My Personal Learning Environment!

The PLE is our Personal Learning Environment…Great! I mean, I never thought about it, but that’s right! We all have our “channels” through which we learn and improve a foreign language! Day by day we construct a net around us that helps us learning!
Usually I don’t make mind maps to study so at the beginning I thought: “What do I have to do?!?!” But then, after just a while of doubt I started the activity step by step, as Sarah said and…Voila! Done it! I mean it has not been hard! I just had to put down what I do!
I tried to construct my map with FreeMind…but still my relationship with technologies is not that good! So I took the dear old “paper and pencil” and started working on my PLE map!
I decided to divide my personal learning environment into 5 big categories which are “Formal learning”, “For fun”, “Digit@l” “Friends” and "Around me”.
First of all, we have to make a distinction between the formal and the informal learning: "formal learning" deals with school, University and all the “classic” tools like grammar books, dictionaries, homework and activities that we, as students, have to do. I think that this point, is the most prescriptive one, and probably also the less funny…Is it learning grammar rules and their dammed exceptions funny?! NO! At all!! But at the same time it is the most important point of all the map, is the starting point of everything because without an academic course that gives us the basis to learn a language, all the other aspects would not exist! Well, maybe that’s not completely true…many people do learn a language without studying grammars and things like that…But that’s another story!! This has to be my personal learning environment, and this is how it works for me!
So, having cleared up, what the formal learning is, I can now explain you the other 4 point, which all belongs to informal learning!
Under the etiquette “for fun” I put things that I usually do in my spare time like listening to music, watching television or reading. I have to confess you that I have to know the words of the songs I like, it’s stronger then me! I always check the lyrics on the net and in this way I learn a lot of new words and expressions! All those activities are like hobbies, they are not heavy nor boring and they are surely useful to learn a L2!
Another category I put is “digit@l”, actually many of the tools I indicated could be also part of the “formal learning” as we discovered them attending Sarah course at University…But to tell the truth they are so informal!!! I mean, many teachers still work in class with old books and photocopies…Anyway, here I put all the technological tools that I use to find information, to search for what I am interested in and to save and organize my favourites.
The forth category is called “friends” and to me, this is the best one! Leaving philosophical considerations about friendship, I can say that speaking with my foreign friends is the best way to improve my language! I have a lot of Spanish friends, and some English too, unluckily many of them are far away, but thanks to technologies I can always speak or chat with them! And if I’m lucky I can have also conversations face to face!
The last category is named “around me” and contains all those input that come from outside and reach us without my will like fashion, advertisement, the labels of food and products in general. These are all things that surround us and we do implicitly learn things from them!
So, learning a language is a lifelong process, and the channels are several; the most important thing that never has to fail is the personal will! Learning an L2 is not like learning how to ride a bike…Learning a language implies exercise, dedication, study and enthusiasm! We all have to find our incitements and it doesn’t matter if they are formal or informal input! The point is reaching a goal, and my goal is learning English!

A compass, please!!

As it has already been said many times during this course we are living in a digital era! Mass media and Internet with their tools seem to make information easily available for all the people, but is it completely true?
When navigating on the net we are assailed by an enormous amount of information and it’s not easy to orientate ourselves! We definitely need a compass to find our way about in this mass!
If we search for something in the net, we’ll see a lot of info matching the topic of our research…But is it everything valid and reliable?
The answer is no!!!
We surely have to think critically about the returns!
As far as I’m concerned, I always try not to waste my time consulting untrustworthy websites and sources…But how do I judge them?! I have to confess that many times I follow my inspiration saying “Ok, this seems to be a useful web site!!” I guess that following my sixth sense it’s not always a good thing and that’s why many times I lose the sense of direction!
During this course Sarah suggested us many tools and strategies to face this problem: Bloglines is one of these, as well as Google advanced research or Del.icio.us.
In the three websites we had to consult for e-tivity 8 there are some interesting criteria for judging the sites, their authority and validity!
First of all we have to know clearly what we want to search otherwise…what are we going to search!?! Opinions, facts, news reports, history!?
Secondly, when on the screen appears the list with the returns we have to look at the URL of the different sites before follow up a link! As a matter of fact, URL can say something about the seriousness of a web site: e.g. if it ends with “edu” it means that the responsible for the information is an educational institution.
Once we have decided which links we want to follow up, we have to check who the responsible for the site or the author is and if the site is regularly updated.
So, to draw a conclusion, we can say that evaluating is something that we need all the time: not only for academic purposes or for our theses but daily in our lives!! The temptation to accept what ever we find is real, but we have to pay attention because everyone can be a potential publisher of Web documents, all we need is an Internet account!
So we have to be critic and clear-headed in order to find what we need!

