Del.icio.us Feedback

As I learned a few days ago, to have an account into Del.icio.us give me the possibility not only to store my bookmarks, but also to create a personal network with other users, in my case with my classmates. So, I went in and took a look to my peers' choices.

I found out that Francesca and I have the same interest in punctuation. Personally, I want to learn more about the right use of English punctuation because I usally tend to reproduce the Italian one while writing in English, and this is a bad habit! :)
She bookmarked the WikiHow page on punctuation; the content of the page is clearly organized and full of useful examples. There are a lot of tips and warnings to use some of the most tricky punctuation symbols correctly.
Feedback: clear, simple and very useful.

Among Valentina's choices, I found the bookmark on Internship Mistakes very fun. It's a website on the most common mistakes, bad behaviours and habits in the working field. Perhaps, it is not directly linked to our field of study, but it can come in useful while approaching any job field...thus, our next future!
Feedback: fun and job-oriented.

Take a look to them!

Bye
Giorgia

It's a snap(shot)!

I totally agree with Betta’s post on images: that of photo sources is a problematic issue. Finding a useful photo on the net is very easy, but discovering if it's possible to use it is not so immediate. More often than not photos on the net are covered by copyrights, so they cannot be copied and then pasted somewhere else, otherwise you’d break the law.
When you find an image that you want to use try to find out as much information as possible concerning the right to use it and always remember to put the link from which you took that image.

Another great tip that I’ve got from the teacher is to use Flickr, which is an image and video hosting website (online community for photo sharing) with plenty of photos. The good thing is that each photo is accompanied by some specific symbols explaining the way in which you are licensed to use that photo (i.e. if it is covered or not by copyright). These symbols are - technically speaking - the Creative Commons license: each symbol represents a type of license.

Well, as regards my blog I've put the link of each photo at the end of my posts, while if you click on the photos on my sidebar they take you directly where I found them.

Hope you'll find some useful news!

Bye
Giorgia

...some Del.icio.us links...

While I was surfing on the big waves of the net through both Technorati and Del.icio.us, I found some interesting websites and blogs that I'd like to tell you about. I decided to store them as bookmarks in my social bookmarking account.

I've pasted there the links and I've given a short description of them. Anyway, if anyone interested has an account on Del.icio.us can find my bookmarks using the search toolbar...just searching for the tag 'bloggingenglish_09'.

My bookmarks:

• Omniglot is a blog concerning a plenty of linguistic issues, such as translation, ESL, education and foreign languages learning. It is very interesting, its style is formal when talking about language games and fun stuff, and it becomes formal - but not too technical - when exposing specialized issues;
• Livemocha is an online international community, where people from all around the world sign in to take online language lessons and give feedback to the others. Anyone interested can choose among 20 different languages and take lessons at 4 different levels;
• BBC English page is a webpage inside the BBC website. This page is full of tips, links, games, crosswords, audio files and fun stuff for learning English while enjoying;
• GrammarGirl is a blog full of 'quick & dirty' tips and suggestions for better writing in English. It gives a lot of lessons through both written texts and podcasts. These lessons particularly focus on word choice, grammar and punctuation;
• Two Expats is a blog run by two young Italian guys living in London. Gioia and Matteo (their names) write about food, life style, music, friends and everything else about their lives in London. The blog has a catchy and funny style, it is obviously written in English with some Italian words here and there.

Hope you like them as I do!

Bye
Giorgia

To Bookmark or not to Bookmark…?

The more I go on learning new things about the web, the more I get scared :P
Well, we all know how huge is the net…scary!
We all know how huge is the blogosphere…twice as scary!
Now we can make them smaller…at our fingertips…SUPER-SCARY!

What about creating your own 'little' world wide web?

