YouTube is everywhere!

I thought YouTube was something older, but I discovered it was created only in 2005. We all know it’s a website which allows you to see and share videos with other users. You can watch videos about everything, and when I say everything I mean whatever is possible (and impossible, too, unluckily!).

I began surfing in YouTube last year when I was in Barcelona. There it was impossible to me to see Italian TV-programs, and I have to admit that when you live abroad for a long period you miss a little bit what you were used to see in Italy. Obviously there were thousands of things to do, but before going to sleep I usually searched for parts of Italian shows in the net in order to fall asleep convinced to know a little bit more about what was happening in my country.

Everyone can post his/her favorite videos: from a home-made video to something recorded on TV or downloaded from the net. You can be the protagonist of your video or another person can be the actor, most of the time without knowing it. Nowadays with all these new cell-phones it’s easier recording whatever in every moments but above all without the others to know. Just an example, students in Italian school. Is increasing the number of those students who put on YouTube videos about pieces of nonsense they or their teachers do in class, or about what students do to or with teachers, or the contrary. This is an example of what is going to be YouTube in the future: a well of TV-trash and a documentation of reality (or degradation, I could say!), as well.

As far as the English learning is concerned, I think YouTube is a very useful and economic tool to improve your study of a language. Because, obviously, we are always speaking of English, but, as foreign languages students we are, we can use all the tools Sarah suggested to us for the other languages we are studying, too. We can watch videos all the times we need, we have the opportunity to hear mother tongue people speaking, listening to their pronunciation, developing our listening and oral skills without spending money!

I hope YouTube will keep its sense of cheerfulness, irony and fun, without collapsing, as unluckily it’s happening, in pornography or trash. Therefore I decided to post an amazing video on what Europeans think of Italians! Hope you’ll have fun watching it!

Learning English through your iPod!

photo by Tyson Smith

I have to admit this was the very first time I had some problems in order to understand what “podcasting” means. Therefore I apologize with all my peers to have been so late! I had to search the definition of this word in the dictionaries and last in Wikipedia, and it’s here where I found the most detailed description. In the end I discovered that is more or less the activity I do every time I download a file for my iPod. You can now understand how stupid I am in using computer!

To sum up, podcasts are above all music and video files you can download automatically in your computer and then transfer in your mp3 reader, if you want. Nowadays, for example, lots of radio stations create their podcasts in order to enable users to listen to them wherever they want. You don’t always have the time to listen your favorite radio program, so that you can do it when it is more congenial to your obligations.

By subscribing in bloglines. com the most interesting podcasts websites I found I noticed how useful it can be to get informed whenever they are updated with new files, new interviews, new programs and new discussions. After 6 weeks of class I can say the computer tools we are getting to know week by week will be helpful for the improvement of our oral skills, as well.

After a little research, thanks to del.icio.us that undoubtedly makes me waste less time, I discovered some affective websites:

- English as a Second Language Podcasts it's a kind of English course in the net. Instead of buying one of those expensive series of dvds with dialogues and exercises to learn English, here you are a perfect one. You can find dialogues, with the text transcription too, on the most various topics: from the discussion with your boss to tips on how to write a love song for your lover. If you register to the websites, you have the possibility to learn new vocabulary and grammar rules. Each episode represents a short piece of everyday life and this will help you in your English practice.

- Open Culture: Audiobook Podcast Collection it's a audio library, where you can find chapters of some of the most famous novels and poetry of English literature read by some English mothertongues. I straigh away searched for my favorite authors, that are the Bronte sisters, but unfortunately I couldn't find the audiobook of "Wuthering Heights", so that I cheered me up by listening to a chapter of "Jane Eyre". How a useful tool is this website in order to practice my English pronounciation!

- BBC Radio Homepage in order to get updated everytime with news from all over the world. How could it be missed? Besides listening to the news all the times you want to understand them better and to practice pronounciation and learning new words, I found interesting the link that allow you to listen to the news in different languages and the free music you can listen to through the BBC Radio.

