Analyzing online information sources...

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How can we effectively evaluate online information? Certainly, it is not as easy as it seems...

Browsing through the three websites Sarah suggested us, I’ve become aware of how important it is to learn how to evaluate the huge amount of information we daily find on the Internet! So what criteria should we use to distinguish good information from bad? How can we get out of such a big mess!?
After spending some time reading the tips of the University of Essex, I’ve come across a lot of useful suggestions on how to work out a method to evaluate online resources! Here is what I’ve come up with…
Well, if we have to do some research for our next thesis, a good way to start with is asking ourselves: where should we start looking? Is the information we are looking for only retrievable in the Internet? If this is the case, what we need is a good search engine…so we should forget Google or AltaVista as they give far too much information which might be misleading; in this case, what we need is a meta search engine (such as dogpile, search) or a specialized search engine (like Google scholar), which can refine the information retrieved in a more effective way! :-) Surprisingly, I found out that the University of Essex provides its students with free online services (like Intute), thanks to which they have access to the best web resources for education and research...great, isn't it?!

Moreover, what we have to be careful in evaluating the quality of a website is the authorship, i.e. who is the author, what are his credentials and if he/she had past writing experience in the field: when writing my thesis this was one of the first things I checked in order to be sure that what I found was trustworthy and at the same time worth reading.
A criterion I’ve always followed is that of evaluating the credibility of a website as well: in each new website we come across we should check if the home page displays the name and the logo of the institution or organization who provided the information, and if the website is frequently reviewed by the editors. Therefore, it is always important to have a look at when the information was published and when it was last updated. So we’d better not use undated sites if we are looking for recent information! ;-) In addition, we should be capable of verifying the kind of information we are retrieving, i.e. if it is based on facts or on opinions, which is not always easy to establish when reading through online material.

One think I didn’t pay attention to was the quality of the inner organization of a website: the information provided in the homepage should be easily accessible to everyone, even to the more inexpert people; moreover, a website should have external links which can help you retrieve more information about the topic of interest to you, as well as an internal search engine would be useful for the websites which contain a huge amount of information, so that more relevant material can be recovered. In addition, the content of a website should be as complete and accurate as possible.
The criterion of peer-evaluation was not unknown to me: anyway, I think it is essential in order to make sure of the quality of the information presented...Actually, I may trust more a website which has been highly rated than one which is not! ;-)

That’s all for now,

Bye girls, see you on Monday!

YouTube..a way to share your videos!

Well, it is not the first time I heard about YouTube, but I must confess that I never visited this website until last Wednesday! So before exploring the YouTube dimension I went searching for information just for curiosity’s sake and I found out that you tube provides 100 million videos per day..could you ever have imagined that?

Once I entered YouTube, I was simply struck by the number of videos and things I came across in this HUGE website!!! I spent hours visiting it because I couldn’t resist the temptation to click on the links that I found here and there on the webpage and watch the videos that caught my attention! ;-)

What I liked the most of this website is that it is organized by categories according to the topic (for example cars, animals, films) where you can find any video which can be of interest to you; however, that’s not all! YouTube is also a way to filter videos, making it possible for you to know which are the most recent, the most discussed, the most responded, and even which videos can be uploaded on your mobile phone..isn’t it fantastic!?

Moreover, I consider this new digital tool to be far better than television: YouTube enhances us to make our own contribution to develop it by creating videos, sharing them with people from all over the world and have our own say, instead of just sitting in front of the screen passively as it happens with television. In addition, the fact that it’s users and not show producers who make and broadcast their own videos makes anything more real and personal and it enables you to know more about people of our age (since most of the videos are broadcast by young people), their lifestyle, how they cope with everyday problems and what they think about certain issues such as politics, health care and so on.

Obviously, we have to pay attention to use this tool, as when surfing the Web, because in YouTube you can find a lot of videos and comments which are not filtered by moderators so they might contain vulgar and rude images or expressions. In fact, another thing that I appreciated of YouTube is the chance of creating a group in which it’s only the people subscribed to it who can post videos and comments..good way of filtering, isn’t it?

Moreover, YouTube is a useful way to improve our English language learning: by watching the videos and reading people’s comments you can learn a lot of colloquial expressions! Some curious words I found were: convo which stands for conversation; luv for love; huppy for happy; cuz for because; vid for video.
Since I’ve recently become really curious about what concerns technology and new digital tools in general (also thanks to this course!), I searched in TeacherTube and I came across this video, which immediately caught my attention: it explains in a very clear and plain English how to use wiki, a new tool which enables groups of users to create collaborative websites..enjoy! ;-)

If you can't watch the video, please click on this link:

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b7a75a3ce09d40b497f6&page=5&viewtype=&category=rf

and it should appear.

