What a delicious discovery! I'm not playing with words, I just want to write something about social bookmarking and about Delicious. I had no idea what social bookmarking was, but this brand-new discovery opens up the door of a new world!
First of all, Delicious is a social bookmarking service. As far as bookmarking is concerned, it gives you the possibility to save and use bookmarks even if you are not visiting the Web from your computer. I must admit Delicious was a surprise, because I didn't even know this kind of tool existed...
But the best is yet to come, so let's talk about the adjective ' social'! It is not simply a matter of bookmarking! With Delicious you can share your bookmarks with other people! This means that Delicious can be considered a sort of library! Moreover, people sharing their bookmarks add to them specific labels - called tags - in order to identify the website, so everybody can easily find what they're looking for.
I visited some bookmarks my peers saved and I think this is a good way of sharing knowledge! Francesca, for example, saved a very useful website for ESL. It is an interesting website where you can find grammar or pronunciation lessons, but also jokes and proverbs. On the other hand, Sarah saved an 'academic' website, ESP-World, where you can read all that you need to know about English for Specific Purposes. It is a web-based journal and it is very useful if you want to see ESP from different points of view.
Enjoy Delicious, it's delicious!
PS: From now on in my posts I will use only personal images... I'm going to be original, so let's see what will happen...
Hello everybody!
How are you? This time I would like to talk about RSS and Feed Aggregators... What do you think about them?
You know, I was not interested in feeds... but during our last lesson I realized that they are quite useful if you want to stay updated on the blogs or websites you're interested in! It's like having someone always telling you that somebody added that post or updated that website...You don't need worry about losing important news or an interesting post because RSS does the job for you!
For this reason, I don't understand why sometimes it's impossible to find the little RSS icon... I mean, there are websites in which the RSS icon seems to be...hidden; it is very small or it is quite difficult to find... If feeds are so useful, why do we have to go RSS icon-hunting? If you want to know more about RSS you can obviously have a look at Wikipedia ;-D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
I also started to use Bloglines ( http://www.bloglines.com/ )! I think it is fantastic! It gives me the possibility to arrange all my feeds and to see new posts or news in one page without going to that website or that blog. Moreover, I can decide whether I'm interested in the new post or not simply by viewing the title, and I think this is very useful most of all for feeds of newspapers and news networks.
Now that I know both RSS and Feed Aggregators I guess I will use them to stay up to date with all the websites I'm interested in and not only for educational purpose. It is a useful and simple technology everybody can use... What are you waiting for?
Bye!
Elisa
This second semester is going to be very important for my language learning since it is my 'final occasion' to improve my English. For this reason, I have more than one learning target and I would like to improve different skills, for example listening, writing and spoken production.
I'm going to make a good use of the Internet, which I guess can be very useful most of all for listening activities. In fact, it is possible to watch TV programs or listen to the radio, and I think this is very useful if I want to get used to different types and styles of speech.
The Web can also be a source of information for writing tips. I was searching for a useful page about accuracy in writing and I found two interesting sites:
http://www.write-better-english.com/index.aspx
http://ezinearticles.com/?English-and-Foreign-Language-Compositions---5-Tips-for-Easier-Writing&id=1079901
Anyway, as far as writing is concern, it is also important to receive suggestions and corrections from my peers and from the Professor, so I will need some help in order to achieve my target.
Collaboration is also important for spoken production. I need to become more confident and fluent, so I'm going to make the most of the lessons and try to be accurate in speaking.
I made something of what I wrote in my learning target sheet but honestly I didn't devote so much time to my good intentions... Hope I will manage to do something more during the next weeks!
Bye!
Elisa
Hi!
This is my very first blog... I'm still a little bit... confused...I don't know exactly how to do this or that but be patient and you'll see, I'll become a perfect blogger! :-D
I think it will be a great opportunity to improve my computer skills and to start ' considering' another useful tool the Web is offering. I hope I will manage to maintain the blog after the end of the course, because I think it is perfect for a 'writaholic' like me!
I think this blog will help me becoming more accurate in writing, so if you want to comment on my posts, correct them, suggest how to improve the blog... feel free! It will also be the chance to start using an informal English or, better, to start using the right style for the right situation...
Hope you'll enjoy my journey through the English world!
Bye!
Elisa