I love this song...don't u?!?!

I Tube, You Tube...

You Tube is a video sharing website where any user can watch videos for free!! If you get register you can upload your videos, create an account with your favourite videos and make play lists too.
I love you tube!! It is very funny! You can watch any kind of video, u just have to write some key words (tags) and then press the search button and…Done! A list of video will appear! On the left side of the page there are some stars indicating the quality of the video so u won’t waste time watching bad videos. There are also important information like 4 example the duration of the video, or how many time it has been watched and in this way we are able to make a quick selection of what to see.
There are a lot of funny and stupid videos, about animals, children, cars, sports and whatever available on the net! I could spend hours watching other people’ videos!
But there is something more! It can undoubtedly be an educational tool: You Tube allows us to get in contact with real english speakers!! Well, not only english of course!! You can find videos in any language!! The point is that watching part of TV programs, interviews, jokes, sketches and comedies we face real speakers’ language! There are real conversations…But u know what!? You can click the “pause button” any time you need!! That’s great! You can watch the video all the times that u want or need in order to understand what’s going on!

A podcast is an audio file that you can download for free onto your pc or mp3 player.
Nowadays podcasting is really widespread around the world and on the net you can find a lot of podcast about all the different topics that you want.
I mean, this is great!! I don’t know if you like Radio Deejay, but I do! On Radio Deejay website you can download podcasts of the different programs…U have to try “Deejay chiama Italia”!!! Linus and Nicola are great!! Just an advice: if you walk around listening to them on your I-pod you’r surely going to laugh a lot….Other people may think that you’r mad! Hahaha J
Well, obviously podcasts can be useful also for educational purposes, I think that they have replaced the old cassettes of the language lab we grown up with!
Thanks to this technology the audio files available have increased incredibly and so we have got a lot of chances to improve our listening skills.
Searching for podcasts in Google I found some interesting things:

1) http://www.voanews.com/english/podcasts.cfm
This is a web site where you can find many different podcasts; you can choose a region like Africa, USA, Europe and so on, to see the news about those areas, or you can choose a topic like for example arts and entertainment, environment, education, sports an so on. I mean, many different kind of information available to be downloaded!! And moreover you can also see the scripts of the audio files!!! I think it can be very helpful to check whether you have understand it well or not!

2) http://www.englishthroughstories.com/scripts/scripts.html
Also in here you can find podcasts , but this time there are short stories divided into episodes. At the beginning of each audio file, a voice tells us who is going to read the story and sums up what happened in the previous episode. It is also possible to see the transcription of what the voice is reading and, as I have already said, this is very useful: you can see what u have actually understood and it is a good tool to make auto corrections.

3) http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
Here there are jokes for ESL students…To tell the truth I thought it to be funny…But the jokes are terrible!![John says I’m pretty, Andy says I’m ugly, what do u think Peter? I think u’r pretty ugly!L ] Is it a matter of cultural differences!? I guess so… Anyway it can be interesting to listen to them. A part from jokes there are also short stories, exercises of “listen and read along” and “listen and repeat” to improve our pronunciation.