Let me know what you think of it!

Bye!

Exploring the world of podcasts...

PODCASTS...somewhere I’ve already heard of them, but this is certainly the first time I get in touch with this new tool Sarah suggested to us! Well, I have to say that searching for some interesting podcasts at first took me a lot of time because I couldn't easily find, open and download the podcasts I wanted to listen to, maybe because of my old computer... but finally, guys, I got it! :-D

Exploring the search engines Google, Odeo and del.icio.us, I was really struck by the number of podcasts I found and I must confess that it was very hard for me to choose only three of them…anyway, I hope you find them interesting and useful for your English learning! ;-)

The first website I chose to visit is betteratenglish because it’s very well-organized and clear: podcasts are divided into sections according to categories, topics and levels, so even an inexpert learner can easily find what he/she is searching for! Besides, the latest podcasts are separated from the less recent ones, which you can find under the section archives..so if you miss an episode of a podcast you were particularly interested in, you can immediately find it by simply clicking on the link!
I chose to click on Real English conversations and I listened to an informal discussion about television between a British and an American English Native speaker, in particular dealing with tv commercials: I found it very useful because through a simple dialogue I've learnt important differences between British ad American English (such as talking about advertising, Americans say commercials while British people say adverts) as well as phrasal verbs I didn’t know (i.e. to go about, put up with, see through it) and idioms, like don’t get me started, which means that if you start talking about a certain topic, nobody will be able to stop you!

Moreover, besides podcasts concerning everyday situations, you can also find those dealing with business English: I listened to some of them (try this just for curiosity’s sake!) and I must say that despite what I thought, they can be understood without any difficulty and very useful to enlarge our business vocabulary as well! ;-)

To listen to more informal podcasts, from this website I went to www.china232.com, which was created by two American guys: even though it’s not as complete and well-organized as the first one, I really liked it because there are a lot of interesting and funny podcasts: each of them include the transcript of the podcasts added with explanations of complicated words and expressions as well as further discussions about the topic! This way, they perfectly combine fun with learning! For example, I listened to a conversation about vacation plans, which tells the problem of a guy who wants to postpone his trip to Hawaii but the travel agent refused permission, saying that the trip was non-refundable and non-transferable. I think this podcast is very useful because there are very clear explanations of the words and idioms with plenty of examples taken from everyday language (for example to explain the meaning of the expression to bend the rules and something came up). Moreover, for each podcast a further discussion about the topic is provided, so that you can get a deeper understanding of the situation and know a little bit more about American culture. What else could you want??! ;-)

Finally, the third website I visited was eslpod.com: it offers a wide variety of interesting and informal podcasts dealing with common situations which can be easily understood by any kind of learners. Among them I chose to listen to this, in which husband and wife have a discussion about the character of their neighbor: by simply listening to this brief conversation I’ve learnt a lot of new sayings and words, such as to shoot the breeze (i.e. to have a conversation in an informal way), busybody (i.e. a person who is too interested in what other people are doing) and to be entitled to something (i.e. to have the right to do something). Besides, the fact that they speak very slow helped me a lot to have a more complete understanding!

Let me know what you think about the three podcasts I chose,
See you soon!
bye

DEL.ICIO.US...What a wonderful tool!!!

Again I’ve learnt something that was completely new to me, i.e. DEL.ICIO.US!!! It is a fantastic example of what is called social bookmarking, which is a new way to store and organize your favorite websites. You might think that there is nothing new in it as you can easily do it from your computer at home..however, my dear peer, if you think so, you are completely wrong! Through del.icio.us you can bookmark and have access to your favorites from anywhere you are, not just from your computer! And that’s not all…del.icio.us enables you to share them with your peers as well as with all the people subscribed to it..I can hardly believe it!!! Moreover, del.icio.us is a very useful tool in order to filter out the huge amount of information you can daily found on the Internet, which may often be unreliable, unnecessary and even misleading. From the notes you find under each website suggested by the members of del.icio.us you can easily retrieve what it is about, how many people saved it (and therefore whether they consider it useful or not!) and if it might be of interest to you: if so, you can save it in “your favorites” and have access to it anytime you want…isnt’ it fantastic??!!! Besides, del.icio.us offers another great advantage: 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?! Moreover, you can decide with whom you want to share your websites, i.e. if you want to share them publicly or only with people you chose to put in your networks: they can view them by category or tags, in chronological order simply randomly..Have you seen how many things you can do with del.icio.us??!! :-)

