Blogging English

E-tivity 10

2009-05-20T09:17:00.003+02:00

YouTube

OK. After all this serious stuff this semester, for our last lesson let’s have some fun! This week we’re going to explore (no panic!) YouTube. YouTube is the largest online video sharing tool. It is probably the fastest-growing tool on Web 2.0. You might be asking yourselves, as you often have in this course, ‘cosa c’entra con l’inglese?’ Well, let’s see if you can figure out how it may be useful for your language learning, and have some fun along the way!

Sarah

Purpose: To start reflecting on the potential of YouTube for language learning.

Task:
1 – Understanding Music

2 - Music and Pronunciation

3 - Comedy and Culture on Youtube

4 – Reflect. What do you think are the consequences of this tool? Do you think it has been / can be useful for your English language learning?

Respond: Of course you're welcome to do some reflective blogging on the use of YouTube for your language learning ;-)

Timeline: None - you're free now!

Comedy on YouTube

2009-05-19T18:10:00.004+02:00

Comedy is another fun, but useful way to use YouTube. Understanding what is funny in other cultures is a way to help you better understand that culture.

Go watch this video on YouTube. As you watch, does it make you laugh? What does it tell you about Britains and British culture?

Feel free to comment with other videos you find entertaining.

I particularly enjoy these:
the Medieval Helpdesk
the I-rack

Music & Pronunciation

2009-05-19T15:10:00.003+02:00

Ok, and what about pronunciation? Sometimes singing a song can be much, much more difficult than understanding the lyrics. Below is the famous first hit by Amy McDonald entitled This is the Life. Besides the fact that I love the music ;-) it's really hard to sing the refrain! So, try reading through and pronouncing the words. then watch the video and sing along (a bassa voce if you're too embarassed!). Then let us know if you're up to the challenge :-)

Sarah

Oh the wind whistles down
The cold dark street tonight
And the people they were dancing to the music vibe
And the boys chase the girls with the curls in their hair
While the shy tormented youth sit way over there
And the songs they get louder
Each one better than before

And you’re singing the songs
Thinking this is the life
And you wake up in the morning and your head feels twice the size
Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna sleep tonight?

And you’re singing the songs
Thinking this is the life
And you wake up in the morning and your head feels twice the size
Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna sleep tonight?
Where you gonna sleep tonight?

So you’re heading down the road in your taxi for four
And you’re waiting outside Jimmy’s front door
But nobody’s in and nobody’s home ’til four
So you’re sitting there with nothing to do
Talking about Robert Riger and his motley crew
And where you’re gonna go and where you’re gonna sleep tonight

And you’re singing the songs
Thinking this is the life
And you wake up in the morning and your head feels twice the size
Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna sleep tonight?
Where you gonna sleep tonight?

Understanding and Interpreting Music

2009-05-19T15:08:00.009+02:00

I'm sure all of you are familiar with Coldplay's famous song Viva la Vida. But do you know what it's about? There has been a lot of discussion about the meaning behind this song. Coldplay has yet to give their own explanation, but the YouTube comment function on the video as well as various other forums have had a great debate about it. So...tasks always at hand...

Have you ever thought that music could also teach you about grammar? This song tells a story and as such makes use of the past simple, 'used to' and 'would'. Before listening to the song, see if you can guess what form of the verbs is used in the first two stanzas. Click here to see the lyrics and do the task.
Rhyme is also very helpful in figuring out what singers are saying. Do the second part of the same task by listening to Viva la Vida and trying to complete the lyrics. If you can't figure it out, search for the lyrics on the Net ;-)
Finally, go read what some Internet users have had to say about what the song means. Complete this (very easy) reading task by clicking here and then make a comment to this blog post with your own interpretation of the song.

Have fun!

Sarah

And the winner is...

2009-05-18T09:07:00.002+02:00

PHISING!

Only 14 students have voted so far, but here are the results and the reasons given for this choice. Well done Group 2!

Sarah

I think that the definition of 'phishing' is the best one because, though it has some grammar mistakes, it is not copied and is clear. Moreover, it is concise and easy to read.
This definition is concise and clear. It gives all the main information to understand what we're talking about and at the end it gives the possibility of knowing something more about it through some links.
I chose this definition because when I read it I immediately understood what phishing consits on. I didn't have to go back and read again some sentences as I sometimes had with the other definitions. This is probably because who wrote the it tried to use their own words. The structure of sencences is simple; this is important because these concepts are not always easy to undertand so a grammatically clear text can help the reader a lot.
I appreciated the links they put at the end because they included a concise explanation of what they are about.
I chose the definiton of 'phishing' (Group 2) because it is very clear, precise and concise at the same time. The girls from Group 2 managed to give enough information without being too long-winded. They put some useful links where to find further information and details about phishing. Also, they put a few links concerning the ways in which recognize and prevent the phishing trap.
It is the clearest definition among all those published in this blog, as it describes clearly and in detail what phishing is about. Students, who dealt with it, managed to refrase both information and definitions found on the Internet, without citing Wikipedia or other online sources. As a result, a good explanation of the term phishing. The Examples and the links provided advise other students about phishing and how it is possible to prevent damages, caused by hackers.
I chose the definition of 'phishing' because it's clear, exhaustive, but not too long. I also like that the students who wrote this definition used their own words without simply copying and pasting from the original.
I think the best definition is 'phishing' even if it contains some grammatical mistakes that could be avoided. However, this definition is clear, concise and easy to read. It goes straight to the point immediately, and gives essential information without being too technical.
I think that "Phishing" is the best definition of the list because the concept is explained clearly, concisely, and the paragraph is well-structure. It starts from a more general view, and then goes into details explaining the technique and the victims of this online fraud. Finally, it gives some simple cricks to avoid falling victims to phishing. Particularly I appreciated that the definition mentions the origins of the word too. Even if with some lexical imperfections, the whole concept is well paraphrased and analysed.

E-tivity 9

2009-05-13T09:29:00.005+02:00

Personal Learning Environments

Two buzz words in education, and indeed in the media today, are “lifelong learning” and “informal learning”. Both relate back to the fundamental idea that we do not stop learning when our formal education is over. On the contrary, studies (Cross, 200) have shown that only 20% of our learning actually takes place in institutional contexts whereas the remaining 80% takes place outside of the classroom in different periods of one’s life. I would argue that this is even more relevant in the case of language learning because if you do stop, you will forget, and if you don’t learn outside the classroom, you will make little improvement.

One possible solution to help support students in their lifelong informal learning process is what is called a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). A PLE is not a new tool (don’t worry!) but rather “a new approach to using technologies for learning” (Attwell, 200). There is still no universally agreed upon definition of exactly what a PLE is. Some do not limit the concept of PLE to technology, but offer a generic definition that could include anything we do or use to learn: “a combination of the formal and informal tools and processes we use to gather information, reflect on it and do something with it, which is essentially what we mean when we talk about learning” (Martin, 2007). Others, limit the definition to the toolset used to aggregate and connect what we learn: "A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a collection of free, distributed, web-based tools, usually centred around a blog, linked together and aggregating content using RSS feeds and simple HTML scripts" (Fitzgerald, 2006). The fact that there are very different definitions of the concept is “reflective of infancy of the concept, and the practical applications of the read/write web itself” (LTC wiki, 2007).

As you probably know from e-tivity 5, you've been in the process of building this toolset for the past two months, your blog being the hub for your PLE. However, a PLE is personal: "It [...] recognises the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations" [...] (Attwell, 2007). In other words, how do you learn and in what contexts? I don't know how much you've organized your own learning so far, but upon graduation (not too far away!) you will have to, of course only if you want to keep on learning.

Sarah

Purpose: To develop a mindmap of your personal learning environment.

Task:

1 – Reflect on what you do to learn languages. This will include both your formal instruction (e.g. classes, textbooks, professors, colleagues, etc.) as well as anything outside of it (e.g. travelling, listening to music, surfing the Net, etc.). Make a list of all of the different activities, sources of information and tools you use. Try to categorize them in some coherent manner that makes ense to you.

2 - Develop a mindmap of your PLE based on your reflection and categorization in the first step. Remember, it's your personal learning environment. Just to give you some ideas, here are a few links to some PLEs:
a first draft of mine
Michele's (the one who gave me the idea)
Ray Sim's
The mindmap of a student last year (Martina Garbinato)

3 - Produce a mindmap of your PLE either on paper or using the FreeMind software that you can download for free onto your computer. If you produce it on paper, please scan it or take a digital photograph of it so that you can upload it onto your blog. If you use FreeMind, please put a link to it on your blog.

4 – Write a blog post about your PLE, building it, what you think about it, etc., including a picture of it or link to it.

Respond:

I would like you to focus on developing your PLE so there’s no respond part this week. Just come prepared to talk about your PLE on Wednesday for our last lesson.

Timeline: Wednesday, May 20.

N.B. A personal learning environment is yours, there's no right or wrong, there's just the way you see it.

Vote for the best definition!

2009-05-13T09:28:00.000+02:00

hacker

2009-05-13T09:27:00.009+02:00

According to Wikipedia, a hacker is someone who makes substantial changes to both the hardware and software of computers. More precisely, hackers usually create or change software and hardware in order to improve them, make them work faster, add new features, or even make them do something completely new.

The word ‘hacker’ originally had a positive meaning but during the 90’s it acquired a negative connotation. In particular, 'hacker' started to be associated with the word ‘cracker’, which refers to a person who severely damages computers in different ways. It’s easy to understand why the two words have been wrongly mixed up: any good cracker needs to be an expert hacker first. This is the reason why people have been confusing the two words thus making a success of the word ‘hacker’ - with a negative meaning - in popular press.

References:

subliminal advertising

2009-05-13T09:27:00.007+02:00

"A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind's perception. These messages are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems. The term subliminal means 'beneath a limen'" (retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_message).

Subliminal messages influence our brain in a fraction of second and work on a subconscious level. As a matter of fact, they attract the brain's attention using invisible images and sounds hidden in anything you're reading or watching. The result of a study conducted by University College London (UCL) on subliminal messages shows that subliminal messages or images reach the retina and have "an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe". The wider implication for the study is that the "techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain" (retrieved from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/notaware).

trojan horse

2009-05-13T09:26:00.001+02:00

The Trojan horse, also known as trojan, in the context of computing and software, describes a class of computer threats (Malware) that appears to perform a desirable function but in fact performs undisclosed malicious functions that allow unauthorized access to the host machine, giving them the ability to save their files on the user's computer or even watch the user's screen and control the computer.

When a malicious program is disguised as something innocuous or desirable, users may be tempted to install it without knowing what it does. This is the technique of the Trojan horse.

For a malicious program to accomplish its goals, it must be able to do so without being shut down, or deleted by the user or administrator of the computer

Trojan Horses (not technically a virus) can be easily and unwittingly downloaded.
(source: WIkipedia)

Trojan in American English is also the name used for condoms or rubbers!!

(source: Professor Sara Guth)

Trojan Horses are not viruses but softwares which can enter in your computer disguised as a normal program or an application. It is very difficult to understand why people create viruses, malwares and Trojan. We guess they create them in order to make a challenge with operating systems!

There are also creators of Antivirus programs who hire hackers to create Trojans and viruses and send them throught the net, with the final aim to sell the antivirus!

email spoofing

2009-05-13T09:24:00.001+02:00

Email spoofing is a fraudulent email activity in which an email header is forged in order to make the message appear as originated from a source different from the actual one. It often affects the security of your site, and aims at getting sensitive information from the addresser, such as passwords. If you receive an email from a person you don't know, don't open it: it's probably a virus! In this case we suggest you to use a regularly updated antivirus software and don't trust any attachment containing vague and strange messages.

Feedback e-tivity 7

2009-05-11T11:34:00.002+02:00

Sorry, I forgot to upload this file. For those of you who weren't in class (and for those of you who were), you will find both my feedback on your peer feedback and my corrections. I've noticed that those who attend the Thursday lessons regularly are making fewere and fewer mistakes - nice to see you're actually learning something ;-)

Sarah

Facebook Beacon

2009-05-11T11:20:00.001+02:00

FACEBOOK BEACON

Beacon is a part of Facebook's advertisement system that sends data from external websites to facebook. Beacon is a software that:

- notifies activities or purchases made on facebook's partner websites;

- notifies activities or purchases made in facebook to partener websites;

- shares your account information with targeted advertisers;

- allows targeted websites to publish advertisemets in your facebook page.

It is possible to prevent these third-party sites from using your personal information by clearing al Facebook cookies from the browser after having explicitly logged-off.

We found out in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary that 'beacon' means lighthouse or also a light in the dark so it is a kind of ironic use of the word.

Useful links:

http://www.wikihow.com/Block-Facebook-Beacon
How to block Facebook Beacon! unfortunately IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to do it from an Italian Facebook profile.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/technology/30face.html?_r=1&ref=technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_(Facebook)

Online Identity Theft

2009-05-11T09:33:00.000+02:00

Online Identity Theft. A definition.

We talk about online identity theft when somebody steal somebody else's personal bits of information, such as name, address, phone numbers and banking and credit card information, taking them from the Internet tools. Thieves can use the information they access (i.e. email addresses, bank accounts and log-in details) to commit fraud in the name of the victim.

Internet criminals can obtain personal data in many ways, for example they can:

* Infect the victim's computer with softwares that secretly monitor the user's activity;

* Mess up the victim's computer with popups and viruses;

* Take over a victim's computer and use it to attack other people;

* Hit a victim with spam and scam emails;

* Hack into the victim's wireless network.

[http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1489]

Victims understand their personal data are being stolen because:

* Their computer becomes slow, it is infected by a virus and some files are corrupted or lost;

* They start to have problems with their bank accounts or credits cards;

* They or their friends receive strange emails.

[http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1141]

Online Identity Theft. Details.

Identity theft is a crime whereby criminals impersonate individuals, usually for financial gain. In today's society, you often need to reveal personal bits of information about yourself, such as social security numbers, a signature, name, address, phone numbers, and even banking and credit card information. If a thief is able to access this personal information, he or she can use it to commit fraud in your name. With this information the thief could do things such as apply for loans or new credit card accounts. They can then request a billing address change and run up your existing credit card without you knowledge. They can also use counterfeit checks and debit cards, or authorize electronic transfers in your name, to wipe out your your bank account (Beal, 2006).

Identity theft can also go beyond this type of a monetary impact. Thieves can use your information to obtain a driver's license or other documentation that would display their photo but your name and information. With these documents thieves could to obtain a job and file fraudulent income tax returns, apply for travel documents, file insurance claims, or even provide your name and mailing address to police and other authorities if involved in other criminal activities (Beal, 2006). Let's analyze online identity theft considering its categories, techniques, consequences and the way we can protect from it.

According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center and other sources, identity theft can be sub-divided into five categories (Wikipedia):

business/commercial identity theft (using another's business name to obtain credit);
criminal identity theft (posing as another when apprehended for a crime);
financial identity theft (using another's identity to obtain goods and services);
identity cloning (using another's information to assume his or her identity in daily life);
medical identity theft (using another's information to obtain medical care or drugs).

Identity theft may be used to facilitate crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism, and espionage. Identity theft may also be a means of blackmail. There are also cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including online credit card processing and medical insurance.

Some individuals may impersonate others for non-financial reasons - for instance, to receive praise or attention for the victim's achievements. This is sometimes referred to as identity theft in the media. (Wikipedia)

Online identity thieves usually use some techniques for obtaining the personal information they need. Indeed, a criminal needs to obtain personally identifiable information or documents about an individual in order to impersonate them (Wikipedia). They may do this by:

stealing mail or rummaging through rubbish containing personal information (dumpster diving);
retrieving information from redundant equipment, like computer servers that have been disposed of carelessly, e.g. at public dump sites, given away without proper sanitizing etc.;
researching about the victim in government registers, internet search engines, or public records search services;
stealing payment or identification cards, either by pickpocketing or surreptitiously by skimming through a compromised card reader;
remotely reading information from an RFID chip on a smart card, RFID-enabled credit card, or passport;
eavesdropping on public transactions to obtain personal data (shoulder surfing);
stealing personal information from computers and computer databases (Trojan horses, hacking and Zero day attacks);
data breach that results in the public (i.e. posted on the internet) or easily-obtainable (i.e. printed on a mailing label) display of sensitive information such as a Social Security number or credit card number;
advertising bogus job offers (either full-time or work from home based) to which the victims will reply with their full name, address, curriculum vitae, telephone numbers, and banking details;
infiltration of organizations that store large amounts of personal information;
impersonating a trusted company/institution/organization in an electronic communication to promote revealing of personal information (phishing);
obtaining castings of fingers for falsifying fingerprint identification;
browsing social network (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc) sites, online for personal details that have been posted by users;
changing your address thereby diverting billing statements to another location to either get current legitimate account info or to delay discovery of fraudulent accounts;
using false pretenses to trick a business (usually through a customer service representative) into disclosing customer information (pretexting). (Wikipedia)

Online identity theft may cause several consequences for the victim. Some of these consequences include:

• cost, time and hassle involved in resolving the issue;
• a bad credit rating and/or loans refused;
• final demands for products and services not purchased;
• wrongful accusation of criminal activities;
• difficulty getting a mortgage;
• unwarranted receipt of summons, court actions and county court
judgements;
• difficulty opening a utility account. (Nik, 2006a)

To protect our identity online we should follow this ten-point guide.