I'm sure that a tool like the one we have learnt to use this time will turn my approach to computer science and technology more positive and optimistic. I enjoyed surfing the net to find something which could help me improving my English oral skills. Hoping to learn much more about this, see you at the next discovery!

Don't leave room to laziness!!!

photo by undertakergonzalez

Here again talking about what the net offers to lazy users! As a matter of fact the aim of social bookmarking is to filter useful websites for those users who don’t have enough time, patience or will to search what they need and what they are looking for by themselves. Once you logged in you can have access to series and lists of suggested websites on the topic you’re interested in, filtered for you by diligent students. But my questions are: 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?

I wonder whether you have notice how skeptical I am about internet and its users. I hope having the possibility to change my opinion during this “bloggingenglish” year. I don’t believe that sharing is always the best way to produce something. 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.

I know Sarah suggested us to get familiar with social bookmarking because they can make our job easier and in fact they actually permit this, because instead of wasting time by searching in Google or wherever, we can trust in the help the other users give us with their suggestions and pieces of advice. I admit to have been taken the suggestion in a far too negative way, but I want to reaffirm my motto: “Don’t leave room to laziness!”.

As far as the websites suggested by my peers I find relevant the following:
- among those suggested by Stefania I found that of the BBC really useful. Every time I try to read an English or an American newspaper or to watch Tv-news, I have big problems in order to understand everything. In this site there is a section where you have the possibility to learn the meaning of the scientific and professional words journalists use throughout their articles and interviews.
- among those suggested by Alessia I think the websites about the most common mistakes in English is helpful for an Italian girl like me who wants to delete everything could demonstrate she's Italian. When Sarah corrects our texts, she always finds more or less the same typical mistakes of Italian people studying English. I hope this websites will help me to improve my lackness!
- among those suggested by Roberta I appreciate that on punctuation. As a matter of fact punctuation in English is another big problem for Italian students. For example we don't quite know how to use semi-colon, or when we write informal we tend to excess in the use of dots. This website provides rules and examples in order to understand better how to use them.
- among those suggested by Caterina I like that on intonation. It's true that unfotunately is very difficult for everyone to leave his/her particular accent, but I hope we can do something to improve it just by following some useful rules and by practicing. This website allows you to listen to a mothertongue reading some words, so that you can learn the pronounciation and the word stress patterns.
- among those suggested by Marta I found really interesting those on English literature. I'm so fond of literature that I immediately started surfing them, searching for my favourite authors and reading some pieces of their novels. I'm absolutely convinced that studying the culture of England means learning and analizing its history and its literature!

How many things we learn!

Technology is great! I mean, nowadays you can do a lot of things only by pushing a button or by clicking on a icon. The last thing we learnt was how to keep track of new information of our favorite websites or blogs. Actually I can’t realize how much more we have to learn and discover, because every day we are amazed by the news the net can propose to its users, but I’m sure we have a long way to go.

Technology is really helpful and above all allows us to do whatever we want very rapidly, but I’m afraid that all these improvements are going to make everybody lazier than what we already are. People go shopping on the net, people organize their holidays just by filling some forms they find in internet, people download movies and music or read newspapers on the net. I ask, what about crowded supermarket? What about agency travelers’ job? And what about eating pop-corns watching a movie in a dolby-sorround cinema? And what about chatting a little bit with that curious man of the newspaper kiosk?
That’s only a little part.

Nevertheless I think that a program like a feeds aggregator that allows us to know if one of our peers updated her blog, gets our task easier and quicker. I know that not everybody has the free time I have, so it’s better for him such programs do exist to make easier his job. I admit I’m not very good in using computer’s programs, so I will continue to do whatever is possible without using internet or whatever concern technologies. I hope one day I will improve my computer skills. But I admit not to be so optimistic, or better to say I don’t want to be. I won’t leave room to laziness!