After spending some time exploring the world of del.ici.ous, I had a look at my peers’ favorites and I must say that all of you girls chose very interesting and original websites!! Basically, I've noticed that all of us are mainly interested in websites regarding online dictionaries or those which include a lot of grammar exercises, writing and listening activities; however, we also try exploring some other levels of English, i.e. searching for the origin of words and idioms or for particular techniques to improve our conversational skills.
For example, Elena mainly focused on online dictionaries: this is the website I've appreciated the most because I always have problems to choose the right preposition which can combine with the verb!
Among Giada’s choices I found this website particularly useful because it really offers a huge variety of listening activities according to the level of our English; moreover, most of the tasks include pre and post-listening activities which help you have a more complete understanding of the topic discussed.
As fas as Letizia’s favorites are concerned, this website immediately caught my attention because it gives very useful tips on how to avoid unpleasant hesitations and sounds while speaking to people! Therefore, if you’re going to become a teacher or just want to improve your conversational skills, you’d better follow them! ;-)
Finally, among Zara’s choices I think that this website is worth visiting because it includes a very interesting forum in which English/American Native speakers discuss about the origin of words of common use, such as politician or t-shirt..it's really interesting reading through their comments!!

I’m looking forward to reading your impressions !

Bye!!!

Halloween: HOW MUCH DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT THIS HAUNTED HOLIDAY??

Undoubdedly, it is a good question!
Since I didn’t know very much about the origins of this holiday, I decided (as Sarah suggested us to do!) to surf the net to search for further information and I found a lot of interesting things! :-)

First of all, its name is a shortened form which stands for All-hallow-even, as the 31th of October is the eve of All Halows day (i.e. All Saints day) and traces its origins back to the ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. It is believed that on that day the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead are blurred, so people used to dress as otherworldly creatures in order to drive out evil spirits. This gradually evolved into trick-or-treating because children would knock on their neighbors’ doors, in order to gather fruit and sweets for the Halloween festival. During the centuries this ancient belief spread throughout Europe and in the 19th centrury was exported in America, where it became a rooted tradition.

Nowadays these ‘American’ custom of celebrating Halloween has influenced our culture as well, even though in my opinion it has only become a way to make money and feed consumerism, as shops sell any kind of pumpkin and fancy dress, and the same do locals and discos, which organize for that occasion any kind of party and stay open till early in the morning!

As you clearly see, on the one hand it is difficult for me to have arguments in favour of this ‘imported’ custom, which I didn’t absolutely feel part of our tradition; however, on the other hand, I think that we should begin to open our mind to different traditions, as nowadays globalization is entering our world day by day: this doesn’t mean that we have to have the same holidays and celebrations which other countries have, but that we should know and appreciate the positive effects which they may have on our culture. For example, the Halloween festival can have positive sides as well, as this is an occasion in which children begin to overcome their fears of spirits, evil creatures and darkness by dressing up as monsters and ghosts, so that they can go out from rational thought, even if for a moment, giving free play to their wistful imagination and to the world of their dreams and fairy tales, which I think it is very important for their growth.

Let me know what you think about this topic!

Bye!

Using feeds and feed aggregators...

Hi guys!

Well, I must admit that during our last lesson on the lab I felt a little bit confused in having to do with feeds and feeds aggregators: at first I didn’t understand what the aim of the activity was, but when I started to learn something more about it I realized that feeds are very useful because they enable you to spare a lot of time in searching if your peers have updated their blogs: thanks to this new tool now with a simple view on your screen you can immediately see if they did it!!!

Playlists can be useful tools as well, as they help you organize all your favourite websites as well as your peers’ blogs into lists, so that you can have a general overview of the latest updates, isn’t it fantastic?!

Moreover, thanks to feed aggregators you can always receive all the most recent updates of the websites you chose to put on the playlist! For example, I subscribed to the BBC website and to two other very interesting sites: the first one is dictionary, which every day provides the meaning of particular or new words that you can usually find in newspapers..so if you’re simply too lazy to search for their meaning in paper dictionaries, this could be a very useful tool to keep always up-to-date about new words!;-) Another one is quotes of the day, where you can read the funniest quotes that people every day post on this site..why don’t you have a look and subscribe to it as well? ;-)

Let me know what you think!
See you tomorrow!