well... I decided to post a video that shows one of my passions: latin dance! I'm attending a course on Friday evenings and I think latin dance is simply fantastic! I chose this video since it shows a pair of dancers that dance cuban salsa and then give some pieces of advice as how to improve your style when dancing. Cool!

Besos

Veronica

Do you know YouTube?

photo by manu contreras

According to Wikipedia, YouTube was created in 2005 and is “a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips”. YouTube is free and very easy to use. You can search for every sort of videos just by tapping tags in the ‘search’ bar; most of the videos are available also for unregistered users. You can also see is the file you want to watch is worth attention by looking at its rating and reading though the several comments people wrote.

I think that YouTube is a fantastic tool since you can find videos dealing with every topic and for every purpose you want. I knew YouTube even before Sarah introduced it to us; I used it mainly to find funny videos, but I never thought about it as a learning tool! Thanks to Sarah, I discovered that in YouTube you can find interesting videos that can teach you how to do several things. I think that the next time I want to learn something more about how using computers I will look for a good YouTube video! LOL! Since many files are in English, you can also improve your English listening skill, your vocabulary, and your pronunciation. Great!

YouTube can be useful for teachers too; they can find interesting videos that can be used in order to teach in a different and more involving way some subjects that students often consider boring. In TeacherTube I found some good video files that deal with several topics, such as physics, mathematics, informatics, and that can be an effective support when teaching.

In YouTube you can find also funny videos; Sarah suggested us two files which I find brilliant! When I saw the one about the translator I couldn’t stop laughing! The second one was a satiric video that parodied Bush’s foreign policy and the sad situation in Iraq. I particularly appreciated the puns such as I-rack/Iraq and I-ran/Iran, or the double meaning of some words, such as ‘rack’.

YouTube, however, has also negative aspects. Since everyone can add his/her own video, you may find some files that aren’t good; information conveyed could be inexact, language can be used improperly, and both comment and videos can be full of grammatical mistakes or vulgar.

In conclusion, I think that YouTube is an excellent tool in order to find audio and video files dealing with several topics, but people should be aware that they can find both good and bad stuff. As a matter of fact, teachers should control the videos they want to employ as teaching material before using it.

What do you think?

Veronica

Let's podcast!

photo by Astrangegirl

Two days ago Sarah introduced us to another very useful tool for improving English: podcasts. The term ‘podcast’ is a neologism derived by the fusion of two words: ‘broadcasting’ and ‘ipod’. The first word indicates the transmission of audio and video signals over the airwaves from radio or television; the second noun refers to a portable media player (Wikipedia). A podcast is then a multimedia video or audio file which can be freely downloaded on your computer or on your mp3. However, some files are accessible directly online.

I think that podcasts are an excellent way of improving your English; you can train your listening and comprehension skills and you can enrich your vocabulary, pronunciation, and style. They are completely free, so everyone can take advantage of this fantastic tool. Cool!

You can subscribe to podcasts syndication feeds, so that you can receive new and interesting video and audio files as soon as they are available on the Web. In this way, you have always recent material at your disposal.

As Sarah pointed out, another important advantage of podcasts is that they can be used whenever and wherever you want to. You can listen to or watch them not only on your computer, but also bring them with you on your mp3. Fantastic! I never thought to the possibility of listening to several English conversations and videos each week while traveling by bus!

I surfed the Net and I used del.icio.us to find some useful podcasts; I chose these three good podcasts about English learning.

- The British Council Podcast is a wonderful website where you can find many audio files about several topics. You can listen to them and then read the correspondent audio scripts by clicking the ‘script’ link. Here you can find also some exercises that can be useful to check your comprehension skill. The content of the website has been written by English teachers and educationalists. There are many links to interesting English websites.

- The BBC Radio Podcast: How to… is one of the several interesting podcasts that you can find in the BBC website. Here you can listen to English radio programs that deal with different everyday situations. Not only can you improve your listening skill, but also enrich your everyday English vocabulary since explanations of language choices are provided.

- The Business English Podcast is an excellent resource to improve your listening and comprehension skills; you can find audio files, the texts scripts and exercises to check what you’ve actually understood. Conversations concern mainly suggestions to improve your business English, your intonation, pronunciation and style in the working field. It’s very useful both for students and workers!

That’s all for now!

Veronica

It's really Del.icio.us!

photo by crush with eyeliner

Before Wednesday, I usually used Google when I wanted to search for a website. The search engine shows all the websites (usually a huge number!) containing the words you searched for, with no distinction of their effective relevancy. What a waste of time!