I’m talking about bookmarks, or better, Internet bookmarks.
They work just like real paper bookmarks we commonly use while reading books; therefore, we use them to find what we need easily.
When you frequently visit a website or blog you can save their URLs in order to be easily retrieved. You can do it on your pc or you can subscribe in a social bookmarking community, such as Del.icio.us and store your bookmarks in the personal page you’ve created. Being a social community you can share your bookmarks with the other people in the community. Also, you can create your network of users and see their bookmarks.
Social bookmarking communities are better than your pc, since you can visit your bookmarks from any computer, while if you save bookmarks only in your pc you can retrieve them just from it.
What's more, to make the search of bookmarks easier anyone usually put tags, that is to say, key words to label the URLs stored (i.e. if you type ‘language’ in the community toolbar, will appear all the shared bookmarks with the tag ‘language’).

I think it's a really good tool to keep track of our favourite websites, without searching for their URLs all the time, or without writing them down on a piece of paper that you may lose!

Well, I think it’s all…
Let's enjoy with this new tool!

Bye
Giorgia

(photo source)

Good Chances II

Hello all,

Hope you’re doing well!

Does anybody know the American serial Prison Break? Well, I started watching it in 2005, since the first time it was broadcast in Italy. Obviously, I watched the first two seasons in Italian, but a few weeks ago…(suspense like in a drama serial!)…straight from the U.S.A. …a friend of mine brought to me the complete third season and part of the fourth in the original language! I was so excited!
Unfortunately I’d had some troubles with the dvd player, so I watched the first episode only a few days ago.
I have to admit that I sometimes missed some words, especially those of the actors who spoke with strong (strange *--*) accents! However, after the initial panic I decided to watch it as I watch to any Italian movie or serial, that is to say, relaxed! (thank you, Sarah, for your advice!)
I missed some words…Ok, fine. I didn’t understand the meaning of some words…Ok, fine. Accents made the listening difficult…Ok, fine. However, in the end I tell you what they were talking about, I can tell you the plot of the episode because I was relaxed, and when I missed a word there was an image, or a sound, or a gesture that helped me to understand. I realized that listening (and understand!) doesn’t involve only ears!
BTW, watching movies and serials in English can be fun and useful at the same time…And you know that it’s difficult to join these things together :P

Talk to you soon!
Giorgia
(photo source)

FEEDing on New Technology

Shame on me…Unfortunately last Thursday I was absent from class ‘cos I was sick and I missed the important lesson on feeds and feed aggregators. By the way, although I’m unfamiliar with Internet technologies, I managed to follow the walkthroughs given by the teacher. I created my account in a feed aggregator (Bloglines) and started to subscribe to the feeds I was most interested in.
I think feed aggregators, and feeds as well, are amazing tools to keep track of the blogs or websites you like to visit. After the initial ‘technical’ effort, I realized that these tools give me a lot of interesting opportunities! I created my page on the aggregator, I subscribed to the feeds I was interested in and I made my playlists…ok, these things took time, but in the end it was worth it…Once I started to run my feeds’ page properly, it became very easy to find news, images, information, all kinds of things…and keep me updated on them!

Basically, a feed is a piece of information (in a particular format) used for providing subscribers with frequently updated content. Subscribing to a feed of any blog or website is like signing a subscription with magazines or newspapers…except for the fact that feeds are FREE!
Isn’t it amazing? I just go into my Bloglines’ page and I immediately see all the news about the feeds I subscribed to! This will totally cut down the time I usually need to search for information online, and will provide me only with the news I want…’cos I decide what to keep track of!

That’s all guys…
Let me know about your experience with feeds so far…

Bye
Giorgia
(photo source)

Good Chances I

As I've told on a previous post, I committed myself to do as much as possible to improve my English in any possible way…so…guess? I’m attending a seminar of English Contemporary Literature in which we watch movies in original language – English obviously – without subtitles! It’s definitely a good chance to prove and improve my listening skills. What’s more, these movies were produced in some of the old European colonies (i.e. Australia, Africa, Jamaica, to name a few) and therefore they are full of slang terms, which are interesting to learn as part of everyday, informal language.

Ok…just a little step forward, but a step indeed!

Bye
Giorgia