1. keep your wits about you at all times (operate with caution and appropriate scepticism);
2. question why a Web site is asking for information about you;
3. never give any online security details to anyone unless it is completely necessary;
4. Look after your password (change your passwords regularly, avoid standard passwords and do not use the same password for every secure site you are registered with);
5. never click on links in emails;
6. keep up-to-date (keep your security software, such as anti-virus, up-to-date at all times);

7. remove the spies (check all files on your computer at least once a week using anti-spyware and adware applications);
8. keep your connection secure;
9. if it seems too good to be true, it probably is (don’t open emails or go to sites that claim you have won a prize. If an email looks suspicious and is unsolicited delete it and don’t open it);
10. know where to go for help should you be a victim of online identity theft (there are wide range of organisations and groups that people can turn to for advice). (Nik, 2006b)

In conclusion, we should be very careful about the data we share on the Internet because there are many individuals ready to take advantage of our good faith. In spite of this, we shouldn't simply avoid using the Internet and in general the new technologies since "the Internet is quite a safe place to do business too, and, as long as precautions are taken, keying in credit card details on an encrypted webpage is probably safer than, say, calling personal numbers out over the phone to some unknown sales clerk [...]. However, ID theft has been the subject of different legal characterisations in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) countries, leading to different enforcement schemes. While the US and Canada consider it as a serious crime, EU member states classify it as fraud". (Acoca, 2008)

References

Acoca, B. (2008). Online identity theft. OECD Observer, 268. Retrieved May 6, 2009 from
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/2662 /Online_identity_theft.html

Beal, V. A.(2006). Defend yourself against identity theft. Retrieved May 6, 2009, from
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2006/identity_theft.asp

Nik. (2006a, February 14). What is ONLINE identity theft? Message posted to http://www.easypeasy.com/guides/article.php?article=168 retrieved May 6, 2009

Nik. (2006b, February 14). What can users do to protect their online identity? Message posted to http://www.easypeasy.com/guides/article.php?article=170 retrieved May 6, 2009

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2009, from the Wikipedia Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft

Phishing

2009-05-11T09:29:00.002+02:00

PHISHING is an online fraud that, unfortunately, is becoming more and more common. It consists in the attempting to obtain personal details and sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers or pins numbers and secret codes, in general. The technique of phishing is based on the mass sending of fake e-mails or spam messages with the intent of stealing the above mentioned details. The victims of phishing usually receives a bogus e-mail that ask them to connect to a fake Website almost identical to the legitimate organization's one (i.e. Visa, E-Bay and many others) and they insert their personal data. Easier done than said, the criminal organisation immediately steals their information to carry out illegal transactions.
Using phishing filters, don't clicking on suspicious links or attached files are some simple tricks to not fall victim to phishing.
The origin of the name phishing comes from the lingo of hackers who usually replace 'f' with 'ph'; moreover, the analogy with the verb "to fish" is clear: the aim of hackers perpetrating identity theft is to fish ingenuous people's passwords and user names in the big ocean of the Internet.

Click here to have a more complete and exhaustive definition of phishing
How to secure your computer : firewalls and antivirus and anti spyware softwares

Why phishing works

Phishing Scams in Plain English

Do Security Toolbars Actually Prevent Phishing Attacks?

Blogsecurify: Social Media Security

E-tivity 8

2009-05-05T13:42:00.007+02:00

Critical Awareness on the Web
So far in this course we have discussed issues such as evaluating the sources of information you find on the Web and being aware of advertising that appears on sites such as gmail. Although I am a strong advocate of the Web as a social networking tool, communication tool and research tool (especially for language learning!!!), I say this (as I said last Thursday) with a 'grain of salt'. As you all become more and more avid 'prosumers' of the Internet, it is important to maintain a critical awareness of what you are accessing on the Web. It is important to understand the social, economic, political and other consequences of particular technology design, use and regulation both for individuals and communities. A critical approach to new technologies and online practices means that learners and teachers become aware of the power relations involved, e.g. the purposes of oppression or liberation that new information and communication technologies can bring about.

Purpose: To develop our critical awareness when accessing the Web.

Task
1: Using all of the 'skills' we have learned so far, search for definitions of the following terms and be prepared to explain them to your peers:

Group 1: online identity theft
Group 2: phishing
Group 3: e-mail spoofing
Group 4: trojan horse (in online contexts obviously!)
Group 5: hacker
Group 6: Facebook Beacon
Group 7: subliminal advertising

2: Prepare a 'definition' of your term using relevant language and hyperlinks. Post this definition as a comment to this blog post. If you are all in class, you can do it in class. Otherwise, you will have to work on Google Docs or a peer's blog.

3: Read this article about privacy and Facebook (a tool I see most of you use avidly!): One Friend Facebook Hasn't Made yet: Privacy Rights

4: Write a reflective blogging post: Have you ever considered what happens to the information you put on the Internet? Do you think the solution is to avoid the Internet? If not, what can you do to protect yourself? We have spent a lot of time discussing how to attribute authorship to others who have posted their work on the Web, but what about you? Consider these issues and write a blogging post reflecting on a critical use of the Internet.

Respond: The usual :-)

Timeline: Sunday, May 10 (task), Wednesday, May 13 (respond).

P.S. Here's a pretty good site in Italian ;-)

Feedback and some clarifications

2009-04-30T14:51:00.002+02:00

Hello all,

Several of you were absent yesterday and/or today and others have written me some emails with questions about what you are supposed to do so I'm going to give some info here.

Feedback on E-tivity 6
What can I say but excellent :-) As you can see by the feedback from Group 01 and Group 05, you are definitely making improvements in your written work. From the contents I found in your blogs, I can see that you are making progress in your ability to critically think about referencing, sources, what should be done, how and when, etc. And from the comments you're making in (almost) all cases it appears you are learning to help each other out and are becoming a community of learners so keep up the good work ;-)

Clarifications
Today in class, rather than focus on your work from task 2 in E-tivity 6, I decided to focus on language. So,

if you weren't in class, please download the feedback above, reflect on it and sent a comment to this post if you've got questions about it;
if you were in class, the links above will show you the complete versions for Group 01 since in the photocopies I made for you in class, many of the corrections were missing;
if you would like me to check your work from task 2, E-tivity 6, send it to me in an email.

Working on E-tivity 7
I'm hoping that some of the problems we encountered in class, e.g. some of you not being able to edit the original .doc are resolved if you are working with Firefox, and not from one of our labs! If this is not the case and you're still having problems, let me know.

You are welcome to work on the task individually, but by Sunday I'd like there to be a complete corrected version of the original .doc shared. You can either highlight the pieces of text you edit and change so that your peers know you've done something to the original or check the history function to see if your peers have corrected something before you. The main aim of the task is not necessarily to get a corrected version (I've already got that!), but to get you focussed on the kinds of issues that come up when you are trying to reference and follow a specific style. I would encourage you to blog about this (frustrating) experience.

As always, write a comment here if you've got questions and doubts.

Sarah

Have a happy May Day :-)

E-tivity 7

2009-04-29T11:28:00.001+02:00

Uffa! Respecting referencing conventions (and learning about Google Docs)

Probably the most frustrating, time-consuming activity in finalizing your academic work is respecting the IPR that we discussed in E-tivity 6. Although it may often seem absurd to have to respect 'conventions' for referencing, like the MLA and APA styles that we've looked at, it is a key aspect of respectable academic and professional work, be it digital or paper. Nobody said it was fun, or interesting, but it's something we have to learn. Unfortunately, as much as we may be effective in using social bookmarking and other tools, we often find ourselves ready to complete our text without having correctly dealt with the references. The focus of this week's activity is how to finalize a text with correct references.

Purpose: To work on learning how to reference correctly.

Task: My colleague Francesca Helm and I are currently editing a book and writing chapters for a book on Telecollaboration 2.0. Writing a chapter for a book is much like writing a thesis or dissertation (BTW, it appears you, my students, were right that 'thesis' in America tends to refer to an MA while in Britain it refers to a PhD and for 'dissertation' vice versa). What often happens is that you write, write, write and then you have to 'fix up' the references. I am going to give you an early draft of the Introduction to the book and ask you in groups to check the references using the various online sources we have looked at in class. At the same time, we will learn to use Google Docs - a very useful site to have your documents always online and to share and edit them with peers. As always, if you are in class, you should be able to complete the task in class. Otherwise, complete it online.

1 – Go to Google Docs and make sure you can see the documents I have shared with you: "Hello all" and "E-tivity 7".

2 - I have divided the references part of the text into 8 sources for each group. First correct the referencing based on the APA style. It's useful to have multiple windows open to do this task. You may also have to do some searches on the Internet to find all of the correct information. To do this you can use google advanced search, google books and the other sources we've looked at together. It may not always be easy to find what you're looking for and that's part of the task!

3 - Once you've got the references sorted out, try and find them in the text and correct the in-text citations. Again, it may not be easy but...Use the APA style again.

4 - Write a reflective blogging post on how you think Google Docs could be useful for you and your studies.

N.B. For those of you who used the wiki last semester, I'd just like to point out some differences between a wiki and Google Docs. A wiki is a site with many different pages that anyone can edit. Google Docs is an invite-only service which you can use to privately share documents with peers and colleagues. On a wiki, only one user can edit a page at a time. On Google Docs, more than one user can edit the same page at a time. When you are editing a page at the same time, you should see who is editing it with you. When doing this, once you've entered text, just save and refresh and the new text will appear.

Respond: The usual :-) Overall, you did a great job responding to E-tivity 6!

Timeline: Sunday, May 3 (task), Wednesday, May 6 (respond).

P.S. Once you all have completed the task I will share our final version with you so that you can compare it with yours :-)

E-tivity 5: Feedback

2009-04-08T20:09:00.001+02:00

Hello all, especially those of you who were not in class on Thursday.
This week, I must admit, I was surprised that many of you wrote you found the e-tivity interesting. As I wrote in the feedback, judging by your expressions in the classroom you all looked utterly bored - so either you lie on your blogs or I can't trust your expressions ;-)

Anyway, I was pleased to see you are developing a critical approach to all of the information you find anywhere. In today's so-called 'information society' or 'knowledge society', critical awareness is very important. I also think you are slowly making improvements in accuracy. Some continue to make 'the same old mistakes', but, indeed, it does take time to get over bad habits so don't get discouraged.

As I said in class, although I only correct two groups' writing each week (due to time constraints), I am certain we all have a lot to learn from each other's mistakes. Indeed, it might be a worthwhile task to critically assess my feedback, make a list of the typical errors and go back and see if you can correct your own blog post!

Finally, last week, Francesca was really the only one who provided detailed linguistic feedback. Her comments were not always 100% correct, but providing linguistic feedback (as I said in class) serves two purposes:

for the person providing the feedback, it requires you to reflect on somebody else's written work;
for the person receiving the feedback, it requires you to decide whether or not you accept your peers' feedback or not.

In other words, we all learn from peer feedback. Therefore, I would encourage you all to make a greater effort in E-tivity 6 to provide one another with peer feedback.

Click here to see feedback for this e-tivity.

I hope you all enjoy your Easter break. I think we are making progress - we just have to keeep on working!

See you on the 29th!

Sarah

E-tivity 6

2009-04-08T09:30:00.005+02:00

Respecting IPR and Avoiding Plagiarism

Even before the Web made it possible to easily distribute contents all over the world, laws were developed to respect the rights of people who invent new tools and machines and who create artistic works. These laws can be brought together under the term 'Intellectual Property Rights' (IPR). Not respecting IPR can lead to legal actions.

In academic spheres, similarly, there are un-writtren codes of honor that oblige students and scholars to attribute words, ideas and opinions that are not their own to the original source. Not doing so is called plagiarism. Although not the case in Italy, in many other countries plagiarism can lead to failing a course or being expelled from a University.

Purpose: To understand what we can do to respect IPR and avoid plagiarism.

Task: (N.B. It may look like a lot, but you've got more than two weeks to do it ;-)

1 – On your blogs: What can you do to respect IPR and avoid plagiarism on your blogs? In groups, come up with a list. Search for any websites that discuss the issue and save them in delicious. Make a blog post about what you have learned or feel you still need to better understand.

2 – For your research: If you have not already done so, find an academic article on the Web that you can use for your thesis (see Task in Handout 1).

3 - Complete the Task on the last page of Handout 2.

4 - Start learning about different referencing styles. Explore these two sites that explain the APA and MLA styles that are most commonly used internationally. Based on the research article you found, do the following in both styles:

paraphrase a part of the article + in-text citation;
summarize a part of the article + in-text citation;
choose a direct quotation from the article + in-text citation;
write the bibliographic reference that comes at the end of a paper.

Bring your article to class on Thursday, April 30 and we will look at them together. (This is what students have to do in America so now you know how we suffer!)

5 - Write a reflective blogging post on how these two styles differ and how they differ from what you used for your BA thesis. Also comment on any difficulties you encountered.

Respond: Read the other the posts of the members of your group. Write a comment agreeing/disagreeing/reflecting on what your peers have said. Provide linguistic feedback if and when necessary (see Francesca's linguistic feedback to her peers in the .pdf file with corrections from E-tivity 5 - it provides some good examples).

Timeline: Wednesday, April 22 (task - should be 3 blog posts in all, points 1, 3 and 5 above), Wednesday, April 29 (respond to one of all of the 3 posts - your choice!).

E-tivity 4: Feedback

2009-04-01T16:39:00.002+02:00

SIMPLY… DELICIOUS!!!

Surprise, surprise!...Bookmarking is so delicious...

What a del.icio.us discovery!

Social Bookmarking is DELICIOUS!

"Delicious-ly" bookmarking!

Your blog post titles say it all :-) Undoubtedly the name of the tool lends itself to creative title-making ;-)

You all have clearly explored delicious and discovered many of the ways in which it can truly be a useful tool. From reading your posts, what’s most important is you’ve understood the ‘social’ aspect. It’s also good that you’re finding new ways the Web can help you improve your English. Speaking of which…as language students you are, obviously, still making minor errors in your written expression. You should feel comforted by the fact that you make similar mistakes ;-) It’s also always good to make a list that can become sort of a checklist of things to go through before posting a post. One that might come out of these posts is:

- Relative clauses
- Sentence order and structure
- Paragraphing and paragraph length
- Punctuation (especially with subordinators and conjuncts!)

All things considered, though, you all express yourselves clearly and use appropriate words. Well done.

Regarding comments, those I read were supportive and friendly and clearly indicated you are reading one another. The next step is to make a second comment in which you provide each other with linguistic feedback. Good luck!

Sarah

P.S. Three people put the –s on adjectives!!!

Click here to download my feedback to groups 3 and 7.

For some tips on how to give effective feedback, click here and here.

Criteria we came up with in class

2009-04-01T10:45:00.003+02:00

Collective Intelligence

Why was the information provided?
if you are an academic or researcher
online journals pay-access only
open access online journals

Author
who is the author?
is it an author who is known in the community?
if not, could he/she be considered authoritative? (e.g. a dissertation)
shouldn't be written by a no-one
part of a network?

The website
what's the domain? (if it's on the Web)
do cross-referencing - same info or opinions in other websites? cited in other places?
graphics - layout, e.g. a lot of emoticons? a lot advertisements?
is the "knowledge" protected by some kind of license, material copyrighted? or creative commons?
how many times has the site been visited?
who is responsible for the website and the content?

The contents
is the contente reliable? external references? useful links? use of paragraphs, etc?
when was the information published? is there something more recent or is this still the authority?

words we've excluded from our vocabulary: DON'T HAVE TO BE MUSTN'T
alternatives, SHOULDN'T, ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO, CAN'T, IMPERATIVE

E-tivity 5

2009-03-31T13:19:00.007+02:00

Evaluating Online Sources

Read this comment by a teacher to a blog post by Lawrence Lessig (mind you, blog, not website) responding to Andrew Keen's book "The Cult of the Amateur", which criticizes user-produced content on Web 2.0, at the cost of what he calls 'expert knowledge'. Lawerence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and the founder of Creative Commons.

"I find the most interesting aspect of these phenomena (be it Wikipedia or blogging or YouTube or Amazon recommendations) is the way that they force [u]s to recognize that the established mechanisms and institutions of information and culture (be it Encyclopedia Brittannica or The Wall Street Journal or NBC or Consumer Reports) are themselves socially produced, historically contingent, institutionally bound, and systematically imperfect systems. They too have an implicit, built-in philosophy of where knowledge and culture come from and how one knows to trust or appreciate it, they too are structurally better at getting at some things and worse at others, they too can be mishandled or exploited. This is not to say that we should adopt a relativist position, that any way of producing information is okey-dokey. We can have a discussion about specific kinds of resources are best served by particular arrangements, some of which may benefit from wider, amateur participation, others benefiting from more bound, trained communities. But it obligates us to give up this kind of comfortable certainty we enjoy about those traditional forms, the social authority they have built up over time that cloaks their imperfections. And just as much as the Internet and its applications may be highlighting this, the traditional institutions of knowledge are doing a fine job revealing their own weaknesses all by themselves, from the failure of the political press to challenge the run up to war in Iraq, to the diminishing cultural relevance of major label music, to the crushing consolidation of corporate radio , etc etc."

All this to say, that what we consider when evaluating online sources of information is just as valid when we are evaluating print or 'traditional' sources of information.

Purpose: To reflect on and discuss what criteria you do use and can be used to evaluate the reliability and authority of information you find on the Internet (or anywhere!).