If I found an interesting site and I wanted to save the URL, I could write it down on a piece of paper, or save it using the ‘Favorites’ button. If I lost the piece of paper or I used another computer, I had to search the URL again. What a pity!

Fortunately, Sarah taught us to use another useful tool that lets us save time: Del.icio.us. It is a social bookmarking website that allows you to save, store, and share your favourite websites online.
Del.icio.us is completely free and can be accessed from any computer; after having registered, you can start searching for the websites that interest you. You write one or more tags and Del.icio.us finds all sites that had been saved with those tags. You will find a relatively smaller number of sites than that retrieved using a searching engine, but these sites are surely more pertinent! It’s fantastic! You can also see how many people saved a certain website and what they wrote about it on their notes. Their comments can really make your search easier!
You have the possibility to create a list of your favourite websites; for each of them, you will be asked to write the URL, a short description, your notes and the tags. Your bookmarks are public; this means that everyone can read them. This activity, in fact, is called ‘social bookmarking’ since it’s a sort of mutual exchange: you can read and use others’ bookmarks and they can use yours. It’s wonderful!

Finally, you can create your network in Del.icio.us, by saving the usernames of the people you want and check their favourite websites. I added my peers on my network and I checked their ‘Favorites’; I liked very much the work they did and I chose to comment one bookmark for each peer.

- Silvia’s choice: Wordreference
“This website contains free online dictionaries. It can be very useful when you're translating! As a matter of fact, it contains both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.” (Silvia)

I chose this bookmark, since I use it every time I had to translate a text. It’s really useful! It contains English, French, German, and Italian dictionaries and there is also a forum where people can discuss about their doubts when translating a word or a sentence into s foreign language. Cool!

- Marina’s choice: Web Concordance
“A useful tool when you need to know a collocation. You simply have to write a word and the concordancer will give you a list of examples from the corpus you have chosen.” (Marina)

I think this is a very useful tool, especially when you want to use a word, but you aren’t sure about its position and context. I had already used a similar tool when I wrote my paper and I found it fantastic! I had to search for the occurrences of several words and, without a specific programme of web concordance, it would have been impossible to do my searches!

- Elena’s choice: Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
“A free resource for ESL students who want to practice their listening skills. There are many listening quizzes (Pre-listening/Listening/Post-listening activities) dealing with several topics taken from everyday conversations, but also from interviews.” (Elena)

I found this website really interesting and useful; I immediately tried to practice my listening skills, and I think I will use this fantastic tool very often! I appreciated the fact that I could choose the level and the topic I preferred. Among my ‘Favorites’, I saved two websites that contain grammar exercises and listening quizzes!

- Camilla’s choice: How to use English Punctuation
“Small and useful guide to the use of English punctuation.” (Camilla)

I think that this is a concise, but very clear and useful guide to the correct use of English punctuation. I saved another website about this topic among my ‘Favorites’; I think that English punctuation is sometimes very different from the Italian one and many doubts can arise when translating a text into English. For this reason, an easy online guide can be really helpful!

- Martina’s choice: National Public Radio in US
“You can access hourly news summaries and 24-hours programme stream. It’s a US public radio.” (Martina)

I think that it is a useful website where you can find a large number of news regarding several topics. You can learn a lot about the world’s news and you can also listen them; in this way, you have the possibility to improve your listening ability.

That’s all for the moment! I hope you enjoyed reading my experience and my opinions about Del.icio.us!

Veronica

Four good reasons to celebrate Halloween!

photo by Brit.

Hi!

Last week was the 31st October… Halloween! I saw some children go for trick-or-treating in my village, and this makes me happy! There are several reasons for celebrating Halloween also in Italy:

- First of all, Halloween is an occasion to meet people and stay together for a night. It is then a way of socializing and making the acquaintance of new people!

- At Halloween, people (especially children) have fun, since they can wear fancy dresses and go for trick-or-treating and eat a lot of sweets!

- People can also express their creativity and their immagination, since they have the chance to create their own fancy dresses (that, in my opinion, is better than buying them already made!), to put on bizarre make up…. And make their own jack-o’-lanterns! Personally, I never made my own carved pumpkin, even if I would like to. Since I was a child, I’ve always made carved oranges and mandarins! It’s very easy to make them and they are so cute and funny! I found this interesting website that explains how to make your own Halloween pumpkin! The website is clear and nice: instructions are accompanied by photos, which show different stages of preparation; in this way you can check your work step-by-step! You can find also many suggestions, alternative methods and useful links. This website will be surely useful next year, when I will try making my first jack-o’-lantern!