Del.icio.us

Delicious!
Del.icio.us seems, at the first sight, a sort of “preferiti” online, but it is more than that! It is not just a site for saving your favourites and bookmarks!
It is very useful because we can save a link to anything we view on the web and the list of our favourites exists virtually so that we have access to our bookmarks anywhere, we just need a web access!
The registration on del.icio.us is very simple, just a username and a password and…Done! You can store and organize all your bookmarks!
Once we have created the account, we just have to click on “post”, on the top of the page, to add the sites we are interested in. For each url that we save, we have to provide a brief description (notes) and some keywords (tags) to identify rapidly what we are saving.
The best aspect of this brand new tool concern the fact that it is a social bookmaking: it is not a private way of storing, but everything that we save on del.icio.us is shared!! Del.icio.us works like a filter for the overload of information available on the net: in this way we can easily see what the other users have saved, seeing which sites are actually used and useful! We won’t waste our time consulting useless and unreliable sources of information anymore!!
It is also possible to create a network in which we can add the usernames of our friends, or in our case the users of our peers, in order to have a very quick access to their bookmarks!
In my network there are the names of group F members of and having a look to my group mates bookmarks, I found many interesting things...

Elena saved this link:
http://esl.about.com/od/englishgrammar/a/a_punctuation.htm

It is a guide to Basic English which provides the basic rules of punctuation cleared up by examples.
On the left column of this site there is also a list with the different topics developed, e.g. grammar, vocabulary, listening and so on. Since we can’t deny that we often have doubts about english grammar, it seems to me a very useful site to consult! Moreover there are also quizzes in order to keep trained!!

Monica saved this link:
http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/

It is a website about the International tandem network, which in other worlds is a great chance to learn a language with a mother tongue peer! In this site they explain you how to find a partner and how this tandem project works! I never took part such an activity, but it sounds great to me! I mean, the only way to learn a language is practicing and so, what’s better than finding a mother tongue partner to have a conversation with?

Ah, one last think, I put this pic because I love it! It gives the idea of doing something together with another person, don't you think so? Something like...Learning a language! :-)

Valeria saved this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

It is the BBC learning zone in which you can find good exercises with sessions dedicated to the vocabulary, the grammar and the exercises. I guess it can be particularly useful to improve our skills listening to the radio and watching videos!

Elisa saved this link:
http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/

A dictionary of slang!! That’s great! Slang and colloquial/informal expressions are very difficult to understand and translate! The different expression are in alphabetical order and followed by a definition which helps us to get the message and tells us also where (geographical indication) those expressions are used!

Bloglines: our personal secretary!

Eureka!
Every week we do discover something new: first the blogosphere, then how to develop our blog and now…feed aggregators! Wow!
We all agree that surfing the net and blogging are very time demanding activities, but luckily now bloglines aggregator came to our aid!
We are speaking about a technology which manages all the new information that are posted in the blogs or web sites we regularly visit and then tell as everything new! In this way we won’t waste time opening

all the different blogs like our course blog, our peers’ ones and so on! Once we have created our account in Bloglines, and subscribed to the web sites and blogs we are interested in, we just have to check out one page to be updated!! Isn’t it great?! I mean, this is a very useful tool, it is like having our personal secretary! Cool!:-)
Thanks Sarah!