Task:

1 – Many of you will be writing your theses soon and there’s no doubt that you will be using the Internet as part of your research. Whenever you do research, be it in the library or online, you have to judge the information you come across. I’d like you to think about what criteria you use to make these judegments. Make some notes about this either on paper or in your blog. If you do this in class, make a list in groups of 3-4.

2 – Go take a look at suggestions other universities make for students. Go to the websites listed below and see what they say. Do you agree? Disagree? Have they pointed things out you had not thought of? Feel free, of course, to do your own searches too ;-)

Tips from the University of Essex

Tips from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Tips from San Diego State University

3 – Make a checklist that you can always keep handy when searching for information.

4 - Based on your checklist, let's go explore some MORE tools you can use to 'filter' information on the Internet. Search for the phrase "personal learning environment" in the following websites. Find sources that you think are valuable and save them on delicious (in class, again, do this in groups).

Google Blogs - Similar to Technorati, Google will search for your tags in blogs on the Internet
Google Books - Various publishers have published parts of books on the Web. Although you cannot download or copy the information, if a book is not in the library and you're thinking of buying it, or if you want to check it out before you go to the library, you can use this tool to read bits and pieces of a book.
Google Scholar - Going one step further, with this tool, Google will search for your tags in online academic texts, be they .pdf files, .docs, abstracts or citations. You may find paid-access only sites, but you may also be surprised by how many free online texts are available on the Web.

DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals

And the good old library catalogue

And if that wasn't enough ;-) What about wikis? In his book, "The Cult of the Amateur" Andrew Keen' states "Since Wikipedia's birth, more than fifteen thousand contributors have created nearly three million entries in over a hundred different languages—none of them edited or vetted for accuracy (p4)." Well, not all wikis are Wikipedia. See what you think of these:

The E-language wiki

The LTC wiki at the University of Manitoba

5 - Write a reflective blogging post on what, if anything ;-) , you have learned in this task.

Respond: Read the other the posts of the members of your group. Write a comment agreeing/disagreeing/reflecting on what your peers have said.

Timeline: Sunday, April 5 (task), Wednesday, April 8 (respond).

Dashes and so

2009-03-26T14:52:00.002+01:00

During class today, a bit of confusion came up regarding how to use dashes and the word 'so'.

Dash
I never use them, but this doesn't mean they aren't used. This site confirms what you said Scott told you about dashes giving importance to words. This one says something a bit different. This one looks a lot better and I like the WikiHow site :-)

So
No definitive conclusions yet, but besides being an informal version of 'therefore', 'so' is a coordinating conjunction, meaning it connects two words, phrases or clauses, whereas 'therefore' is an adverb and links independent clauses.
Therefore ;-) 'therefore' is preceded by a semi-colon and followed by a comma and 'so' should not have any punctuation even though you will often find it preceded by a comma.

Sarah

Feedback e-tivity 3

2009-03-26T14:45:00.003+01:00

Hello all,

This week I corrected the blog posts of those who posted e-tivity 3 by the deadline. We discussed them a bit in class, but you can see a .pdf with the corrections on the wiki. I would suggest you ALL read ALL of my corrections as I feel we all have something to learn from each other's mistakes.

You did a good job of eliminating what we said we'd eliminate, e.g. present perfect, also, such, must, etc., and today in class we decided to eliminate 'don't have to' as well. I think these posts are an improvement on the first ones and I'm sure as you learn to blog and simplify, they'll get even better.

Next week I will be correcting the the posts and comments of two of the groups :-)

Sarah

Speaking of RSS...

2009-03-26T14:43:00.001+01:00

It appears UniPD is not the only institutional website that does not use RSS. The Open University - Britain's first and best distance learning university - doesn't either! Go here to read about why some think it should.

E-tivity 4

2009-03-23T16:31:00.003+01:00

Social Bookmarking

So far in this course we have seen how blogs can be a useful way of 'filtering' the overload of information on the Internet and how you can use feeds to help manage that information. This week we are going to explore another tool that can help you effectively use the Internet for your learning and searches: social bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is a way to store and share your favorite websites and blogs online instead of on your computer, which is good for those of us who use different computers. “Bookmarking” because it’s a way to always find your way back to that great website you found. “Social” because not only are you sharing your bookmarks with a community of people, but they are sharing theirs with you; this gives you access to searches other people, with your same interests, have already done to find great websites. We’re going to use social bookmarking to build up a repository of useful websites for all of you in your English language learning, tapping into each other’s resources.

Sarah

Purpose: To start social bookmarking and in doing so, search the Web and del.icio.us for websites of interest to us all (read, read, read), evaluate them and summarize them (write).

Task: (If you were in class, presumably you've done all the tasks except maybe finding all 5 bookmarks).
1 – Watch this explanatory video by CommonCraft- I'm subscribed to their feed so you may want to too :-)
2 - Explore. Go to del.icio.us and explore. Click around to get an idea of what the website is all about.

3 – Log in. You will have to register, as usual, to use del.icio.us (obviously it’s free!), though I'm confident you're experts by now! Click on “register” and proceed using your bloggingenglish username. The second step involves installing easy-to-use buttons on your computer; you can do this on your computer at home if you like, but we will not be using them in the language lab. In any case, then go to the top of the page and on the left-hand side you should see "your favorites". Click there and you should see a pop-up window telling you that a verification email has been sent to your email address. Go check your email and click on the link del.icio.us sends you. Once you've done that, you're ready to go!

4 – Search for websites and blogs that might interest you and your peers by typing key words in the tag box. They should be words that involve language learning or other subject matters you study and, this time, not personal interests. For example, in this course you might be interested in English, learning, listening, writing, blogging, etc. If you come up with too many bookmarks, narrow your search by adding more words. Scan the bookmarks that come up and go and visit the ones that interest you. Choose 5 that you think may be of interest to you or your classmates. (If you found blogs of interest to everyone, feel free to use those - or even see if you find them on del.icio.us!)
For curiosity's sake, look for the tags bloggingenglish1, bloggingenglish2 and bloggingenglish to see what your peers came up with last semester - some very interesting sites!

5 – Post your new bookmarks (You can watch this tutorial I made last year about posting on del.icio.us). At the top of the page, click on “post”. Then you will see a frame like the one here.

url: (self-explanatory)
description: this is like the title, what other people will see. It can be the title of the website or a summary-title that you make up.
notes: Make a 2-5 short sentences summing up the website in such a way as to attract attention. Do NOT cut and paste information from the site; use your own words.
tags: These are words that describe the site. Among the other tags you choose, always write bloggingenglish_09. That way we’ll always have a way to find our course bookmarks.

6 - Make a network for the members in your group. First send a comment to your group mails on the course blog (see blogroll) where you sent the comment with the url of your personal blog indicating the username you have on del.icio.us. Then go back on to del.icio.us and click on "your network" on the top left-hand menu and then using the "add" box on the right -hand long menu to add the members of your group (and me if you want) to your network.

7- In preparation for next week's lesson, please read this article from the NY Times. I have also added it to delicious with the bookmarks "bloggingenglish_09" and "ipr", which stands for "intellectual property rights". Feel free to comment on this article too ;-)

P.S. I just found these two articles on the NY Times and Repubblica - same story, news a bit different. Check it out.

Respond: Choose 1 bookmark from each of your classmate’s 5 bookmarks based on the description in “notes” (find them by using the network you created) and go visit it. Write a post in your personal blog about your impressions of social bookmarking and your classmates’ choices.

Timeline: Sunday, March 29 (task), Wednesday, April 1 (respond).

N.B. As always, write comments to this post if you've got problems or difficulties.

A little slap on the hand

2009-03-23T15:12:00.003+01:00

Hello all,

I've been monitoring your blogging (through Bloglines!) and as of today, 10 out of 24 students have not completed the task part of the e-tivity. Only 1 group (Group 3) has the posts on RSS feeds from all its members and can, therefore, move on the the respond part of the e-tivity. So before things get out of control, let me establish a few rules.

1 - If you decide to attend this course, you have to do the e-tivities. Blogging is about creating communities and communities are only created if members participate. Like some of my past students, you may eventually create your own community, but when you first start blogging it's important to have readers and that's what you all are for one another.

2 - Complete the task part by the deadline so you will have time to do the respond part as well. If you have difficulties, write a comment to your peers' blogs letting them know.

3 - Write something interesting, and write well ;-)

If you feel you are not up to this, let me know. I don't think I'm asking too much of you, but, again, let me know if you think I am.

See you on Wednesday for another technological adventure :-)

Sarah

E-tivity 3

2009-03-18T19:05:00.004+01:00

By now, if you were in class, you should have your aggregator up and running. The next step is to build up resources on your aggregator. Your feed aggregator can be a very useful resource and help you learn to use the Web in a more time-effective and efficient way.

Purpose: To start using your feed aggregator, to start building up resources on your aggregator and to reflect on what you're doing.

Task: Using the bloglines account you created in class:

1- subscribe to all of the personal blogs in your group (if you haven't already done so);

2 - search for other useful sites that have feeds, e.g. online newspapers in English, and subscribe to them;

3 - create playlists for your group (if you haven't already done so) and for your other resources, e.g. online newspapers, blogs, etc..

4 - write a post on your personal blog giving your impressions of your new experience with feeds and feed aggregators.

Respond: Go to each other’s blogs (using bloglines!) and read your peers’ reactions. Comment on the blogs of the peers in your group. Read carefully: this time I would like you to provide linguistic feedback as well.

Timeline: Sunday, March 22 (task), Wednesday, March 25 (respond).

As alwyas, if you've got questions or doubts, don't hesitate to write a comment to this post with it!

N.B. When working on any computer that is not your personal computer, always remember to LOG OUT BEFORE YOU CLOSE BLOGLINES.

In class on Thursday, March 19

2009-03-18T19:04:00.006+01:00

Feeds

Imagine that there are several websites and blogs you want to keep track of because they are regularly updated with interesting information (e.g. your peers' blogs). Traditional approaches include bookmarking each site on your pc, linking them to your blog, or writing down the urls on a piece of paper and then visiting them on a regular basis to see if there are updates. They may or may not offer new items each time you check.
Wouldn't it be much better to use just one technology that would visit all of these websites for you, collect any new information posted there each day, and then aggregate that information for you in one easy-to-read spot? That is the gist of what a news aggregator does. "While the technology that makes this all work is on the complex side, the actual implementation and use of RSS and aggregators is actually very easy” (Bell).
Have you ever noticed that on many of the websites you visit (even on your blog) there’s a little orange box or a few little orange boxes under the title ‘Syndication’ like these:

If you have, have you ever wondered what they mean? Let’s start with RSS. This acronym stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. What is ‘Syndication’ then? News agencies produce a flow of news organized based on a common structure: a title, the body of news, the date and hour and, sometimes, the author and subject. The publications that subscribe to a given agency can publish the news they receive from the agency in any format they chose. RSS, and the other formats you see in the image (XML RSD and XML ATOM) are the Web incarnation of the same concept. In other words, websites where information is updated on a regular basis, e.g. newspapers and blogs, offer users the possibility to subscribe to the site. RSS and XML are languages used to transfer the information on a site in a standard format, often free of images and other multi-media content and formatting. Each time the site is updated with new information, subscribers receive the update.

How then does one subscribe to an RSS feed? To do this you need an aggregator. Some aggregators can be installed on your computer (e.g. Sage by Mozilla) while others are websites you can access via any web browser (e.g. Bloglines) – most are free. You download or register for an aggregator and then you can subscribe to various RSS feeds. When new information is added to the sites you’ve subscribed to, depending on the options you’ve chosen or that are offered by the website with the feed, you will receive a summary or complete text version of the new information.

This week we’re going to play around with feeds.

Sarah

Task:
1 – Create an account in Bloglines. (If you weren't in the lab and would like to be guided through the process, check out the video at the bottom of the message.)

2 – Subscribe. Open two windows. In one open your bloglines account, in the other our course blog. First subscribe to all of your peers’ personal blogs (use the other bloglines tutorial if you weren’t in class). You have to subscribe to the blogs of peers in your group and are welcome to subscribe to all the other ones as well. Then explore the Web, e.g. the blogs you found in e-tivity 2, and see if there are other websites you may want to subscribe to, e.g. online newspapers.

3 – Create playlists. Playlists are another nice way to organize information and a good way for you to organize work in this course. Make a playlist for the blogs in your group. You can also make playlists for the other groups as well as other categories such as newspapers, Listening online, etc..

Bell, Steven. Using An "Aggregator" To Capture RSS Feeds: A Technology For Keeping Up-To-Date. Retrieved November 17, 2006 from http://staff.philau.edu/BellS/rss.htm

Registering for Bloglines Tutorial
Subscribing to Feeds Tutorial

Thursday, March 19

2009-03-18T10:50:00.003+01:00

I have been able to find a lab for us to use tomorrow, Thursday March 19th as there's an important task I would like to do with you using the computers.

So, we will meet in the new lab at the Centro Linguistico. It is in via Martiri della Libertà, numero 2. I've never been there, but the secretary tells me "in pratica un po' più avanti rispetto a dov'è il CLA, dove ci sono le scale esterne di entrata; una volta entrata, il laboratorio è subito sulla sinistra dopo la guardiola."

The technician can't arrive until 8.45 so for the first group I'll meet you outside at 8.40.

Hope you all see this message - pass the word around.

Thanks and see you tomorrow.

Sarah

CVs

2009-03-16T15:18:00.002+01:00

Hello all,

For what it's worth, you may want some tips on how to write a good CV or Resumé.
1 - open google
2 - advanced search
3 - write something like "good CV" or "good resume"
4 - choose the domain: .ac.uk for "CV" and .edu for "resume"
You should find some good tips.
Maybe add some links to your blog or as a comment to this message if you find a good source.

Sarah

No class on Wednesday

2009-03-16T11:18:00.002+01:00

A strike for the entire education sector has been called for March 18, 2009. Together with many other colleagues, I feel the reform proposed by the present government will only harm this sector. Clearly reforms need to be made, but not this way. Therefore, I will be participating in the strike on Wednesday and will not be teaching.

I am currently looking for a lab for us on Thursday because there's something I really wanted to do with everyone this week. Please check this blog before Thursday to see if I have found a room and, if I have, we will be meeting elsewhere.

Sarah

Read more on the Italian newspapers:
Repubblica

E-tivity 1 : Feedback

2009-03-11T09:55:00.005+01:00

After each e-tivity, I will try and provide you with some feedback on my observations of how you managed to do the task. Sometimes, like this week, I will focus on content, other times on language. So this week it's...

Feedback in your words ;-)

Below I’ve categorized your reactions to e-tivity 1 by using your own words. Let’s see.

You felt overwhelmed

It took me some (quite a lot, I must say) time to get used to the logic of blogs, posts and whatever.
Only after surfing the web for an hour I found out an interesting blog about movies.
I started to search for a blog from Technorati and I must say that I was disoriented: the blogosphere is so huge that I had difficulties finding what I was looking for.
I had never realized how huge is the blogsphere.
This has been my very first experience with blogs and I must admit that I have found myself a little bit confused. The reason is that there is a huge amount of blogs but only some of them are interesting while some others aren’t at all.
I've been surfing the web for two or three hours I guess

Some showed a bit of enthusiasm

So, what can I say about my first experience in the blogosphere? To be honest, it was confusing. The fact is, I wasn't able to focus on one topic, there are so many blogs that I was curious to read a little bit of everything!
I wasn’t familiar with blogs…I’d never written a post before our last lesson! I spent some time surfing on the Internet and I found many interesting things!
I think that using the proper tools (e.g. Technorati) one can find a lot of interesting and authoritative blogs. Many blogs offer technical and reliable informanion through a plain and readable style, which is useful especially for those who are not practised in a certain matter, but want to know about it!

And you made many insightful observations about the language used in blogs?

Blogs are mainly an informal way of communication, similar to oral conversation. People blogging are not concerned with language accuracy, but with communicative purposes.
besides being a little weird, I found that her language is very fresh and spontaneous, as well as a blog language should be, since it is created in the very moment it is spoken/written/thought.
It is written in a very spontaneous and witty way. There is a huge load of idiomatic expressions and everyday ways of saying. Sometimes the language tends to be a little foul-mouthed, but that's the style of the writer. The comments are mainly written by the fans and they are written in a very spoken style with the add of smileys and other internet stuffs!
The blogs I looked at were written in a plain style, using contracted forms, abbreviations (such as lol, afaik, asap, cul8r etc...) and emoticons. The latter are very important: since netspeak lacks facial expressions and gesture, smileys can forestall a gross misperception of a speaker’s intent. Generally speaking, I can say that blogs are written in an informal style and the writers do not care about accuracy (for example, most of the people write the first personal pronoun without the capital letter).
the blog has both a formal and informal language style, depending on the purpose of the message: quoting, comments, reviews.
If you are also interested on reading a blog written in a formal style, here a good example of writing, that aims to distinguish itself and also its readers and writers.
The linguistic style of the posts is quite formal, even if the use of the first person makes you feel closer to the writer. It is like reading someone else's diary.
The comments are however much more informal and colloquial.

