Men's A Cappella

Have a nice Christmas!

Personal Learning Environment

This is the most difficult activity I’ve ever dealt with during this course. I realized that it’s not so easy to develop a mindmap of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). It took me a lot of time to think about how I learn and in what context.

First of all I made a list of all the different activities and tools I use making no difference between formal or informal learning. As I now know the 80% of our learning is informal. The majority of our improvements take place outside the classroom. This is the reason why developing a mindmap of my PLE has overturned to be fundamental in order to organize a lifelong informal learning process. I tried to focus my attention on the tools and activities I’m using in an informal context. Then I thought about Web 2.0 tools we’re using in our University English course judging which can be useful for my English learning outside that formal context.

I wasn’t really convinced of the reliability of my first mindmap. The simple division between formal and informal context wasn’t coherent enough. I was looking for a clearer and more specific categorization. I thought that my European Language Portfolio could help me to find the categories I needed. Since my first year of English learning I have been thought to identify what kind of activity I was doing (e.g. listening exercises, reading exercises etc.). So I asked myself if I could use the same categorization for my PLE. The answer was yes. I divided my mindmap in 4 macro groups called Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing. I put in those groups all the tools and activities I found in origin.

I’m convinced that my mindmap will work very well. In my opinion it’s very important to understand which tool you can use if you want to improve a particular language skill.

Judging Online Sources (E-tivity 8)

Using the Net I feel a little bit uncomfortable because when I search information I’m overwhelmed by it. This almost limitless amount of information can have both pros and cons. In the Net you can find everything you want but can you trust all information you come across?

Sometimes I choose one web site instead of another without knowing precisely what are the criteria of my decision. Usually this happens when I surf the Net to find relaxing or funny things. When I deal with a more ‘serious’ matter I pay more attention to my choices. These are the criteria I apply when I make judgements about web sites:

1. Find the author of the web site.
2. Why is this information provided here?
3. Find when the site was last updated.
4. Judge the style of the web site. Is the information exhaustive?
5. If you use del.icio.us read other people’s descriptions of the site.

Reading the suggestions that other Universities made for students I found new useful criteria. It’s a good thing to start your research with a precise idea of what kind of information are you looking for and which sources are likely to be most useful to you. It’s important to understand if the site follows a particular view point and excludes others. If the information has been copied from other sources make sure that there’s a bibliography somewhere in the site.

For more information have a look at these sites:
How to evaluate sources on the web
Evaluating web sites

Judging sources

Italian Memory

Yesterday I watched many videos about stereotypes on YouTube. It’s very funny how foreigners imitate Italians. It was like I expected. When I ask my foreign friends how they see Italians they always repeat me these words: pizza, spaghetti, mandolino, mafia. I realised that I needed more information about this organisation called mafia, this Italian phenomenon. I tried to use YouTube to find some information. I wonder if our generation have an idea of the tragic events that occurred in Italy 15 years ago, in 1992. It’s extremely important to know our recent history. I think something has changed but there are still writers like Saviano who has to live under escort. Nowadays public opinion has a great influence and if we give importance to these news and facts things can change. Like a great man once said: ‘Mafia is a human phenomenon and as a human phenomenon it has a beginning and an end.’

I invite you to watch these videos. In the first one you can see some shocking photos but this kind of reportage had been broadcasted on Italian national television. So I decided to put it on my blog.

YouTube (E-tivity 7)

YouTube is a video sharing tool among the web 2.0 tools we’re experiencing during our English course. YouTube is known and used all over the world. The problem is how people use it. On this web site you can find every kind of videos. Some are really clever like the one we watched about iRack. Others are funny like the one about languages interpreter. But you have to pay attention because there are some others which are stupid or vulgar. Current events showed us how young students put stupid or offensive videos on YouTube. So I want to repeat that the important thing is how you use this tool and what are you looking for.


I like to show you this funny video which is strictly connected with stereotypes. The title is ‘French learning English’ and it’s performed by a well known actor.

I’m doubtful about the use of YouTube for my English language learning. I looked for something connected with ESL/EFL learning. I found videos of English lessons that cannot be really useful for us. The only interesting thing I found is a video which explains how to write an essay.


Even if I don’t think YouTube can be of real interest for our language learning, I admit that it’s a great tool that can be used for other purposes. You could say what you want through a video without censorship. Certainly you have to keep in mind a certain ethics and a sense of respect for other people. From this point of view YouTube seems to me a very democratic tool.