I hate Halloween

So…group F is against Halloween! Well, to tell the truth I’m not against this holiday, but I can surely find good arguments against this imported tradition.
According to Wikipedia, Halloween is celebrated on the night of October 31, the term Halloween is the shortened form of All-Hallow-Even, which is also known as All Saints’ Day. The modern Halloween has got its origins in an ancient pagan Gaelic festival ( Samhain): the Gaels believed that on October 31 the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festival involved bonfires and people usually wore masks and costumes in order to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.
The symbol of Halloween is a pumpkin, or better a carved pumpkin with a candle inside and all Halloween imagery is connected to death, magic, witches and monsters, ghosts and spiders. There are also games and activities which are traditionally associated with Halloween parties like for example children’ “trick or treat!”: children disguise themselves and go door-to-door ringing at doorbells asking for a little gift or a candy.
First of all, I have to say that here in Italy it is not a rooted tradition, there are not historical or religious reasons: Halloween is just a consumer party! It is just an occasion for spending money, buying silly orange ornamentations and decorate pumpkins! At the end of October our cities are invaded by spiders and spiders’ web in every corners, skeletons at the doors, ghosts and orange pumpkins at every window, but why? Why are we overwhelmed by something unknown? Why can’t we choose wheatear to celebrate it or no? We should be all aware of what is going on, whereas, to me, for many people it is just an occasion to party, have fun or go to the disco!

I am a neo-blogger

I have never read a blog in all my life before starting this course. And I firmly thought that I would never read one.
But you know what? You never can tell!
I have always been suspicious to blogs, maybe also because I didn’t exactly know what they were, and we are always afraid of the unknown.
But navigating around the web I discovered this new world: the blogosphere. And I have also discovered that blogs are not all the same; some of them are very interesting, they look like a web site, but they are much more useful because you can communicate in order to ask questions, give your contribution to the topics and leave your opinion. But I have to admit that I still don’t understand why people write blogs even if they have nothing interesting to say. It seems like a matter of fashion, that’s why many young boys and girls write their blog like they were writing a diary...a public diary! But who on heart is going to read it?!?!
We were told to create and develop our own blog...what a shock! I really didn’t know what to do! So, I sat down and looked around the blogosphere to see what people usually say and writes in their blogs in order to find some sort of inspiration, and finally I realized what I wanted to put in mine.
Ok, now that my blog exists I have to write posts...and here comes the second shock! We have been studying english for a very long time, they made us write commercial and formal letters, sum up newspaper articles and translate the strangest articles about the cannon balls of the english army...but colloquial english is something different and I felt a little bit lost! Colloquial English is what people daily use in their life to communicate but for me it’s not that easy! I am sure that it is just a matter of training: we have to read, to write and to speak to get used to this register.
So, leaving all my suspicions behind, I face this course with excitement and curiosity, I’m sure that we’ll learn a lot about blogs and “technologies” and improve our english!

Hi everybody!
I'm Cristina, and
this is the Avenida de Gaudí in the Eixample quarter in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Right at the end of this street is where I have been living during my Erasmus. I have chosen this pic to represent me beacuse the 9 months I spent in Barcelona have been the best of my life. Once I saw a guidebook on Catalonia in which they where analysing the different kind of poeple living in Barcelona and to be an erasmus student was considered as a social role...kind of strange! Living in this city has been a great experience, but not only because I was away from Italy, without my parents, in one of the best European city for having fun.. well, that's important too! But there is something more, something deeper, something that only who as been an erasmus can understand. I have learned a lot in BCN, I studied, worked and had fun. I met a lot of persons with which I'm still in contact, of course :-). I discovered a magic city that goes beyond the same old tourist places, there are some corners and little streets that leave me brethless, there are museums and artistic buldings, there is the crowded beach that becomes suddenly sparkling with its parties and bonfires in summer, there is the colourful market of La Boqueria full of exotic products and the Rambla with its street artists catching the turists' attention.
So...that's me!!

Now, here there are two web-sites I often visit:
http://www.hostelworld.com/index.php?affiliate=hostelsworld.com
first of all, I tell you that I love traveling but I'm often hard up :-) and so, this is a very usefull site where you can find cheap solutions to sleep while travelling. You can choose the country and the city where you want to go to see the various hostels and B&B!
http://www.ferroviedellostato.it/
this is another web site that, against my will, I often have to use! The point is that I commute between Treviso, that is where I live, and Padova...That's a hard life!

Draft

This is a draft!