You noticed how the language used tells us something about the community of bloggers surrounding a given blog

The language used is very informal and simple. The bloggers are all 'on the same level', they are young people who share an interest, and this permits them to be completely relaxed and feel free to write whatever they want. Some comments even contain insults and bad words to express disagreement on someone else's post, but I think it's fine: in informal contexts we all talk like that, so why shouldn't we be ourselves on the blogsphere?
Unlike the majority of blog that are based exclusively on simple language, this site also includes technical words, and goes into details when for example they talk about photos and cameras. This helps us to understand that the all the bloggers share the same interest and knowledge of the topic.
I think that the author of this blog is an artist and knows very well the topic he is writing about. The bloggers who make comments are less qualified, but equally involved in the topic. They use the links to advert to their own blog; while the author uses the links to give more information or post the blogs of his friends.

And, finally, you found some common characteristics of blogs

Blogs are written in a simple way for they want to attract as much readers as possible but also because they reflect the oral interaction between persons.
The links I found in the posts have the aim to develop some themes that the reader couldn’t know and in this way he could deepen them. The link are related both to other web-sites and to other posts of the blog.
you can find extended links at the end of each post, with the aim of getting the possibility to find out more information about the topic discussed in the post. But you can also find links in the form of underlined and clickable words (they are links to external web pages).
I like this blog because I think it is well organized, it is full of external links to other blogs or websites and it is possible to watch movie trailers directly from the posts. Moreover, every post has some tags so that you can easily find what you're looking for. It is also possible to subscribe to RSS or to receive updates by Email.

You may be happy to know that you're not the only ones who felt this way. Go see what your peers last year wrote. Click here.

Blogging Groups

2009-03-09T16:41:00.005+01:00

Hello all,

From today on, many of your tasks will be done in groups. I have divided you into groups according to your Thursday lessons, but besides that randomly. Tomorrow in class you will have to come up with a name for your group so start thinking about it :-)

Sarah

Group 1
Crema Arianna
Crepaldi Martina
Deon chiara
Grotto Ilaria

Group 2
Kosic Zvjezdana (Stella)
Maniero Francesca
Martellozzo Francesca
Migliorini Elena

Group 3
Persegona Cristina
Verotti Michela
Zambolin Elisabetta
Bertelli Anna

Group 4
di Gioia Serena
Bianchi Chiarani Mario
Bonomi Federica

Group 5
Bortolamedi Valentina
Bullo Francesca
Campagnolo Giorgia
Zorzi Serena

Group 6
Faggian Anna
Colombo Sarah
De Polo Elisa
Faggioni Maria Francesca

Group 7
Marabiso Sara
Simioni Anna
Tolfo Valentina

E-tivity 2

2009-03-09T11:07:00.003+01:00

Blogging

Hopefully you all were in class and have got your blogs up and running. The biggest challenge with blogging, all the literature shows, is trying to update your blog on a regular basis. During this course that won't be a problem as you'll have weekly tasks to do that I give you ;-) Your blog is going to be your personal learning environment. One aspect of this, at least during the course, is going to be what I call 'reflective blogging' which entails reflecting on your learning process through blogging.

Last week, during the Thursday lessons, you all wrote down your "next language learning targets" that I then photocopied and will give back to you. This week, we're going to explore how you can use your blog to achieve the learning target.

Sarah

Purpose: To start reflective blogging.

Task: Write a reflective blogging post that includes:

1 - a concise summary of it in a blog post, including how much time you will devote to achieving it;

2 - if anything you've found so far on the blogosphere might help you achieve that target, if so, what, if not, what do you need to look for;

3 - an honest account of whether or not, in the past week, you have done anything you wrote on your learning target sheet!

N.B. Make sure you sign your post and be concise ;-)

Respond: I have placed you in groups (see next post) that you will 'blog with' over the next 8 weeks. Go to the blogs of the other members of your group. Read their posts, take a look at their blogs. Leave a comment on one or more of the posts in each member's blog.

Timeline: Sunday, March 15 (task), Wednesday, March 18(respond).

Class Activity March 11

2009-03-09T10:35:00.007+01:00

Developing your own blog

Now that you’ve started exploring the blogosphere and seen other people’s blogs, it’s time for you to become a blogger yourself and develop your own blog. In their comments on blogs, two students last year made the following comments: Francesca said “it is like a work of art: it expresses your personality" and Tania commented, bloggers "want to express their personal opinions and catch other readers' attention." This week it’s time for you to express your creativity and personality, to find your own style, and to figure out how to catch other bloggers' attention.

Task: Log on to blogger and rather than clicking on our course blog, develop your own. You have the freedom to do whatever you want. Choose a style, change the colors, add some links and some images or pictures, etc. Please include: 1 - a welcome message, 2 – a post in which you critically reflect on your first experience with blogging (e.g. what are your impressions) and if and in what way you think it can influence your language learning (e.g. reading colloquial English).

Write a comment back to this post in which you share the url of your new blog with the rest of us.

A student from last year's course wanted me to share this email with you that she wrote to me last week: "you know, I'm still blogging, even if without your tasks it is a bit difficult to write every week. The american Blogger friend camu i Italy once more, and that was an occasion to meet another blogger, a professor at the University in Genova. Tell your students that there are many interesting person you can meet with this kind of tools!"

Let's get to work!

Sarah

N.B. If you weren't in class, then you need to do this on your own. If you're having difficulties, check out this tutorial on YouTube. If you type in the words "blogger tutorial" in YouTube you can find other tutorials on how to do various things with blogger.

E-tivity 1

2009-03-04T09:45:00.007+01:00

Exploring the blogoshpere

According to wikipedia the blogoshpere is "...the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture."

Sarah

Purpose: To search the Internet for blogs that interest you in order to become aware of how large and varied the blogosphere is. To start analyzing some of the characteristics of blogs as a genre.

Task: Search for blogs that might interest you by going to Technorati and searching for a word, e.g. “rugby”, in blog posts, in tags or in their blog directory (please choose blogs in English). Read some of the blogs. Choose one that interests you. Come back to our course blog and write a comment to this post about one of the blogs you have found. Give us the url and explain what you like about the blog and why you would recommend others visiting it. For example, I put in the tags 'language learning' and came up with a blog called the Linguist, which I found interesting.
Start considering how blogs are written and how links are used in blogs. What kind of language is used (formal, informal, vulgar, elegant)? How do bloggers make use of links in their posts? At the end of your post, write a few sentences about your initial observations of the styles used on the blogoshpere.

N.B. Make sure you sign your post and be concise ;-)

Respond: Read the comments of the other students and go visit at least one of the blogs they have suggested. Be prepared to discuss this in class.

Timeline: Sunday, March 8 (task), Wednesday, March 11(respond).

(photo source)

As always, if you have any doubts or questions, write a comment to this post and I will answer them for all to see. Therefore, check and see if others have written a comment with the same question before writing yours. Blogging is first and foremost about reading, not writing!

Class Activity March 04

2009-03-04T09:45:00.006+01:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar with blogging, this task is aimed at familiarizing you with how it all works. For those of you who are experts, this task is for us to get to know you better ;-)

Task
Post a comment to this post that includes the following information:

your name, matricula number and degree program
a sentence or two about you
what aspect of language and communication you feel you still need to work on quite a bit

Sarah

start of lessons postponed

2009-02-25T09:12:00.003+01:00

Dear all,

My apologies, but for various reasons I cannot start the semester today, Wednesday February 25 or tomorrow Thursday February 26. Therefore, we will start next week on Wednesday March 4.

Sarah

cercasi ragazza alla pari - Germania

2009-02-18T10:08:00.003+01:00

Ogg: annuncio cercasi ragazza alla pari

Famiglia italo-tedesca residente in Germania (Münster) con tre bambine di 6, 3
e 1 anni cerca ragazza o signora alla pari madrelingua italiana, non fumatrice,
ordinata, gioiosa e amante dei bambini. A casa si parlano entrambe le lingue. Offresi vitto, alloggio molto carino e remunerazione da concordare. Possibilita' di frequentare qualificati corsi di tedesco presso l'universita' di Münster o altri istituti.

Let me know if you're interested and I can give you the details ;-)

Sarah

Course Calendar - Second Semester

2009-02-18T09:24:00.003+01:00

Here is a calendar of the times we will meet in the second semester. Any changes will be posted on the blog. Please use this calendar to organize your activities in such a way as to be present in class.

Week 1:
4 March
5 March
Week 2:
11 March
12 March
Week 3:
18 March
19 March
Week 4:
25 March
26 March
Week 5:
1 April
2 April
Week 6:
8 April
9 April
Easter Break
Week 7:
29 April
30 April
Week 8:
6 May
7 May
Week 9:
13 May
14 May
Week 10:
20 May
21 May

Lingua Inglese II - Second Semester

2009-02-18T09:11:00.003+01:00

Welcome back to those of you who activiely participated in the exchanges in the first semester and welcome to those of you who will be attending in the second semester - for the latter, my name is Sarah and I'll be your 'guide' through Web 2.0 during this second semester, 2008-2009.

Whereas the first semester was dedicated to exchanges and cultural learning, the second semester will be dedicated to exploring how you all can exploit the Web for your language learning, cultural learning, and the dissertation you will all, hopefully, have to be writing! We will be having one class in the lab, all of us together, and then be divided into smaller discussion groups on Thursday morning to work on our oral communication. Here's the schedule:

Wednesdays 10.30-12.00 Aula EF 9, via Venezia (just after Prof. Taylor's class at 12.30)
Thursday mornings Group A: 8.30-10.00, Group B: 10.30-12.00 in aula L, Maldura

The first lesson will be on Wednesday, February 25th. On that day we will divide you up for the groups on Thursday.

The first lesson with Prof. Taylor will be on Tuesday, February 24th at 12.30 in via Venezia.

I look forward to working with you this semester!

Sarah

Lingua Inglese II - Laurea Specialistica A.A. '08-'09

2008-09-25T13:02:00.006+02:00

EFL 2.0 and Intercultural Competence

Credits: 3

Duration: 10 weeks in the 1^st semester, 10 weeks in the 2^nd semester

First lesson: The first full week of October. Date and location will be announced shortly in another post in this blog.

Teacher: Sarah Guth

Non-attendees

Students who choose not to attend the course will have to take a C1-level exam at the end of the second semester. The exam has four components: listening, reading, writing and speaking.

Course Description

This is an advanced English as a Foreign Language course that aims to improve students’ English language skills (all 4) through the use of Web 2.0 tools and social software in order to improve information and participation literacy skills as well. ‘Social software’ is a term used to speak about a new generation of web-based tools that facilitate human expression, communication, and collaboration. This course will use several different types of social software to help students develop their technological and collaboration skills while at the same time improving their English. The tools we will be using are weblogs (online journals), wikis (systems for collective authoring), distributed classification systems such as del.icio.us, and the use of RSS feeds to distribute information not to mention other fun tools involving video, image, slide and music sharing.

A secondary aim of the course is to develop students’ intercultural competence. Culture, both one’s own and ‘the other’, will be the overriding theme of the entire course. Students will be given the opportunity to develop this skill through reading, reflection, writing, speaking, listening, watching and doing exchanges with students in the United States and, for some, Poland as well.

Audience

Students who choose to attend this course are expected to participate actively and, in the end, form part of a dynamic research community. This course is intended for students of the laurea specialistica who are able to express themselves well in English, able to autonomously take control over their own learning process as well as work in groups, and who are motivated and curious.

Course Objectives

Students will improve their written fluency in English and their reflective and critical thinking skills by publishing their thoughts, opinions and reactions on a course blog and on a personal blog.
Students will improve their written accuracy by contributing to a wiki and writing papers.
Students will improve their spoken fluency and accuracy in English through classroom lessons and exchanges with students in the United States.
Students will improve their reading and listening skills by learning how to access effective online resources.
Students will develop their practical research skills using online information networks as they look for, find and share online resources.
Students will develop competency in the use of blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and web syndication (rss feeds).
Students will develop their intercultural competency through reading, reflection, writing and exchanges with students in the United States and, for some, Poland.

First Semester: Exchanges

The first semester will be entirely dedicated to telecollaboration projects with university students abroad. For those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘telecollaboration’ is internet-based intercultural exchange between people of different cultural/national backgrounds set up in an institutional context with the aim of developing both language skills and intercultural communicative competence (Byram 1996) through structured tasks. In other words, projects that pair you up with students in different cultures in order to allow you to both practice your language skills and improve your cultural knowledge and understanding.

It is preferable to do the telecollaboration projects in the second semester, but this year I have only been able to set them up in the first semester so we’re going to have to jump right in, sink or swim. Since there are many of you, there will be two projects. You will have to choose which project you would like to participate in. Students in each exchange are expected to attend 2 hours of face-to-face lessons each week and to do 4-6 hours of work online each week.

Each student may participate in only one exchange!

Padova-Dickinson Exchange

Homepage: http://interculturewiki.pbwiki.com/Padova-Dickinson+Fall+08

Where to sign up: http://interculturewiki.pbwiki.com/Padova-Dickinson%20Fall%2008%20students

Class meeting: Group A Thursdays, 14.30-16.20 and Group B Thursdays, 16.30-18.15

Brief description: This is a bilingual (English-Italian) synchronous oral exchange. You will spend one hour a week chatting with peers from the United States using Skype in the lab. The other hour of lesson will be dedicated to discussion and practical matters.

Tridem Exchange: SVSU, USA - PUT, Poland - UniPD, Italy

Homepage: http://interculturewiki.pbwiki.com/Tridem+Interculture+Exchange+2008

Where to sign up: http://interculturewiki.pbwiki.com/Tridem08-Students

Class meeting: Thursdays, 10.30-12.00 lab A, Maldura

Brief description: This is a monolingual (English) asynchronous text exchange (although you always have the option of Skyping with your peers on your own time). You will spend several weeks collaborating with students from the USA and Poland on the creation of a report and a powerpoint presentation on cultural issues. Class time will be dedicated to working on and discussing the project.

Second Semester: Web 2.0 and personal learning environments

Work in the second semester will be dedicated to developing your skills to learn languages using the Internet, through online social communities, in order to become autonomous language learners.

Attendance and Participation

This is your last year of University study so it is expected that you are, by now, responsible, independent learners. However, unlike other courses, attendance in this course is compulsory and the number of students who may attend in the first semester limited to 78. The first semester is dedicated to telecollaboration, as explained above, and the success of these projects depends on student participation. Students who do not or cannot attend in the first semester are allowed to attend only in the second semester.

Weekly attendance and online participation are mandatory. Three absences from the weekly in-class lessons will be tolerated if notified in advance. Additional absences due to serious illnesses and family emergencies must be documented and notified to the instructor PRIOR to class. Unexcused absences will guarantee a lower final grade (minus 2 points per absence). You will be taken out of the exchange following three absences.

Required Books and Materials

All of our reading materials will by online resources made available by the instructor on the course blog or provided by the students themselves as a result of their online searches.

Course Environments

Course Blog: Here you will receive all communications regarding assignments (e-tivities), changes in the program, etc. You will complete some e-tivities here.

Personal Blogs: All students will be required to develop and maintain a personal blog. You will complete other e-tivities here. Your blog will be a record of your own personal learning during the course.

Interculture Wiki: The exchanges will be carried out on a wiki.

Distributed Research Database (and RSS feed): This database, maintained in del.icio.us, is where all the online research will be collected and shared. As you surf the web in search of resources for learning English and information about the topics we discuss in class and in the e-tivities, you will bookmark items using the tag bloggingenglish. Even if you decide an item is of little interest to you, you should bookmark it if you think it might be of interest to someone else in the class. The aggregated collection of items will be available to the whole class by subscribing to the RSS feed generated by del.icio.us. You will select specific items from this database for your individual analysis, which you will post on your individual blogs (as part of specific e-tivities).

Grading

This course is graded in continuous assessment, i.e. there will be no final exam but rather you will be graded on what you produce during the course.

Online participation (learner diary): 10%

In-class participation (discussion, debates, questions): 10%

Mid-term paper: 15%

Online Exchange: participation/collaboration, task completion: 30%

Self Assessment: 10%

Peer Assessment: 10%

Final oral presentation: 15%

Final grades: explanation

2008-06-10T23:06:00.002+02:00

Dear all,

I've gotten a few messages from you all wondering why the grade I gave you for your mid-term is different from the one you thought you got. If you take a close look at your rubrics, you'll see your grade for the mid-term is /20 which I translated into trentesimi. Then in my comment, based on the other work you'd done and your performance, I suggested a grade you might be getting. Your final grade is nothing more than an average of the different numbers you've been assigned during the year. This is what I hate about grades: it comes down to numbers, not real feedback.

Therefore, if you'd like to contest your grade or get 'real' feedback, please send me a message and I'll do the best I can, time permitting. If you feel you deserve a higher final grade, I'm open to discussion. Also keep in mind that I come from a faculty where grades tend to me much lower than the grades assigned at Lingue ;-)

Take care all,

Sarah

Final Feedback

2008-06-04T19:01:00.003+02:00

Dear all,

I finally managed to read all of your wiki pages and give you feedback. In most of your pages, I see significant improvements compared to where you were at at the end of last semester, especially as far as organization and writing short, concise senteces are concerned. There are still some problems with accuracy and this is why you won't find many 30s, but then again that was not the main focus of this course.

I found the pages extremely interesting and the amount of work and effort you put into them is clear. I would especially like to thank you all for putting up with and dealing with the challenges of writing on a wiki. It was hard, but your pages are there, online, and will be used as a reference for future students and may be the starting point for other future students' final projects. So be proud of what you've done! The wiki is still in its early stages, but I present it around the world so believe me, your pages have an international audience!