Podcasts (E-tivity 6)

Strange but true! Last week we talked about podcasts and this topic was a little familiar to me. I came across podcasts thanks to my friends. Some of them regularly download audio files onto their mp3 players. They suggested me that this tool could be useful for my listening improvements in English but I didn’t have much trust in them. I was a bit doubtful about its usefulness. Usually I try to improve my listening skills through web sites that provide video and audio files. Certainly this strategy depends on the use of a computer and I need free time to spend in front of it. This week surfing the Net and looking for podcasts I understood how to optimize the use of my time and at the same time how to improve my English.


Firstly I came across podcasts on the BBC web site. I chose immediately this url: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/globalnews/. I like keeping abreast of current news from all over the world. Regularly I read or listen BBC news but sometimes I don’t have much time. Thanks to podcasts I can download the BBC World Service news programme. It lasts up to 30 minutes and it’s updated twice a day. In this web site there are BBC radio stations as well. I can quickly download their podcasts on my mp3 player and listen to radio programmes at the bus stop, while I’m going to University...


My second choice is The VOA web site. There I can find radio transcripts and audio files. At this stage I think it’s very important for my improvements to find the right tools. Sometimes it isn’t so easy because I tend to choose the easier things and to indulge on my level of advanced learner. Now it’s time to expand our knowledge of English and American culture. For this reason I chose this web site: http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/the-making-of-a-nation.cfm. I can receive every week an audio file about American national history. If I want to know more about a culture it’s fundamental to know his past and history.


The third web site I chose is very funny. The url is http://storynory.com/. It is thought for children because you can download stories for kids. It can be useful for three reasons:
1. Stories for kids use a particular language and vocabulary which is very interesting and funny for me to learn.
2. You can expand your knowledge of the traditional stories for American or English kids. In Italy the most famous story for children is Pinocchio. Which are American traditional stories?
3. Kids’ stories are part of a culture as well. You can learn new aspects of a culture because these stories usually have their origins in ancient times.

Social Bookmarking (E-tivity 5)

The first week I created my blog and it was like a moon landing. A little step for humanity, a great feat for me. Then we experienced the blogosphere, a tangled world based on sharing things. Bloglines seemed to put my head in order. Finally came del.icio.us. Unfortunately I had no idea of what it was and how I could benefit from this tool. I had never heard of it before.


1. First of all del.icio.us can change your old way of storing your favourite web sites and blogs by using another web site and not your browser.

2. It helps you not only to store but also to share your favourite web sites and blogs.

3. When I’m not using my computer I found very tedious to write the url of a web site on a piece of paper. If you save an url on del.icio.us you have access to it by using any computer.


This system is called social bookmarking and it has many pros. Your bookmark can benefit other people because it’s public. Your peers can see what you choose and vice versa. In a few weeks you can produce a network of useful web sites. Del.icio.us can help you with your searches. Using other tools like google you find a huge number of results which is very difficult to manage. Del.icio.us can also make your life easier because when you store something you have to write a description of the web site and this help people to know if it can be useful for their searches.

Thanks to the network I have an easy access to my peers’ choices. They chose web sites that concerns language learning and tools that might improve our skills. I found online dictionary, English grammars and listening exercises. What struck me most was a web site chosen by Laura. It concerns famous quotations from important authors. I put this site into my favourite ones because when I found a quotation in English newspapers or books I want to know the person who has been quoted and what the quotation means. This makes my comprehension clearer.

Halloween (writing for speaking)

Should Halloween be imported to and celebrated in Italy or not?

Halloween is an Anglo-Saxon tradition. It had started long before the Romans occupied Celtic territory. It has its origin in an ancient Gaelic festival. It was a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. How many of us know the origin and the real meaning of this tradition? I’m sure very few people know these things. So there is no reason to celebrate something that means nothing for the majority of us.

Surfing in the net I found that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world. The reason why costumes were worn in ancient times is that it was an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them. Clearly Halloween has pagan origins. On the contrary in Italy the most important celebrations are strictly linked with Christian religion. We celebrate All Saints' Day the 1st November and All Souls' Day the 2nd. Because it has such a current religious meaning for us it has no sense to celebrate a pagan tradition like Halloween.