- Some people think that celebrating Halloween is a sort of ‘Americanization’, since this holiday is embraced mainly by Americans. I think that this is not true, since Halloween originated in Europe! According to Wikipedia, Halloween “has its origins in the Gaelic festival known as Samhain, […] which was a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture”. This holiday was then influenced by many Roman traditions, when the Romans occupied Celtic territory. Halloween was then imported to North America, when many Scottish and Irish people immigrated there in the 19th century. For these reasons, Halloween is not a new holiday introduced by Americans, but is a part of our European culture!

Happy Halloween!

Veronica

Bloglines

photo by somefool (old school)

Hi!

Few days ago on the lab we learned what an aggregator is and how it works. Before Wednesday I never heard about this word and I did not know what it was. Sarah explained us that an aggregator is a useful tool that collects syndicated Web contents and organizes them in a very clear way, so that you could easily retrieve and read them on a Web page. After having downloaded or registered for an aggregator, you can subscribe to various websites and blogs and you can receive updates. I learned also that RSS (‘Really Simple Syndacation’) and XML are languages that are used to transfer the information on a site in a standard format.

On the lab we started using Bloglines aggregator; it is a very useful tool that allows you to check if the websites or blogs you are interested in have been updated; it makes you save time, since you do not need to type every time the URLs on the bar when you want to see whether there are news. However, if you want to have a look at the entire websites, not only the latest news, useful links are provided.

Bloglines is completely free and can be accessed from any computer. Moreover, it is very easy to use: when you create your own account, you are required to give only your e-mail address and your password. Then you have simply to subscribe to and add the URLs of the websites and blogs you are interested in using the ‘Feed’ button (For example, I added some websites about dogs, English learning, gossips and cooking recipes). If you are registered for many websites, you can also organize information creating playlists. Unlike your personal blog, your pages on Bloglines, as well as the way you organize them, are absolutely private and nobody can see them.

That’s all for now!

See you on Monday

Veronica

My first two weeks as a blogger

Before attending this English course, I had no idea of how using a blog. I heard about people who usually read them and used them, but I had never visited one. The idea of using blogs and of creating my own blog excited me, but, at the same time, made me nervous. In fact, I can use some computer programmes, but it sometimes happens that something does not work or is completely new to me, and this makes me a bit upset. However, after the first lessons, I familiarized myself with this means of communication and now I find it fantastic! You can use a blog to write your opinions and thoughts about many topics; you can answer and comment on posts written by other people; you can share pictures and videos and suggest links. I like very much the idea that people can express and publish their opinions… and see what other persons (also from throughout the world) think about them!
In my group of English, there are many girls who share my passion for cooking… and, since we do not live in the same town, the blog could be a good way to exchange ideas and recipes, and to suggest each other useful links to cooking websites.

I think that blogs are very useful in order to improve the language learning, since one own work can be read and commented by other people. The practice of peer reviewing is helpful both for the person who corrects the work, and for the person who receives the criticisms; the first can edit the text and understand his/her mistakes, while the second can learn from others’ mistakes.
The activity of blogging is very similar to that of peer reviewing experienced during the third year of university. During English lessons students were divided in groups and they had to discuss about a topic, write and send some works using First Class, and edit the texts of their peers. I must admit that it had been a bit demanding, since every week we had to write a short text and edit our peers’ works. The same discourse can be said for the activity of blogging; I spent a lot of time searching for pictures in Flickr, thinking of what to write as my presentation and what to suggest to my peers. However, I think that blogging and peer reviewing are useful in order to improve my fluency, my ability to read and write colloquial English.

Veronica

welcome to my blog

photo by unfocused mike

Hi! I'm an Italian girl of 24 and I'm studying foreign languages at the Univesity of Padua. Welcome to my blog!

This is a photo of a cute dog puppy. I've decided to post it since I really love dogs, with no distinction of size, breed or colour. Moreover, I think that this puppy is very lovely and incredibly looks like my dog Trudy. Even if she is nearly twelve years old, she still looks like a pup! She is very lively when we go for long walks, but when we come back home she sinks into sleep on her cushion. I like looking after her, and her thankful look makes me happy. My parents brought her home many years ago, saving her from the bad conditions of a dog pound. If I had the possibility I would like to rescue other stray dogs.

These are the websites that I often use.

Word Reference

Repubblica

Wikipedia

The first is a very useful website that I often use to check the meaning of foreign words that I do not know, or when I want to translate Italian words into foreign languages.
The second website is an Italian online newspaper, that I usually read in order to know what happens in Italy and throughout the world. It contains also many interesting links.
The other site is a sort of multilingual wiki that I use every time I want to know something about a topic that is new for me. I think is very useful and simple to use; in fact, there is a great number of links that you can use to satisfy your curiosity.

Have fun reading my blog!

Veronica