I have uploaded rubrics for each wiki page to the final project page on the wiki. There I have also added the number of votes your page received. I made a mistake when I made the questionnaire and didn't ask you in your comments to explicitly specify which page you had voted for and were commenting on so more often than not it's not clear. Therefore, I have uploaded a file with a list of the comments. See if you can figure out if and any refer to your page. Sorry - live and learn, right?

For your final grades I considered your mid-term papers, your blogs, your peer and self assessments and the collective grade for the final project. I have given them to Prof. Taylor and Prof. Busà for them to determine your final grades. If you would like to know what the separate grades are, please sent me a blank email simply with 'feedback' written as the subject. I find it hard to find all your emails and this way I can be sure you'll get your own specific feedback.

I recognize that you all worked very hard this year, as did I. But personally I have found it rewarding and believe we have all learned a lot about culture, collaborating, online digital technologies, and, of course, English.

Have a great summer!

Please come

2008-06-03T13:42:00.003+02:00

Dear all,

I'm sure and I hope you are all familiar with the problems we language teachers face professionally, e.g. we are not recognized language teachers, but rather 'collaboratori', such that our lessons are actually called 'addestramento linguistico'. It is our belief that this lack of recognition of what we really harms first and most of all students. There are not enough of us, therefore your classes are large, we are not teachers, therefore our courses are worth very few credits regardless of your efforts, etc.

With these issues in mind, I would like to ask you to come support us on Thursday (see below). The more of us there are, the louder and clearer the message will be.

Hope to see you ALL Thursday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I Collaboratori ed Esperti Linguistici (CEL) dell’Università di Padova sono costretti ad aprire una nuova fase di mobilitazione e di lotta a tutela della propria professionalità, di insegnanti di lingue, e dei propri diritti.

I temi e gli obiettivi risultano, purtroppo, gli stessi che da troppi anni affliggono una categoria 'invisa' all'accademia.

Il personale CEL invita studenti, docenti e P.T.A. a partecipare alla

ASSEMBLEA

Aula “H” in Palazzo Maldura

giovedì

5 giugno

12.30-14.00

One last little thing

2008-05-26T13:12:00.001+02:00

I hate to ask you all to do something else, but I really do think it would be useful. Some time in the next few weeks, take a look at the mindmap of your PLE that you made at the end of the first semester. Consider whether or not it has changed since then. Would you add any new categories, tools, etc. for intercultural learning? Are there tools you no longer use or new ones you now use? If so, revise your mindmap and/or write a blog post about the changes that have taken place. Updating your PLE every now and again is a good opportunity to stop and reflect on what and how you are learning, which, as many of you stated in your mid-term papers, is learning itself.

I look forward to reading what you have to say :-)

If you did not attend the first semester and would like to make your own PLE, please go see the instructions for e-tivity 9. If you'd like to see what your peers last semester did, you can access their blogs through the blogroll, clicking on the various groups. They developed some very nice mindmaps ;-)

Sarah

And the winner is...(2)

2008-05-26T13:00:00.002+02:00

Hello everyone,

I've been monitoring the results for the past week and half. About mid-week, last week, several more people had replied, but it was still a tie (incredible!). I waited a few more days, but no more people have replied so I guess it's time to declare a winner.

What's interesting is that you are perfectly divided between a very serious topic and a lighter, but very culturally relevant topic. For now 47 people have voted (out of theoretically 60) and the two that have the most votes, each have 11. This means that many other groups got several votes - and the comments were interesting. If you'd like to know if your group got votes or see the comments, write me an email and I'll get that info off to you.

Now that you've read all this and I still haven't told you ;-) the two groups who tied for first place are: Group 5 ItaliaUSA_CollegeLife and Group 6 ItaliaUSA_DeathPenalty. So, many compliments to the two groups that won, but compliments to you all for doing an excellent job. I am dedicating this week (hours and hours!) to looking over everything and getting feedback to you. I am NOT going to correct your wiki pages, but rather leave them the way you and your peers were able to make them. I will send you feedback on the project and your progress in the course, together with the grade, which I will then give to Prof. Busà and Prof. Taylor.

Job well done to all of you!

Sarah

More about Italians in US

2008-05-20T17:20:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody!
The course finished, but I found this and I wanted to share it with you! Enjoy it!

By the way, the story about hand signals never ends...!

And the winner is...

2008-05-14T18:51:00.002+02:00

...it's a tie! So, before announcing which wiki page wins the 'best wiki page' award 2008, let's see if the students who did not attend today can give their vote. If you weren't in class today, please go to the wiki and read what you are to do to vote and vote. I'll give you until Friday to vote and then announce the winner on Friday.

For those of you who weren't in class today, for your final grade I will consider:
- a collective group vote for the wiki page;
- your participation throughout the semester (in class, blogging, tasks);
- your grade from the first semester;
- your ICC assessment (see task 2 of the final activities on the wiki );
- your peer and self-assessment (see task 1 of the final activities on the wiki).

In other words, make sure you do the activities on the wiki, if you haven't already done so. Please not that on the assessment questionnaire you are to assess both yourself and the peers in your group.

It's been a pleasure teaching and learning with you this year. Thank you for your patience, consistent participation and motivation - that's what makes teaching worth all the effort! If I don't see you around town, good luck for your future!

Sarah

A guest!

2008-05-13T12:58:00.002+02:00

Dear Sarah and dear peers,

tomorrow morning I'd like to introduce my American friend from California to you. Her name is Adriana, she spent one year in Padua as an exchange student, two years ago. I had the fantastic opportunity to meet her and we did the tandem learning project together.
Now, she is in Padua on holiday till Friday and I'd like to introduce her to you. May I ask her to attend our last lesson on Wednesday? I think it would be interesting to share our experience with her and we could ask her to give her own opinion on our wiki-pages as well. ;)

Sarah, let me know if you agree with my proposal and if you think it's a good idea, please.
Thank you very much!
See you tomorrow then.

Martina

Task 8

2008-05-07T17:54:00.002+02:00

Purpose: To self-assess your learning process in the second semester.

Task:

1 – Go to the wiki page on the assessment of intercultural competence (ICC). Read the first section entitled “Intercultural Competence in brief”. You will find descriptions and questions. Students in class discussed the questions. If you weren’t in class, take some time to read them carefully and think of your own answers. In other words, discuss with yourself!

2 – The second part of the page is entitled Questionnaires. Please follow the instructions carefully.

3 – Prepare a short summary of what you think you learned from the experience. You will be asked to speak in class for 2-3 minutes on Monday and to provide one or two specific examples of learning that took place. Please do not be generic, be specific to your experience. Last semester your PLEs were a bit similar, whereas I would like this to be more personal. And when I say 2-3 minutes, it means I will cut you off after 3 minutes.

4 – Write a blog post summarizing your answers to the questionnaires.

Deadline: No panic! Several students indicated to me that they would be very busy studying for exams next week. You also have to finish your wiki pages. Therefore, I would propose the following calendar:

Over the weekend: start taking a look at the questionnaires and thinking about them. Prepare your 2-3 min. presentation.

Monday in class: I will give you time to actually complete the writing questionnaire task on the wiki.

Wednesday: the blog post.

Next Wednesday in class we will vote on the best wiki page. Therefore, I would say have all CONTENTS ready for Monday (the deadline). Then you’ll have another two days to fix up the layout. Sound ok? This way we’ll be done with everything for Wednesday and go and get a spritz after class ;-)

If you won’t be in class Monday or Wednesday, check the blog. I’ll be updating it with more info.

Peer Feedback on your Wiki Pages

2008-05-05T14:11:00.000+02:00

Peer feedback task

Your feedback for your peers is a fundamental part of the editing process. Your wiki pages are written by students for students. They will be used with future students both for informative purposes and as examples of how to write effective wiki pages. Your pages may also very well be edited by future students. The wiki is also public and is already being viewed by outsiders so you have quite a wide public. Clearly the teachers will provide final feedback, but your peer feedback is a first step.

For those of you who attend, we will do the peer feedback in class. For those of you who do not attend, please go to the final project page on the wiki http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/BloggingEnglish08_Final#PeerFeedbackChecklist where you will find instructions on how to carry out the peer feedback. If you are the non-attendees, you are welcome to divide up the task and have one or more of you do the peer feedback for one of the pages and the other for the other page. There is no need to sign your peer feedback, just make sure your feedback is thorough.
Reminder about calendars:

Remember that the students at Dickinson have finished their official semester so we will no longer by Skyping in class (you are, however, welcome and encouraged to do so in your free time!). Therefore, this week and next week I would like everyone to come to class on Monday and Wednesday, if possible.

You will not have to do a ppt presentation for the end of the course, but I will be sending you a little task on Wednesday so make sure you check the blog.

The deadline for the peer feedback is this Wednesday morning. The deadline for the final draft is Monday the 12th (for the Americans too).

As always, write a comment here if you’ve got any questions.

Sarah

Task 7 (ALL STUDENTS)

2008-04-16T11:55:00.002+02:00

Purpose: To start working on your final projects.

Task:

1 – Choose the topic for your final projects together with your American peer and your Italian peers. Write the name of the topic in the Final08 wiki page in the table with the groups in the last column. Once you have written the topic there, I will create a wiki page for your group.

2 – Develop a work method for your group. Consider:

How will you communicate? Only in class? On Skype? Or via email? Someone’s Blog? The comment function on the wiki page?
Subscribe to each other’s blogs so that you can keep track of what those who are Skyping are writing about the Skype experience.
Choose a tag your group can use to save bookmarks on del.icio.us.
anything else?

3 – Start working on your wiki page. This means:

Think about and start building an outline.
Decide who’s doing what.
Start researching.

4 – Based on your Skype exchange, write a reflective blogging post. If you didn’t Skype, take a look at your peers’ blog posts about the experience.

5 – Continue contributing to the forums. There are two on immigration, one in English and one in Italian.

Deadline: Monday, April 21, 2008

N.B. During Monday lessons I will dedicate about 10 minutes to working personally with each group to give you feedback on what you’re doing and the progress you’re making. While I’m working with one group, you will continue working on your page autonomously (in English!) so don’t worry too much about working at home.

Lessons with Prof. Taylor

2008-04-10T18:05:00.003+02:00

Dear all,

Just thought I'd let you know, if you don't already know that professor Taylor's lessons will be in the same time slot as Prof. Busà's lessons. The lessons will start on Tuesday, April 15th, 10.30-12.30 in EF9.

Sarah

Final Project

2008-04-10T13:00:00.002+02:00

Dear all,

I have received confirmation from my colleague in the States that we can proceed with the final projects that you will do in collaboration with the American students from Dickinson. As you all know, the exchange with Poznan did not work out (I still haven't heard back from the colleague there!) and I feel it is important to give all of you the opportunity to exchange with peers from abroad. So starting from now the two groups will merge into one as far as tasks are concerned. As always, the difficulty here in Italy is all in the numbers (there are so many of you) so be patient as we work out this final organizational nightmare.

Final Project Wiki Page
We will discuss the project in class on Monday, but if you're curious, I have already created a wiki page for it: http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/BloggingEnglish08_Final

Groups
On this page, you will see the groups. The ex-Padova-Poznan groups remain the same. I have made some slight changes to the Padova-Dickinson groups based on who you have Skyped with. If you have problems with these changes, please send me an email.

New Calendar:
Mondays - no changes. If you cannot attend on Mondays, I will post what we do in class on the final project page and you will be responsible for making up for what we do in class.
Tuesdays - Skype session
Wednesdays - Skype session. The Padova-Poznan group will no longer meet 'for class' as some will be Skyping. However, I would like you all to know that the lab is available for non-skypers to use if you want to meet and work on your projects even if you're not skyping.

Skype
Not everyone in the group has to Skype every lesson, but at least 1 or 2 of you do. If you are a group of 4, I suggest you alternate 2 each week. You are welcome to switch as fits your schedule. Those of you who Skype will then, through your blogs, share with your partners what you Skyped about.
Help! I still need one Padova-Poznan group to switch to Tuesdays. Even if 2 or 3 out of 4 can and 1 can't, that's enough, but I cannot proceed with the organization until I know which can Skype on Tuesdays. I'm counting on one of you to step forward!

I've tried to be as clear as possible, but as often happens, I'm not so please feel free to write comments for clarificiation. We will, nonetheless, discuss this more clearly in class on Monday.

Sarah

Facebook

2008-04-10T11:41:00.003+02:00

Yesterday two students asked me if your American peers have personal blogs like you do. I told them that I had already discussed with the teacher in America that the mode of communication they use most is Facebook (my 20 and 22 year old brother and sister live on it!). So we think Facebook may be the best way for you to get to know them and get to see them. I had decided not to integrate it into the course not to send you on technology overload like last semester, but since you've asked....

Facebook is a closed community. It's not like our blogs, which are public. First you have to join www.facebook.com but you're experts at registering for things, right ;-) Then you use the friend finder to look for people. I'm there, as is Sara DeTomi (one of your peers studying in England this semester) and I think a few others are there two. Once you find someone you want to share pages with, you have to invite them to be a friend. This will send an invitation and then, if they accept, you're friends and can see and write on each other's pages.

Let me know if you decide to do it and if you have any difficulties.

Sarah

To vote or not to vote, that is the question.

2008-04-09T13:34:00.002+02:00

"Only 54 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots during the last four decades of presidential elections [in America]. Compare that embarrassing number to Italy's 90 percent, Germany's 80 percent, France and Canada's 76 percent, Britain's 75 percent and Japan's 71 percent. We rank 35th in voter turnout out of the world's prominent democracies." (From http://life.familyeducation.com/elections/politics-us/36258.html)

90%? From what I've been hearing the voter turnout in these next elections is supposed to be low. People are disgusted, fed up, undecided, etc. You see, I'm an immigrant, an extra-comunitaria, and as such cannot vote even though I would like to. But you have the choice.

Are you going to vote this weekend or not? This is not about who you are going to vote for but rather the right to vote. Please reply to this post by Sunday!

Sarah

Padova-Dickinson: Task 6

2008-04-09T13:31:00.004+02:00

Purpose: There are several different mini tasks so I’ll skip the purposes ;-)

Task:

1 – Please go to the wiki page and answer the questions you posted for your Skype conversations next week. Even if you did not post any questions, please see if there are answers you can provide to your peers’ questions. You may be personal and make reference to your peers if you like.

2 – Go to Padova-Dickinson wiki page and write the topic you would like to focus on for the final project. The purpose here is to create a virtual list of all the possible topics, just a list. Based on this list you will then, in class, choose a topic for each group.

3 – Get ready for your Skype exchange next week by starting to think about immigration. Do some online searches to find out information about it in Italy if your knowledge is limited. Write a blog post about what you know, or feel, about immigration in Italy. For example, as an immigrant I can’t vote. Is that right or wrong? And this leads me into the next …

4 – I’ve heard some of you say you’re not going to vote. Please go to the post I have published on this blog and add your opinion with a comment.

5 – As always, based on your Skype exchange, write a reflective blogging post. If you didn’t Skype, take a look at the forums and make observations about the discussions there.

Deadline: Monday morning, April 14, 2008

Padova-Poznan: Task 6

2008-04-09T13:30:00.002+02:00

Purpose: There are several different mini tasks so I’ll skip the purposes ;-)

Task:

1 - The second half of the course is going to be dedicated to developing a wiki page in your groups and a final group presentation on the same issue. Next week we will start thinking about your final projects that will focus on a cultural topic of your choice. Start thinking about what aspect of the two cultures (Italy-USA) you would like to explore further and write about this on your blog as well, justifying your choice. The aim here is for you to reflect individually on what interests you and why so that you are able to defend your choice.

3 – At least some of you are going to start Skyping next week so you’ll need to get ready for your Skype exchange next week by starting to think about immigration. Do some online searches to find out information about it in Italy if your knowledge is limited. Write a blog post about what you know, or feel, about immigration in Italy. For example, as an immigrant I can’t vote. Is that right or wrong? And this leads me into the next …

4 – I’ve heard some of you say you’re not going to vote. Please go to the post I have published on this blog and add your opinion with a comment.

Deadline: Monday, April 14, 2008

In class on Wednesday, April 9

2008-04-09T13:18:00.001+02:00

As usual, while I get Skype set up with the others, do the following tasks. Ok. Now you’ve all become expert wiki-ers, right? ;-) I think your page is coming along very nicely and it’s been a good resource both for your Italian and your American peers for their discussions about the elections.

Well, I’d like you to share your knowledge with others. First discuss (IN ENGLISH!) the pros and cons of using the wiki. Then make a list (on your group wiki page) of all the useful tips you would give someone new to using the wiki. In other words, what should newcomers know about editing a wiki?
Then go to these resources on the wiki http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/The%20Writing%20Process and http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/All+about+wiki

What would you add or change based on your discussion? Please edit the pages.

When I’ve got the others set up, I will come back to you and show you a few tips for editing the wiki.

Then we are going to discuss final projects. Please start thinking whether one of your groups would be willing to have 2 people (not necessarily always the same ones) come on Tuesdays for Skype with the Americans for the next three weeks.

Sarah

No class today

2008-04-07T13:59:00.002+02:00

Dear all,

I've been immobilized by a bad back since Saturday. I've been hoping it would go away on its own but it hasn't. I was going to come to class today anyway, but the doctor just called and said he could see me now. I'm in extreme pain so I need to go and see if he can give me something to help out.