Some Italian people have already started to celebrate Halloween, especially children. Certainly they enjoy themselves with traditional activities like trick-or-treating, costumes parties and Jack-o’-lanterns. It’s funny to carve pumpkins into silly or scary faces and lit them with a candle inside. Again I’m convinced Italian people have no idea of the real meaning of these symbols. It’s simply another business imported from other countries to create a more consumer society.

One last thing is that Halloween is celebrated in United Kingdom, United States, Ireland and Canada. My question is : “Do we belong to the same culture?”. More or less we are all part of what we call Occident. We share some beliefs, values, habits, symbols but there are still some differences within our culture. This is not a weakness for us. We have to defend our differences even if we recognise we are part of the same culture.

Feeds and feed aggregators ( E-tivity 4 )

• This new experience with the feed aggregator Bloglines is very useful. Last week I discovered what feed aggregators are. I assure you that Bloglines made my life easier for different reasons:
  
  1. It is a time-saving solution. If I have to check my peers’ blogs I don’t waste my time by writing their blog addresses each time. I can go to each others’ blog using our feed aggregator.
  
  2. It is useful because you receive the last things posted in the blogs you subscribed. Then if you want you can go to their blogs by clicking on the name of the blogs.
  
  3. Playlists are interesting because you can organise the blogs or sites you subscribed into groups and you can see the last time they had been updated.
  
  4. I subscribed to my favourite web-sites and now I can read the last news in an easier way. When things are quite simple I'm highly motivated in using computers and technology.
  
  
  I appreciate this course a lot because what we are learning is not exclusively thought to pass our exam and improve our knowledge of English. Certainly I’m going to use my blog and Bloglines after this course. It’s fantastic!

Blogs and language learning

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This course is completely new for me. I’ve never used a blog before. I’ve just read a couple of them in the Net but really never sent a comment or even better created my own blog. I was a little scared of this new thing because I’m still not very confident with computers and technology in general. But after two weeks I’m satisfied with the use of a blog in our course. The first week I was getting into a panic because all seemed to me very difficult, but it was merely a question of time. One hour was not enough to do the e-tivity or simply to understand how to do it. Now with two hour time things seems easier. I can enjoy my lesson.

A blog is a very useful tool in order to improve my writing skills. It is a good method because I have the possibility to concentrate on what I write and at the same time to read how other people write. In this way I can find and correct some of my mistakes or other people’s mistakes. I can learn some new expressions and compare my work with others. It is a sort of self- evaluation after which you set yourself new goals. A blog can help you to improve your reading skills as well. As I said before, you can learn a lot of new things from other people and you take only the positive and useful things they teach you. Another advantage of using a blog is the fact that you communicate with other people, it is not merely an exercise of reading and finding mistakes in other people’s works. It’s more like an exchange of ideas and thoughts. Sometimes it is difficult to express yourself, but don’t be afraid.

Welcome to my blog

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Hello everybody and welcome to my blog! Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm Serena Santi and here there are some thoughts that could help you to know more about my personality. Enjoy reading it and please remember to write a comment suggesting me whatever you want.

I chose the picture above because it’s so poetic, isn’t it? It represents a landscape with no human presence. I love peaceful and natural places like this. It’s the perfect place I could ever imagine to have a rest after a full day of study, lessons, train delays etc. This image and my home, they both make me feel the same sensation of calm. After a stressful day I need some time for myself, just to recover my strength after a busy day. During the day I’m an hyperactive person, I have a lot of interests, I attend lessons, I have a job, I meet friends at the university, but when I come back in the evening I feel a comforting sensation. This picture shows another aspect of my character. I’m not afraid of loneliness. I think people are always in a hurry and they aren’t able to appreciate the moments they spend alone or to contemplate a landscape like that. I’m convinced that spending time alone can help each of us to be more aware of ourselves.

My favourite websites:

http://www.google.it/

This web site is absolutely the site I use most frequently. All I need to found is there. It gives me always an answer. This is so reassuring. Of course you have to pay attention to the web sites that google suggests you but what I prefer is the fact that all depends on you, on what you choose. I like to compare this web site to a springboard from which you can dive into a sea of possible choices and new information.

news.bbc.co.uk/

I think it’s very important to know how things are going on in the world every day and so I love to read news on the bbc web site. It’s very well organised and its layout is very engaging. It’s also a useful tool that helps me to improve my reading and my listening.