For the Padova-Poznan people, you've got two more days to keep on fixing up the elections page ;-)

For those of you who are going to Skype tomorrow and Wednesday, please go to the wiki page your peers have created on the elections and take a look at the platforms of the candidates in the States. Think about which issues you would like to know more about and post 2-3 questions to the Padova-Dickinson wiki page. This week I will ask you to write your answers to the questions on the page as well.

I do apologize for such late notice - it's not my style - but hopefully the doctor will give me something to help with the pain.

Hope to see you all tomorrow or Wednesday.

Sarah

Padova-Dickinson: Task 5

2008-04-02T16:56:00.000+02:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to do reflective blogging.

Task:

1 – Based on your Skype exchange, write a reflective blogging post. If you didn’t Skype, take a look at the forums and make observations about the discussions there.

2 – Next week we will start thinking about your final projects that will focus on a cultural topic of your choice. Start thinking about what aspect of the two cultures (Italy-USA) you would like to explore further and write about this in your blog as well, justifying your choice.

Deadline: Monday, April 7, 2008

Padova-Poznan: Task 5

2008-04-02T16:55:00.002+02:00

Purpose: To get the wiki ready to go by Monday.

Task:

1 – Introduction: One person starts writing the other introduction (even with just one sentence) and the rest of you continue it and edit it to make it a concise, informative text to let readers know what they can find in the page.

2 – TOC: One person starts creating (or creates) the table of contents and the others edit it.The TOC and Introduction go hand in hand, i.e. there should be absolute parallelism between the two. Keep in mind that the TOC should represent a logical order of ideas in the page.

3 – References: Clean up the references in your page. This means ANYTHING you paraphrased or quoted (using “…”) should be followed by parentheses in which you put the (author/title of webpage, date). Then at the bottom of the page, in the References section, you will put the full citation with url and all. You are welcome to make the reference in the text a link to the site as well.

4 – Contents: Make sure that the contents in your part are clear, concise, parallel, objective, etc.

All of this should be done individually. Don’t worry about changing what others have done: it’s a wiki so if they don’t like it, they can change it back OR you can discuss it through the comments function (which you should check regularly).

I would like a beautiful wiki page by Monday ;-) when your peers from the other group will give you feedback.

Deadline: Monday, April 7, 2008

N.B. If you want to Skype next week with an American peer, send a message to this post letting me know so that we can be better organized for next Wednesday. I'd say 7-9 stuents can.

PD-Poznan in-class task

2008-04-02T13:48:00.002+02:00

Today while I get the Skypers set up, as a full group I'd like you to start fixing up the elections08 page on the wiki.

1 - With one person editing, write up a table of contents.
2 - Individually you will each have to work on one of the following aspects. Using the comment function on the wiki, write who is going to do what. For some of the points, e.g. parallelism, you can divide the work so that each student focuses on what part of the page only.

guarantee parallelism (e.g. in structure of sections, using tables where possible, etc.)
make direct comparisons of the two countries/cultures where it is missing
guarantee the information is factual and not opinionated
write an introduction
check the grammar and vocabulary

All of you will be responsible for adding references where they are certainly lacking.

3 - Discuss what could be added to the page to improve it overall.

4 - If you have not already done so, go to the Purdue Writing Lab and read about the differences between quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing. Then go to the page on paraphrasing and try the task.

Once I've got your peers set up, I'm going to come back and we're going to work on something else.

If you weren't Italian

2008-03-27T17:10:00.003+01:00

If you were an American student studying Italian, what would you have to say about these?

Interesting. Soon after I published this post, the veltroni video disappeared from YouTube. To see it and read about why, click here.
And as an Italian? What DO you have to say?

As an American in Italy I'm speechless.

Sarah

N.B. Take a look at the comments. Which Italians use YouTube?

2008-03-21T13:48:00.001+01:00

Wishing you all a very happy, relaxing, peaceful Easter (and Spring Break!).

Sarah

Padova-Poznan: Task 4

2008-03-21T13:43:00.000+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is three-fold. First, as I said in class, to finish your contribution to the elections08 page in the wiki. Second, to keep up to date on what’s going on with the elections. Third, to participate in the forums.

Task:

1 – By next Wednesday, March 26^th, please make sure your group’s contribution has been added to the elections08 page in the wiki. That will give me time to look at it before we meet on Monday the 31^st. A wiki is a work in progress so it doesn’t have to be perfect (just as accurate as possible!).

2 - Keep reading your sources of information about the elections. Some time towards the end of next week, before Monday the 31^st, write a blog post on what you have observed / are observing. As you read and observe, start thinking seriously about which issue (e.g. the environment, healthcare, etc.) you would like to use to make a cultural comparison between the two countries as you will have to make a decision as a group during the first week in April.

3 – I am going to post two of your questions to the forum with the students from Dickinson college <http://itech.dickinson.edu/confronti/?page=1>. For the time being, check out the discussions already underway. You are welcome to both read and contribute to them. It’s a blog, so all you have to do is comment on them as you do on your own blog. As soon as your questions are posted, start reading their responses (which will hopefully arrive!). Once there are a few responses, you are welcome to start contributing to the discussion as well.

Deadline: Monday, March 31, 2008

Padova-Dickinson: Task 4

2008-03-21T13:41:00.000+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to start reflecting on your own intercultural competence at this point.

Task:

1 – One way to assess Intercultural Competence is by using a self-assessment form called the YOGA form. Download this (http://test.sit.edu/publications/docs/competence.pdf) .pdf and read about the rationale behind the YOGA form.

2 – Print the YOGA form and fill it out for yourself. Note that there are different levels for each section. If you reach a level where your competence is low, there is no need to continue moving on to higher levels. Also note that some of the factors may not apply directly to you and your experience; if they don’t, just skip them. Finally, you can either choose a language/culture you are very familiar with (e.g. if you went on Erasmus abroad) or think of your language/culture competence in general. You do not necessarily have to consider English or English-speaking cultures.

3 – Write a blog post in which you reflect on both the challenges and benefits of using the YOGA form, e.g. what was hard about it, did it help you consider aspects you hadn’t previously considered?

4 - Bring it to class on Monday and be prepared to discuss it. I will ask you to leave a copy with me, so please make a photocopy and bring me one.

5 – Keep an eye on the forums ;-)

Deadline: Monday morning, March 31, 2008

N.B. Remember to do your reflective blogging post on the most recent Skype exchange as well.

N.B. For non-attendees, towards the end of next week, I’ll make a post about what you are to do to make up for our class discussion on Monday the 31^st.

Padova-Dickinson: Task 3

2008-03-12T13:16:00.002+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to start contributing to the online forums.

Task:

1 – The Americans have posted on the forum the two questions that they also wrote about on the wiki. Go to the forum (http://itech.dickinson.edu/confronti/?page=1) and answer the questions in Italian by making a comment (it’s called a forum, but it’s really a blog!). As always, read the other responses before adding yours so that you don’t repeat each other. Of course you can ‘pick up on’ what someone else has said, just don’t say the same things. In order to avoid too much reading, if more than 10-15 people have answered one question, please answer the other question. For now, we don’t want more than 10-15 responses per question. You’re also welcome to answer as a group.

2 – Each group has to come up with a question you want to pose to the Americans based on your observations of the questionnaires. Based on what you, as a group, wrote about your observations, come up, as a group, with one question that you think will provoke interesting discussion. You can have a discussion on the wiki or on one of your blogs (or, of course, always meet in person!). Send your group question back to this blog post as a comment and I will post your question on the forum for you. Check the comments to this post before sending it so that you don’t ask the same questions!

3 - Check the forum every now and then to keep the discussion going.

4 – Reflective Blogging. No Skype this week, but you’re welcome to blog about your discussion on the wiki or anything else for that matter!

Remember: Next Tuesday and Wednesday, we will Skype starting at 13.30. I spoke with MariaGrazia and she says those of you Skyping can move to the back at 13.30 on Wednesday. Please, however, let me know if you won’t be there!

See you Monday at 4.00.

Deadline: Monday morning, March 17, 2008

N.B. I had to make two changes. Anna Giabardo, who can attend on Mondays, is now in Group 1. Stefania Pasquali, who cannot attend on Mondays, is in Group 7 with other non-attendees.

Padova-Poznan: Task 3

2008-03-12T13:13:00.002+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to compare the news regarding the elections in newspapers and magazines from three different countries.

Task:

1 – Look for 3 online newspapers, news magazines, news radios or news websites from 3 different countries (1 source per country). You may choose a ‘center’ news source or go to the more partial newspapers, such as Unità or Il Giornale, depending on whether you are right or left.

2 – Follow the news about the two elections for a few days. You are welcome to follow just ‘your candidates’ or the elections in general. Observe differences and similarities in the way the news is presented, the words used, the images used, the amount of coverage, the location of the news (e.g. front page or embedded somewhere hard to find), etc.

3 – Write a post about your observations on your personal blogs. Also link to the sources you've used. If you notice differences, try and formulate a hypothesis or two about why the differences exist, e.g. is it country? culture? politics?

Deadline: Monday, March 17, 2008

Padova-Dickinson: Task 2

2008-03-05T13:39:00.005+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to get prepared for our class discussion on Monday with Chiara Olivi from Dickinson and to continue reflecting on the questionnaires.

Task:

1 – Go to the Cultura website using INTERNET EXPLORER ONLY. All of the answers to the questionnaires are now available for viewing. Analyse the responses considering the following points:

Word Associations:

- choose the 3 words whose answers make the greatest impression on you
- check any vocabulary that is new to you
- what words appear most often in the responses for the 3 words you’ve chosen?
- which words appear only once?
- do most of the words have a positive or a negative connotation?

Sentence Completion
Choose the two that you found most interesting and try to understand why they struck you.

2 – Go to your group wiki pages and discuss your analyses. You can either do this directly on the wiki page or using the comment function for your page (on the top menu). ‘Discuss’, as you know, doesn’t mean just post, it also means read and respond :-)

3 – Based on your discussion, as a group come up with a series of questions you would like to ask Chiara next Monday in class. Post these questions on your group wiki page.

4 – Reflective Blogging. After each Skype exchange, I would like you to write a blog post in which you reflect on the experience. It’s your blog so, as always, you choose the contents and style. (If you want to ‘read’ each other, though you’re not required to comment, you could subscribe to each other’s blogs using Bloglines!)

Deadline: Monday morning, March 10, 2008

P.S. Did you notice the question they wrote on the wiki about 'raccomandato'? Did any of you discuss that with your peers? It's quite an amusing question ;-)

Padova-Poznan: Task 2

2008-03-05T13:38:00.002+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to start reflecting on the political elections in the United States and in Italy.

Task: Each of the main candidates in both elections now have a site on YouTube. There are also articles daily in the newspapers about all the candidates and what they say, want to do, etc. In other words, as you know, there are numerous sources online for following the elections.

1 – In your groups, divide yourself into two sub-groups. One will follow the candidates on the left (Obama/Clinton and PD), the other the candidates on the right (McCain and PDL). Make your decision and post it on the wiki page.

2 – Depending on the group your in, access the resources I have saved in del.icio.us. You can find them by searching ‘bloggingenglish’ or by joining my network (I’m lamericaana). I’ve also used the tag ‘elections’ and it’s interesting to see what else comes up in del.icio.us under this tag. (If you find new resources, please tag them as I have to share them with the rest of us!) Try to identify key words and key expressions that the candidates use. Also try and note, in the videos, how they interact with their audience.

3 – Write a post about your observations on your personal blogs. If you notice differences, try and formulate a hypothesis or two about why the differences exist.

4 – Subscribe to each others’ blogs in Bloglines. You are not obliged to read or comment on each other, but of course you are welcome to. Since you’ve all written which group your in on your wiki pages, you can also check out the blogs of peers in other groups who are in your left or right sub-group.

Deadline: Monday, March 10, 2008

N.B. The many speeches Clinton, Obama and McCain have given can often be found on the New York Times website (http://nytimes.com/) with transcripts so if you're having trouble understanding them you can find the texts there.

Class Discussion Wednesday March 5

2008-03-05T13:03:00.002+01:00

While I work on getting your peers set up with Skype, please begin this discussion following the instructions below.

Class discussion of YOGA form and intercultural awareness.

The YOGA form was intended for people planning to study and work abroad. Therefore, it cannot be applied entirely to our situation. Nonetheless, it should help focus our attention on intercultural competence. In groups, please discuss the following questions/issues and write up your answers as a summary in your group wiki page.

What did you find most difficult about completing the YOGA form?
Which parts were you unable to complete?
Did any question/part in particular make you reflect on things you had not previously considered? If so, what?
Compare your answers. Did you provide similar answers or are they different? Either way, what are they and why are they similar or different?
Considering that most of you, at least for now, are not planning on going to stay abroad for an extended period of time, what can you do from Italy to try and improve your intercultural competence. Make a list of goals and ways to achieve them.
Please provide a group-consensus definition of intercultural competence using your own words and based on what you have considered in your discussion.

Where's Engineering for Tuesday Skypers?

2008-03-04T12:13:00.002+01:00

Dear Tuesday Skypers,

For those of you who weren't in class yesterday, here are the directions for how to get to Enginering for theSkype meetings.

http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/home/sguth/contatti.html

See you later,

Sarah

Padova-Dickinson: Task 1

2008-02-27T22:27:00.004+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to get prepared for our discussion on Monday and your Skype exchanges on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Task:

1 – Go to the exchange wiki (http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/Padova-Dickinson) and take a look at the project.

2 - Go to the Cultura website (http://cultura.mit.edu/cultura06/)using INTERNET EXPLORER ONLY. If you haven’t already created an account do that. Choose ‘Italian’ as your language and ‘Università di Padova’ as your institution. When you’ve filled out the form, click on ‘go’. Then log in. Click on ‘current Cultura Exchanges’ in the middle of the menu or ‘Your Exchanges’. Then click on ‘Confronti (Italy-USA)’. The system was not working in class on Wednesday but I spoke with the technician and tried again and now it seems to be working. Please let me know if it isn't. Once you’re in the system, complete the Word Associations and Sentence Completion questionnaires in Italian in one sitting (you can’t go back and finish once you’ve clicked on ‘submit’).

3 – Write a very simple, concise, to the point personal introduction in Word. Include a link to your personal blog. Copy the introduction into the wiki page (http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/PadovaDickinson08Students) by carefully following the instructions at the top of the page. If you weren’t in class today, you can edit a wiki page as follows:
- click on edit
- the password is “Xchange”
- put in your name and email

When you’re finished editing the page, click on save and then log out.

If you try and edit a page but someone else is editing it, you can’t. Be patient, keep your info in Word and try later.

Important: I see some of you have justifiably added pictures to the wiki. This is fine, but remember the copyright issues, e.g. don't use Google Images! For a reminder click on the "Add an Image to your post" on the How Tos menu in this blog.

Deadline: Monday morning, March 3, 2008

N.B. Lessons are cancelled on Monday morning for the start of the academic year, but not in the afternoon so see you then ;-)
As always, write a comment if you’ve got questions.

Padova-Poznan: Task 1

2008-02-27T22:24:00.002+01:00

Purpose: The aim of this week’s task is to start reflecting on your own intercultural competence at this point. There's a bit of reading this time, but I promise you will have less homework this semester!

Task:

1 – Go to the Culture page on the wiki we’ll be using. See what your colleagues last year had to say about culture by taking a look at the page.

2 – As is mentioned in this page, one way to assess Intercultural Competence is by using a self-assessment form called the YOGA form. Download this (http://test.sit.edu/publications/docs/competence.pdf) .pdf and read about the rationale behind the YOGA form.

3 – Print the YOGA form and fill it out for yourself. Bring it to class on Monday and be prepared to discuss it.

Deadline: Monday morning, March 3, 2008

N.B. Lessons are cancelled on Monday morning for the start of the academic year, but not in the afternoon so see you then ;-)
As always, write a comment if you’ve got questions.
If you all do your homework and we have a lively discussion, we may have time to take a look at your mid-term papers.

Groups for Second Semester

2008-02-27T18:29:00.004+01:00

Here are the groups for the second semester. If you weren't in class today, please send a comment to this message indicating which group you would like to be in. The two groups are pretty well distributed (as they should be) so first I'll be sending your tasks for Monday to the blog later on this evening.

Sarah

Padova-Dickinson Exchange
Mondays (everyone): 16.00-17.30 Lab B Maldura
Tuesdays (7-14 students): 14.30-15.30 Pineca P20, via Marzolo, 9
Wednesdays (7-14 students): 14.30-15.30 Lab EF 9
Free time (2-4 students)

Anna Bordignon (Tues)
Martina Urbani (Tues)
Marina Fuin (Tues)
Federico Fiorentin (Tues)
Alessia Ferrara (Tues)
Valentina Mioni (Tues – but not on Mon. at 4.30)
Laura Zoccarato (Tues – but not on Mon. at 4.30)
Giovanna Foschini (Tues – but not on Mon. at 4.30)
Sushu Zhang (Tues)
Elena Costa (Wed)
Martina Torresan (Wed)
Sara Pahor (Wed)
Alessandra Squaquara (Wed)
Alberto Tono (Wed)
Serena Santi (Wed)
Cristina Robba (Wed)
Alice Violato (Wed)
Marta Tosato (Wed)
Alessia Leonardi (Wed)
Raffaella Panizzon (Wed)
Stella (Wed)
Eleonora Carta (spare time)
Anna Giabardo (spare time)
Claudia Turolla (spare time)
Enrico Stanic (spare time)

Padova-Poznan Exchange

Mondays (everyone): 14.30-16.00 Lab B Maldura
Wednesdays (everyone): 14.30-16.00 EF9

Sara Babetto
Nicola Canton
Elisa Caramori
Davide Pozzato
Marta Guarda
Elena Boscaro
Giada Guazzo
Letizia Malacarne
Silvia Nicolini
Veronica Bozzato
Elena Vivian
Camilla Zulian
Elena Carlet
Selena Bortoletti
Lisa Belluco
Elena Sottil
Elisa Rossi
Roberta Fumani
Giovanna Sperotto
Nina Horakova
Silvia Lovato
Valeria Fagan
Chiara Ramazzotti
Caterina Luison
Stefania

Two courses, two exchanges

2008-02-27T12:23:00.003+01:00

Dear all,

Here's a basic description of the two courses you will have to choose from for this semester. Based on your schedules you will choose one of the two. They offer different but equally interesting opportunities. It is impossible to do an exchange with more than 25 students so you really need to divide yourselves in two groups. Otherwise, I'll have to make the choices for you.

We'll see!

Sarah

	Padova-Dickinson Exchange
Themes	Comparison of American and Italian culture
Languages	L1 in forums, L2 and L1 on Skype
Tools	blog for course information / tasks personal blogs for reflective blogging wiki and forum for asynchronous exchange Skype (planned) for synchronous exchange Facebook for informal communication
No. of students	25 students
Calendar	Mondays: 16.00-17.30 Lab B Maldura Tuesdays (7-14 students): 14.30-15.30 Pineca P20, via Marzolo, 9 Wednesdays (7-14 students): 14.30-15.30 Lab EF 9 Free time (2-4 students)
Duration	Off and on throughout the semester

	Padova-Poznan
Themes	Comparison of Polish and Italian culture and of these cultures with the dominant Anglo-Saxon cultures
Languages	L2, or English as a lingua franca
Tools	blog for course information / tasks personal blogs for reflective blogging wiki for asynchronous exchange Skype (unplanned) for synchronous exchange Facebook for informal communication
No. of students	25 students
Calendar	Mondays: 14.30-16.00 Lab B Caldura Wednesdays: 14.30-16.00 Lab EF9
Duration	Off and on throughout the semester

Useful links
Wiki for the Padova-Dickinson exchange http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/Padova-Dickinson
Cultura questionnaires http://cultura.mit.edu/cultura06/user_login.php
Skype http://www.skype.com

Getting ready for next semester...

2008-02-11T16:17:00.002+01:00

Hello all,

The next semester is just around the corner so it's time I gave you some info on the situation.

Our first class will be Wednesday, February 27th at 14.30 in ex-Fiat EF9 in via Venezia.

The schedule for now is:
Group 1 Mondays 14.30-16.00 in Lab B, Maldura
Group 2 Mondays 16.00-17.30 in Lab B, Maldura
Everyone Wednesdays 14.30-16.00 in EF9
Change: Tuesdays 14.30-15.30 in an Engineering lab. I'll explain where it is :-)

I am currently in the process of setting up two exchanges (there are too many of you for one class abroad!) and it's no easy task. I've been reading your papers (will be getting you feedback soon) and I often read comments that you haven't had enough speaking practice. These comments only came from students in the Monday 2.30-4.00 slot because there were simply too many of you. Therefore, I am asking you to start seriously considering if you could come to the later slot. If we divide you exactly in half, then we get two nice groups.
One group will be doing (I hope!) an asynchronous text exchange and the other a synchronous oral exchange. For the synchronous exchange I'll need 12 people available on Wednesdays 2.30-4.00 and 12 people on Thursdays 3.00-4.00. Start thinking about it.

To sum up, this message is to start letting you know how things will be organized so that you can start organizing your calendar. I'll be sending more messages in the next few days, but in the meantime start thinking an, as always, write a comment if you've got questions.

Take care,

Sarah

Interested in corpora?

2008-01-30T17:19:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

Prof. Taylor has suggested that some of you might be interested in a stimulating series of workshops on corpora and language learning. She believes it might be very useful for some of you for your theses. Here's the information. If you'd like to attend, contact Katherine Ackerley on First Class asap.

See you soon :-)

Sarah

Il CLA propone una serie di 3 workshop sull'uso di corpora per l'apprendimento delle lingue tenuti dalla Dott.ssa Katherine Ackerley.

mercoledì 6 febbraio 14.30-16.30 Aula EF9 Via Venezia: Introduzione all'uso dei corpora per l'apprendimento e l'insegnamento delle lingue. Strategie per l'uso dei corpora in classe; esplorazione di risorse disponibili in Internet.

mercoledì 13 febbraio 14.30-16.30 Aula EF9 Via Venezia: Learner corpora - creazione, analisi e usi di corpora di testi scritti o orali In questa sessione si discuteranno metodi, usi e possibili problematiche inerenti ai learner corpora.

mercoledì 20 febbraio 14.30-16.30 Aula EF9 Via Venezia: Corpora e concordanze - sessione pratica per chi vuole usare software per l'analisi dei corpora (Wordsmith Tools 4 e AntConc). Si lavorerà conpiccoli corpora creati dai partecipanti al Workshop.

Per partecipare non è necessario avere esperienza di corpora.

Tandem

2008-01-23T17:13:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

I hope you had a nice, relaxing holiday and are done (or almost done your exams). I'm quite busy with my Engineering students and getting the exchanges set up for you for next semester. Although the exchanges will give you an opporunity to communicate with foreginers in English, I've just received info from the CLA that they're setting up the Tandem project again.

I remember when we were preparing the PLEs several of you discussed how useful the Tandem experience had been for you. So if you haven't done it (or even have for that matter), here's all the info.

I'll be writing soon to give you details about the second semester.

Take care,

Sarah

Conosci il TANDEM LEARNING, un’opportunità per imparare faccia a faccia una lingua diversa dalla tua con uno studente madrelingua? Vuoi migliorare il tuo italiano, inglese, tedesco, francese, spagnolo? Ti piacerebbe fare nuove amicizie? Allora il Tandem Learning fa proprio al caso tuo!

Il servizio è gratuito, le iscrizioni sono aperte dall’ 1 febbraio al 15 marzo. Per maggiori informazioni visita il sito del Centro Linguistico di Ateneo: http//claweb.cla.unipd.it/cla oppure contattaci all’indirizzo email: alessandro_spadafora@fc.cla.unipd.it

Per saperne di più puoi visitare anche queste pagine web:

http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/cla/tandem.html
http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/home/cwhigham/tandem/index.html

End of part 1 of the course

2007-12-13T11:37:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

Just a quick message to tie up things at the end of this first semester together. I very much enjoyed listening to your presentations and looking at your PLEs on Monday and Wednesday - I hope you did too. I think you all did a very good job. The technicians are currently working on cutting up the video into single pieces that can be uploaded to YouTube. I'll let you know, obviously, when they're online. For those of you who couldn't make it, this will be an opportunity for you to see what you missed. Time permitting, you all will have the chance to do your presentations when we meet up again in February.

I hope that in the next few weeks, you still find the time to do some blogging, even if I won't be making you do it. It's a nice way to keep track of what's going on in everybody's lives.

Well, I can officially say I'm sick now too. Home, achy, fevery with a nasty cough. I'm feeling pretty miserable so I'm going to sign off now. I hope those of you who had the flu are feeling better and that I'll be feeling better soon.

Sarah

E-tivity 10...

2007-12-12T13:25:00.000+01:00

...or mid-term paper

The aim of the mid-term paper is for you to stop, sit down and reflect on what you have done in this course in the past 10 weeks as a continuation of the reflecting you've done do create your PLE. Knowing facts and being able to repeat them is only a small part of the learning process. Learning to learn, knowing what you have learned and what you still need to learn are aspects that are rarely considered in formal education but which are fundamental for your personal and professional development. You’ve been very active in this course, you’ve worked a lot, done a many e-tivities and now it’s time to reflect to consider whether or not you have actually gained new competences, linguistic and not.

Purpose: To reflect on the semester and write a mid-term paper.

Task: Write a mid-term paper with min. 1,000 max 1,500 words (about 3 pages). Similarly to your blogs, the register of your paper does not have to be formal. Like your PLEs, the paper is a personal reflection on your learning. However, it is an academic essay in the sense that I expect the language to be accurate and the text coherent. You will be assessed according to 4 categories:

Task fulfilment:
content

Organisation: cohesion, coherence, paragraphing and punctuation

Vocabulary: range and accuracy

Grammar: range and accuracy

Here are some examples of steps you could take to start your reflecting.

- Go to the course syllabus and look at the course description and aims. Do you feel that for you personally you have met these aims? Maybe not all of them? Why or why not? If you think you have, what makes you think you have and vice versa if you haven’t. Think about reasons/examples that demonstrate what aims you have or have not achieved.

- Make a qualitative evaluation of the course. What did you enjoy and/or find useful and what not? Remember, we’ve all done the course so we don’t need a description of the tools used. This is all about considering the process (what you’ve been learning and its meaning for you) and not the product (the e-tivities).

- What do you know now that you didn’t know before you started the course? What helped you learn what you learned?

- Think about the future. What has this course given you that you think will benefit you in the future. What did you not learn that you still feel you need to learn? What role do you think social software has in learning and could potentially have, or not have, in your lifelong learning process after you graduate?

Timeline: I would like you to send me your papers via email (sarah.guth@unipd.it) by January 30th, preferably before so that I can start correcting them before the semester starts. Send them to me as a .doc with LASTNAME_mid_paper. I would suggest you get peer feedback before sending it to me ;-)

N. B. Here are some indications from my Master’s course (therefore, in Italian) on why you should reflect.

Perché riflettere
§ Perché, come sostengono Bereiter e Scardamalia, la competenza professionale non si sviluppa soltanto tramite l’esperienza, ma attraverso la capacità di ragionare criticamente sui problemi.
§ Perché il processo di apprendimento che conduce all’acquisizione di competenze presuppone:
- consapevolezza circa la necessità del cambiamento,
- autovalutazione della propria condizione e delle aree di miglioramento,
- sperimentazione e pianificazione di obiettivi
- miglioramento assistito da feedback (Boyatzis, 1999)
§ Perché la professionalità è definibile come la capacità di controllo e direzione del processo in cui si è inseriti ed ogni processo si sviluppa attraverso “movimenti interni e non necessariamente compiuti, nè tanto meno lineari, monodirezionali, univoci o in qualche modo definitivi, conclusi, nè immediatamente visibili” (Pascucci, 2003). La professionalità pertanto, così come la competenza e il sapere professionale, va letta in chiave evolutiva, non è data una volta per tutte, ma è sottoposta alle dinamiche del cambiamento e sente l’emergenza di fondersi con pratiche proprie della ricerca.

Come riflettere
Attraverso quella che Donata Fabbri definisce “strategia di distanziazione”, un cambiamento di prospettiva che consenta di osservarci da una certa distanza e dunque di definire e definirci : “C’è un luogo dove si fanno i mattoni e un luogo da dove ci è permesso di guardarci mentre li facciamo, e questi sono due aspetti complementari dei processi di apprendimento: il saper fare e la consapevolezza del saper fare” (Miorandi, 2001). E tra “consapevolezza” e “saper fare” ci aggiungiamo anche il “far sapere”.

If you’ve got questions or doubts, write a comment to this post. Your peers might have the same ones ;-)

Sarah

FreeMind Trouble Shooting

2007-12-07T13:59:00.000+01:00

Hello there all,

Sorry if I didn’t answer your comments on e-tivity 9, but for some unknown reason, Blogger wasn’t sending the comments as it usually does :-( Anway, here I am with a trouble-shooting post about FreeMind. But do remember, it’s optional, not compulsory, for e-tivity 9. The aim of the task is for you to reflect on your learning - that's what I'm interested in, not the technology at this point.

First of all, don’t worry, sourceforge is a very reliable source.

If you’re having trouble downloading, from the downloading page you can choose a different location, e.g. Bologna, Italy. This might (or might not) speed up the downloading process. Note that once you’ve downloaded it, if it’s like the one I downloaded, it’s a zip file and you’ll have to extract the files first. Once you’ve extracted them, installation should start.

But first, let’s look at the system requirements because there’s no point in installing software that can’t run on your computer.

· As far as the Java script is concerned, if you go here you can find the 1.4 version specifically requested by FreeMind. Otherwise, go here and find the latest version. Note that the site says to restart your browser once you have installed it (it may even be worth restarting your computer). Click here for a little useful information about Java :-).

· About 13MB of Hard Disk space for the full version, including all the plug-ins.

· At least 512MB of Memory.

To find out about your hard disk space and memory, click on ‘risorse del computer’, right click on your mouse, and choose ‘proprietà’. This should take you to ‘proprietà del sistema’ where you can find this information.

Linking it to your blog.

As I believe you all know, a wiki is a webpage that can be edited by anyone. The FreeMind website is a wiki, so you can edit it and add your mindmap to the Mindmap Gallery. I’d put them under the English-Educational category. But first, upload your mindmap to the wiki. Click here to do that. Click on the edit button. As usual, you will have to login (use whatever name and password you want, but as usual, if you use the same one, it’s easier to remember!). Go through the process and it will welcome you. Go back to the English-Educational category and click on edit again. Click here to find out how to embed them OR just take a look at what Martina did last year and do the same thing ;-) When you click on save, your link should appear and you can link this to your blog.

If you haven’t got the time or desire, do it on paper, take a digital picture and upload it to your blog (or upload it to Flickr and then to your blog). Flexibility, that’s what finding a solution is all about.

I hope some of this helps. Feel free to write questions as comments to this post now.

Sarah

E-tivity 9

2007-12-04T23:26:00.000+01:00

Personal Learning Environments

You've actually been in the process of building this toolset for the past two months, your blog being the hub for your PLE. However, a PLE is personal: "It [...] recognises the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations" [...] (Attwell, 2007). In other words, how do you learn and in what contexts? I don't know how much you've organized your own learning so far, but upon graduation (not too far away!) you will have to, of course only if you want to keep on learning.

Sarah

Purpose: To develop a mindmap of your personal learning environment.

Task:

4 – Write a blog post about your PLE, building it, what you think about it, etc., including a picture of it or link to it.

5 – Prepare a 2-3 minute talk about your PLE. Next Monday and Wednesday you will be asked to present your PLE to the rest of the class. As there will certainly be similarities in your PLEs, please try and highlight something unique about your specific PLE (otherwise we’ll get totally bored!). I will be videotaping (I hope).

Respond:

I would like you to focus on developing your PLE so there’s no respond part this week. Those of you who do not attend Wednesday lessons will do your mini-presentation on Monday, in addition to some of the Wednesday students. In other words, everyone come prepared to talk on Monday.

Timeline: Monday, December 10.

N.B. A personal learning environment is yours, there's no right or wrong, there's just the way you see it.

Things you might be interested in...

2007-12-04T09:30:00.001+01:00

Dear all,

Here are some notices I've received from colleagues. You might be interested ;-)

Sarah

Want to act in English? It's a great experience - even some of my engineering students have done it. It's a great way both to practice your English and learn to act in front of an audience (a great skill in life!). Click here for details.

Want to read a poem in another language? Erasmus students put on a concert every year at Christmas. Part of the concert involves reading poems in different languages. They are looking for poems about Christmas, peace and similar topics in foreign languages. Another opportunity to speak in public :-) Please write me an email if you're interested.

Up for another (or first) exchange in the USA or Australia? Always an enriching experience. Click here for information.
- N. 5 posti presso Boston University (USA) - 1° semestre a.a. 2008-09 - Scadenza domande 20/2/2008
- N. 4 posti presso University of Michigan - Ann Arbor (USA) - a.a. 2008-09 - Scadenza domande 7/3/2008
- N. 2 posti presso University of New South Wales (Australia) - periodo Luglio-Novembre 2008 - Scadenza domande 25/2/2008

Update: class on Monday and Albany

2007-12-03T21:34:00.000+01:00

Hello all, both those of you who were in class today and those of you who weren't,

Class on Monday, December 3rd -
For those of you who did not attend, we discussed the criteria for evaluating web sources and then had a debate on print vs. virtual sources. The debate got lively at times because people were doing a good job at defending their arguments. I closed up both debates by summarizing the fact that we can appreciate what both sources have to offer us and have to have a critical approach to evaluating sources in any context, but especially on the Web. The Web offers anyone with an Internet connection access to knowledge, but you have to know how to find the right knowledge. Thanks to all of you who spoke out during the debates and to those of you who contributed your ideas but didn't necessarily speak.

Then we did some peer review from groups G (2.30 group) and H (4.00 group). I had you all do the peer review because I wanted to see the kinds of mistakes you were able to correct in each other's works. A few things came out of this exercise:
1 - As Berg (1999) says, students often find that it is actually easier to correct a peer's work and find where meaning is unclear rather than effectively correct what they themselves have written. I was surprised to see the kinds of things you were able to identify as 'wrong' even if you didn't always come up with the right correction. This would seem to indicate that your 'ears' are working well.
2 - Referring to the same quote, it's hard to identify when what you've written is unclear because you know what you intended to say. This is the advantage of having peers read your work.
3 - Peer correction is no easy task. It's important to learn both how to give constructive peer feedback without being offensive as well as to receive peer feedback without feeling offended. We all have something to learn from each other - that's an important point to remember.
4 - The aim of this blogging course so far has been on accuracy and communication. Clearly you are able to effectively communicate even without complete accuracy and that's not only the aim in this course, but an achievement in and of itself. Your informal writing has certainly made progress.
All this to say that what we've done so far in the course is prep for next semester when the focus will be on accuracy and peer feedback ;-) get ready!

Padova-Albany Exchange
Unlike some of our more clever students, I had not noticed that the Americans had started discussions in the Padova-Albany Presentations forum. There's one on Thanksgiving, one on the education system and one on final exams. If you haven't already been there, go check it out. Please reply if you feel you have something to add. There's no guarantee the Americans will reply at this point as they have final exams and finish up this week (see what they have to say about this), but they will read you and appreciate anything you have to add.
It was our first experience collaborating and it's always a bit rough around the edges the first time so thanks for being guinea pigs for the experiment.
As part of their final exam for the course, they have to do presentations. Their teacher will post their presentations to the Web so that we will be able to take a look at the kind of work they do.

See you all Wednesday!

Sarah

No class on Wednesday

2007-11-27T12:33:00.001+01:00

For those of you who weren't in class on Monday and haven't looked at the calendar, there's no class on Wednesday. I'll be in Berlin for a few days at a conference. Please proceed with e-tivity 8 (no technology!) and check in on the forum with Albany - they should have started writing following their Thanksgiving break.

See you next Monday.

Sarah

E-tivity 8

2007-11-27T12:30:00.000+01:00

Judging Online Sources

In her comments on e-tivity 5 (social bookmarking), Roberta said: “I think there are also a drawback, a limit in its use: you cannot know how people value what they have found, I mean, you cannot know according to which criteria a person judges a website as a good or bad one.” Many of you have made similar comments about podcasts and YouTube as well. Nonetheless, you have certainly been judging a lot of online sources since we started this course. This week’s e-tivity is about reflection and discussion and you won’t have to learn how to use any new tool!

Purpose: To reflect on and discuss what criteria you do use and can be used to judge the almost limitless amount of information on the Internet.

Task:

1 – Many of you will be writing your theses soon and there’s no doubt that you will be using the Internet as part of your research. Whenever you do research, be it in the library or online, you have to judge the information you come across. I’d like you to think about what criteria you use to make these judegments. Author? Publisher? Peer rating? Look? etc. Make some notes about this either on paper or in your blog.

2 – Find out what suggestions other universities make for students. Go to the websites listed below and see what they say. Do you agree? Disagree? Have they pointed things out you had not thought of? Feel free, of course, to do your own searches too ;-)

Tips from the University of Essex

Tips from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Tips from San Diego State University

3 – Write a blog post describing what criteria you have used, and will use in the future, to evaluate sources of information, be they online or not.

Respond: Read the other the posts of the members of your group. Write a comment agreeing/disagreeing/reflecting on what your peers have said. Come to class Monday ready to discuss the conclusions you have come to as a group.

Timeline: Friday, November 30 (task), Monday, December 3 (respond).

Monday, 26 November

2007-11-26T11:03:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

First of all, I found out why the Americans have not been writing to the forum: last week was Thanksgiving! I completely forgot. It's one of the most important holidays in the United States and one for which everyone goes home to their families. The day before Thanksgiving is the most-travelled day of the year! It's also the first break the students have had since starting school at the beginning of September. How silly of me, as an American, to forget.

Their teacher, Virginia, tells me that she's going to have her students post to the forum today in class. So, before we give up on the Americans, let's see if they respond to your questions and pose new ones by Wednesday. OK? In class today we might also reflect on what the differences are as greater participation in Italy always tends to be the case in exchagnes.

Today, we're going to continue discussing culture. If you're in front of a computer, click here to access a reading. If not, I've got photocopies. This is the task:
1 - as a class we'll choose 5-7 countries we feel we know enough about to compare;
2 - carefully read the two pages trying to grasp what the 5 dimensions are all about;
3 - in groups try and classify the countries we've chosen according to the dimensions;
4 - go to the website to find out if you were right or not;
5 - discuss the results you find on the website.

Sarah

E-tivity 7

2007-11-21T13:14:00.000+01:00

YouTube

OK. After all this serious stuff, trying to figure out these new tools to function as filters on the web, let’s have some fun! This week we’re going to explore (no panic!) YouTube. YouTube is the largest online video sharing tool. It is probably the fastest-growing tool on Web 2.0. You might be asking yourselves, as you often have in this course, ‘cosa c’entra con l’inglese?’ Well, let’s see if you can figure out how it may be useful for your language learning, or blogging, or anything else!

Sarah

Purpose: To start reflecting on the potential of YouTube for language learning.

Task:
1 – Go to the group I have created for us on YouTube.There you will find three videos and three discussions. You will have to join the group to participate in the discussions. To this, click on "Join this group" on the upper right hand part of the page. Before clicking on the videos, click on each discussion and read my message first. Make sure you click on the discussions that have '07. The other ones are from last semester and thoughyou are welcome to read them (that's why I've left them), I'd like you to only do that once you've already worked on our discussions.

2 – Complete the tasks in the discussions in YouTube. As indicated in my comments, please complete the tasks on YouTube by adding your own comments.

3 – Find a video for your blog. This part of the e–tivity is optional. If you so desire, search for a video on YouTube that says something about you and add it to your blog. How do you do this? When you click on a video, on the right you should see information about the video including ‘embed’. Copy the html, go to blogger, click on new post, click on html and paste the html there. Post the message and the video should appear. Again, if you’ve got questions, feel free to ask via the comment function here! Note: the videos I’ve put here so far have been from YouTube and I’m no expert so it can’t be hard!

N.B. Some videos on YouTube are 'channels' and have RSS feeds to keep you up to date :-)

4 – Reflect. What do you think are the consequences of this tool? Do you think it has been / can be useful for your English language learning? You could also check out TeacherTube and see if you find anything useful there. And for other purposes? Make a blog post reflecting on your YouTube experience.

Respond: Go to each other’s blogs (using bloglines!) and read your peers’ reflections. Have they said things similar to what you thought? Different? What does this mean? Add comments that help develop the debate on the potential or non-potential of these tools in language learning. If they've put a video, comment on that too!

Timeline: Sunday, November 25 (task), Tuesday, November 27 (respond).

Hello all, it's me.

2007-11-19T14:47:00.000+01:00

Hello there,

I'm sitting here at home still a bit under the influence of the anesthesia so it's probably a good thing I'm not there with you right now! But everything went well so I should be up and running by tomorrow :-)

I see that, fortunately, the teacher in the States has posted questions for you all in the various forums and that, unfortunately, except for Kim, the American peers have not responded to your questions. I will ask my colleague in the States to encourage her students to do so in the next few days. You just never know how an exchange is going to work until you try!

For today, if you happen to be in the lab together, maybe you could discuss the questions in groups and give group answers rather than individual ones (to avoid repitition and too much reading). If not, of course you can answer them individually.

I am home and off and on the computer so if you've got any questions, write a comment and I'll try and get back ASAP.

See you all on Wednesday.

Sarah

Feedback e-tivity 5

2007-11-16T12:49:00.000+01:00

Dear all,

It took me awhile to get this post up because I really wanted to read what you'd written and sort through your bookmarks. The 'bloggingenglish' tag in del.icio.us now has 317 websites. About 90% of them look like very useful websites for learning English - an incredible resource not only for you but for students to come. The related tags are: "english language reference learning writing blog education dictionary grammar blogs". Job well done :-)

Reading your posts, it's clear that you all made very similar comments on the advantages of social bookmarking. These could be grouped into 5 categories: access, community, filter, notes and tagging. Let's see what some of you had to say about each.

Access: "it's accessible from everywhere so that you don't need your PC" (Alessia Ferrara)
Community: "we can also create our personal network of people who share our same interests." (Elisa Caramori)
"Everything is based on reciprocal help. / Personally, I find tagging and describing the site a little time-demanding ( I'm lazy, I know!), but, once you've done, for the others is easier to find what they're looking for. Furthemore, I think that other people too spent some of their time to do the same for me, so I write my description more willingly." (Sara De Tomi)
"When I had a look at the websites my peers found, I realized how useful this technology can be: they stored websites which I didn't found in spite of my three hours long navigating!" (Martina Torresan)
"I think creating a sort of community where you can exchange suggestions for new interesting links with people who has your same interests is the biggest advantage this tool has." (Selena Bortoletti)
Filter: "Another "del.icio.us" surprise from the Web / I think it is an amazing advantage: instead of checking the thousands of pages Google would list (many of which are often completely useless and unsuitable), you limit your search to those websites that have already caught other users' attention. In sum, the best of the best!" (Elena Costa)
"while surfing the Net we're constatly overwhelmed by a huge amount of information, which actually makes it difficult to distinguish between good and bad sources, social bookmarking offers you a way to narrow your search to smaller units of information." (Marta Guarda)
Notes: "By putting a brief description of the site you chose you can let everybody know what it is about and in this way, when you check other people's choices, you know which are worth visiting and which are not." (Giovanna Foschini)
"Thanks to the notes given by the people who previously visited the website, you can have a general idea of the website you're interested in and then decide to log on or simply to quit and try another one." (Elena Boscaro)
Tags: "it enables users to organize their bookmarks by means of informal tags instead of traditional folders! By simply typing a keyword, like blogging, or English for example, you can find the websites of interest to you and cluster them into lists organized by tags…can you really imagine what it means?!" (Silvia Nicolini)
"I like the fact that you have tags and so, when you visit another person's page, you see all the topics he is interested in. This could allow you to extend your research with other linked topics! / Moreover, I could understand some of their interests and what they like. In the future, when we will add other sites, del.icio.us will become a way to know each other!!" (Elisa Rossi)
"I especially appreciate the possibility to organise my bookmarks into folders. Bookmarking on your own computer is undoubtedly useful, but if you save a large amount of sites (as I do) the list becomes messy and in the end it loses most of its aim." (Anna Giabardo)

Was it all good though? No. Some of you made thoughtful, critical comments as well.

The importance of writing notes: "I found irritating that few people write anything about the site's content. I mean, most of the times the title is clear enough to let you know what the website is about, but it doesn't say in details the most interesting characteristics (If there are exercises and their corrections for example!)" (Anna Bordignon)

Who is the del.icio.us community?: "However, I think there are also a drawback, a limit in its use: you cannot know how people value what they have found, I mean, you cannot know according to which criteria a person judges a website as a good or bad one. So, if you must deal with an issue which is of particular interest to you, you should go to Google and filter the options retrieved by yourself and then save them in De.li.cio.us!" (Roberta Fumani)

Maybe it's not all on del.icio.us: "who does make me sure that the websites the users suggest are really the most interesting and that there aren't others more relevant in the whole net, and they don't appear in the list? Who does assure me that the people who suggest the websites are really reliable, in the sense that they could find the most catching website about that specific topic?" (Giovanna Sperotto)

Is it better to do it alone?: "I mean that if you have to do a research or a tesis (such as that we are supposed to be preparing for our final graduation!) on a specific topic, it could be better for you to search, read and analyze all the material by yourself, seeing what you need, what you don't need and what you could put in it but only in the end if you have time and there's space for it. I think that leaning against these new technologies deprive us of this fundamental part of the research, besides our critical attitude." (Giovanna Sperotto)

These are all points that are worth considering and, of course, we should always maintain a critical attitude to anything we do, right?

Finally, I'm really enjoying the interesting, eye-catching titles for your posts that many of you were coming up with. I had never considered that this is a benefit of blogging to: it's great seeing how creative you are getting with the few words in a title. Some from this e-tivity that I particularly appreciated were:

"Simply del.icio.us"
"A way out of the dumpsite"
"...social bookmarking: tag to live, live to tag"

Sarah

What's going on? An update!

2007-11-15T22:15:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

For those of you who weren't in class on Wednesday, I have decided to have you all participate in the exchange with the Uni of Albany for several reasons, none of which I will explain here (write a comment if you want to know). Therefore, in class on Wednesday, in addition to starting e-tivity 6, we all took look at the responses to the questionnaires given by the American students and the Italian ones (you guys) and tried to note general impressions, differences and similarities. Then each group of 2 or 3 students wrote their initial impressions to this forum. In order to get the discussion going, based on these posts and your impressions, I have asked you all to start posing questions to your American peers. To simplify, let me lay it out like this:

N.B. If you're new to the exchange, check out the home page.
1-If you haven't already done so, answer the questionnaire.
2-Take a look at the responses the other students have given and take a look at the general impressions we came up with in class.
3-Based on these observations, individually or in groups (just make sure to sign your names) pose questions in the forums you have been assigned to. Click here to see the forums and names of students assigned to each forum. I have opened a topic for each forum (Questions from Padova to Albany) for each group. Just send a reply to that topic with your questions. Hopefully the American students will reply.
4-Monday. You have Lab B in Maldura reserved for you from 2.30 to 6.00. Hopefully the American students will have replied starting up a discussion. If so, continue the discussion. If not, let me know here in the course blog and I'll contact the American prof. By Monday, there should also be questions waiting for you from them. Please consider the questions, reflect on them and then answer them (individually or in groups). You can also work on e-tiviy 6 ;-)

Most importantly, I have decided to have you all participate in the exchange to get you all reflecting on your own culture and the 'other' culture. I hope this will happen in the next few weeks.

As always, write a comment back if you need help.

Sarah

p.s. Marina and Sara - even though you've decided to move to the 4.30 groups (thank you!!!) you can stay in your blogging groups (E and C respectively). For now it doesn't make a difference since we have different groups for the exchange. We can probably hold out until the end of the semester ;-)

You might be interested ;-)

2007-11-14T16:37:00.000+01:00

Giovedì 15 Novembre alle ore 15 si terrà una video webchat sul Programma di borse di studio Fulbright e le opportunità di studio negli Stati Uniti.

Questo evento promosso dall’ Ufficio Public Affairs della Ambasciata degli Stati Uniti e dalla Commissione Fulbright in occasione della VII edizione della International Education Week, rientra nel programma “Face to Face” trasmesso in diretta sul sito della Ambasciata degli Stati Uniti.

Durante la trasmissione che avrà la durata di circa un’ora, le consulenti della Commissione risponderanno alle domande di tutte le persone interessate che potranno partecipare alla conversazione collegandosi al sito.

Le faccio presente che le domande sui vari argomenti possono essere anticipate collegandosi al sito fin da ora.

E-tivity 6

2007-11-14T12:47:00.000+01:00

Podcasts

A podcast is a multimedia file (audio or video) distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds. Podcasts can be downloaded onto personal computers and mobile devices like mp3 players so that users can listen to or watch the podcast whenever and wherever they want to. Some podcasts are also offered in streaming, i.e. you can listen to or watch them directly online. The term was coined by combining the word "broadcasting" (from radio and television) and "iPod" (the most popular mp3 player). The number of podcasts available online has grown exponentially in recent years. The BBC, radio RAI, NPR, etc. all offer podcasts of their most popular programs. But podcasting has grown beyond that. Many amateurs have also taken up podcasting producing their home-based radio programs and putting them online. Universities like Stanford and Duke in the United States now offer many lectures online in the form of podcasts. To sum up, there is now a quantity of freely downloadable high-quality materials available in English that learners could only dream of in the past. Imagine, you don’t have broadband at home, so you download the podcast at the Uni or an Internet point, upload it onto your mp3 player and listen to it whenever and wherever you want.

Purpose: To explore the world of podcasts to find several that you can use to practice your listening skills in English.

Task:

1 - Search for podcasts that might be useful for English listening practice. Do a search for the word “podcast” and another word like “English”, “education”, or anything else that might interest you in Google, del.icio.us and odeo.

2 – Find at least 3 that are good (unfortunately as is the case in the blogosphere, you’ve got to be critical!).

3 - Save the urls in del.icio.us using at least "bloggingenglish" and "podcast" as tags. Subscribe to the podcasts in your Bloglines (you could even make a playlist!).

4 – Take notes on what the podcasts you chose offer and how they could be helpful and make a post to your personal blogs in which you list the urls of the podcasts you’ve chosen explaining why you’ve chosen them and giving your impressions of the world of podcasts.

Respond: Read the other the posts of the members of your group go visit at least one of the podcasts each has suggested. Then write a comment to their blogs giving your impressions.

Timeline: Sunday, November 18 (task), Tuesday, November 20 (respond).

E-tivity 4 : Feedback Corrected

2007-11-12T21:47:00.000+01:00

Dear all,

We corrected the first half with the 2.30 group and the second half with the 4.30 group. I hope you found correcting in class useful. Here is the fully corrected version. Please compare it to your corrections to see if and where you were right or wrong. As always, there may be more than one correct answer so please let me know if you think one of your corrections that was different from mine might be right. Hopefully you’ll learn something from all of this ;-)

Click here to see the corrected version.

Job well done all :-)

Sarah

Monday 12 November: 16.30 Group

2007-11-12T11:08:00.001+01:00

Hello all,

While your peers begin an exchange with the University of Albany (don't worry - you'll have the chance next semester), we're going to continue our discussions on culture.

Go the this article from the Times on a blogging law proposed by the Italian Parliament.

As you read, take note of your initial reactions and any new/strange language or structures.

Then, with your peers, discuss how you would respond to this article if you were to write a comment.

Go back to the article and start reading some of the comments.

Discuss the comments with your peers (both contents and language).

Finally, if you are so inclined, write your own comment!

Sarah