Judging information on the Internet

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The way we judge the information we come across on the Internet is a central matter if we want our search to be effective and accurate at the same time. For studying purposes (but not only) many of us need to get a lot of information we don't know and I myself do a lot of searches on the Web. The question is: are these pieces of information all reliable? Is there anything that can be a trap and so we'd better avoid?

On the Internet we can find almost everything we want but the difficulty is how to find the right things. In order to make it more clear as possible I'm going to make a list of what I think are the criteria of making a good search:

1) Use of a good search engine: there are many search engines but not all of them are reliable. I think google is a good one.

2) Advanced search: don't limit your search to what you come across at first; better making an advanced search so we can delimit the area of interest to us and filter the overload of information on the Internet .

3) Social bookmarking's websites: use websites of social bookmarking as del.icio.us; they give us the possibility to check if a website is useful or not according to what other people said and to the number of persons who saved it.

4) Author: always look the author of the website and check if it is compatibile with your search .

5) Comments: have a look to what the other peers said about the website. I personally think it is worthy to do that but I wouldn't trust it 100%.

6) File format and domins : specify the file format and domins you'd like in your results and search only a specific website, or exclude that site from your search

7) Use advanced operators : click on this link to see which are the most common operators.

This are just few points that came up into my mind. I read the suggestions other universities make for students and I totally agree with them. However, in my opinion, the level of accuracy of a search depends on what we are looking for. I mean, if you follow all these suggestions you will spend a lot of time; maybe it is not the case if you are looking for something which is not so important. On the other hand if you are looking for information that can be useful for your theses (for example) than it is worthy to spend 20 minutes more but have the certainty that what you came across is reliable.

I'm looking forward to reading which criteria you usually follow.

CU

YouTube

I think all of us know this very popular video sharing website, where people can upload, share and view video clips. You can really find everything you want there: video regarding politics, entertainment, music, enviroment, sport, comedy and many other categories.

In the last few years I heard a lot of YouTube and I think that if on one hand this website can be very interesting, on the other hand it can also be dangerous if it is not kept under control. I mean, we know that nowadays many children are genius with the computer, and the fact that they can watch everything is kind of concerning to me. Of course it does not only regard YouTube but the World Wide Web in general. But if YouTube is used in a constructive way it can be a great tool.

If I think about my language learning, I believe that all these new Web technologies are really useful, not only because through them you can improve your English( you can do it through a grammar book as well) but most of all because you learn and have fun at the same time. If I happen to become a teacher, I will definitely make good use of all the tools Sarah taught us, because I think that catching your students' attention is the first step to be a good teacher.

You Tube can be useful for many other purposes: did you miss your favorite programm on the tv? No problem, you can find it on YouTube; do you want to watch the video your best friend shot on holidays? You watch it on YouTube. Do you want to see in advanced a place you are planning to go to? You watch in on You tube. Do you want to watch programms of other countries? You watch them on YouTube. Do you simply want to have a break while you are doing your homework? You watch a funny video on YouTube and then go back studying again.

CU

The world of podcasts

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Hi,

here we are again, talking about a new tool Sarah taught us in the last few days: podcast. As it can be downloaded on a portable media device such as an ipod or mp3player, it is preferable for us to have at least one of them. If you don't have none of them you can burn the files to a CD and listen on a regular stereo. Fortunately technology develops quickly and here in Italy almost everyone has got a mp3 player. On the market now it can be found at cheap prices. Unfortunately this is not the case with ipod yet, which is still very expensive :(

Podcasts have the advantage to be free; since they are of public domain we don't have to worry about all the legal/illegal stuff!! I read on our English course's blog that some Universities in the United States now offer many lectures online in the form of podcasts. Isn't it great? If you are ill or if you can't go to class for other reasons you don't need to ask classmates or send e-mails to teachers anymore, the material is now available on the Internet. But I think we have to wait a while for this to happen in Italy...

As regards our English learning process podcasts can be very useful. Most of us complain, we cannot improve our listening and comprehension skills because we don't have the chance to talk to a native speaker, now we have it.....at least we can listen to somebody who is speaking in English. The greatest advantage is that having the possibility to download material onto our mp3 player we can listen to it whenever we want. Most of us don't live in Padova and others like travelling a lot, now we can gain time by listening to our favorite English radio or stories while we are on a train or while we are driving our car home.

Surfing the net looking for some interesting podcasts I found one which I think can be of interest to us: Libri Vox. In this site the authors select a book from their collection and podcast a chapter at a time, three times a week, from start to finish. You can visit the Catalog Index or if you don't have a precise idea of what you are looking for you can browse the entire Catalog. There you find an alphabetically ordered list of books, which makes the research very easy. In order to listen to one of the audiobooks you need to get an audiofile onto your computer. It is preferable if you subscribe to iTunes, so you can download an entire book. However I was able to download some chapters of "Jane Eyre" by clicking on ogg vorbis.

Another interesting website I found is English Through Stories. This website is a bit different from the previous one because as far as I understood the stories here are not books. They are divided in episodes and they adress to an advanced speaker of English audience. Each episode is recorded by the host, Doctor Jeff M. coming from the Centre for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California. At the beginning of each episode he gives a short account of what had happened before. He speaks rather slowly so it is not difficult to understand what he is telling us. Furthermore the stories are also written down on the site so you can listen and read at the same time.

The third website I chose is BBC-Radio. If you are interested in what is happening all over the world this site may help you to keep always up to date. There are many many links to different subjects and programmes. You can listen to the radio in 33 languages, which I think is very useful for us students. I find the link to 'learning English' very interesting; here you find some quizzes and exams, explanations of words in the news, materials for teacher and much more. If you click on it you get on a webpage which may help you to improve your skills. I mostly like to listen to World news; when I'm home I can watch Sky, but here in Padova I don't have a digital satellite television platform . If you have problems with listening click on the link 'Help with listening'.

Be careful: to play episodes of a podcast you need a software. To listen to them you will need a media player, a piece of software, that can play mp3 files. Your computer should be installed with a media-software. If you do not have appropriate software loaded try to get one. The most popular media players are Windows Media Player, Real Player, iTunes.

C U soon

Social Bookmarking

Hi everybody!

Have you ever heard of del.icio.us? Of course you have, if you are taking part to our English course. This website is very useful, I like it so much! When you search something in Google you come out with millions results, unless you don't do a very precise and advanced research. I'm not saying that this search engine is not helpful but sometimes you need to restrict your search to websites that are more reliable. Now I can do all these actievities thanks to del.icio.us. I think this website can be very helpful for everybody, especially for students who have to write their master's thesis. I mean: if I look for a precise subject matter in del.icio.us I know that the results are webpages other people believe it is worth to go to and to take into account. Furthermore I can read the comments they left and get a better idea of what the webpage is all about.

As regars the choises made by the other members in my group I think the webpages that deal with grammar and writing are a very good source for students like us. Furthermore they are very easy to read. I like also the urls that deal with slang, as we don't have the possibility to ask a native speaker so often.

So thanks for all your suggestions!

C U

Use of RSS and aggregators

Hi guys!

First of all I'd like to apologize for not having done e-tivity 4 before. As Sarah told us we are learning how those kind of thechnology works, but sometimes I can't understand why my computer doesn't respond to my commands :(

As a consequence I go mad and turn it off! Anyway today it seems to work properly so I guess I will be able to post what I'm trying to write.

As far as feeds and aggregators are concerned I believe they are definitely useful; I had never heard of them before and this points out the fact that I still have much more to learn about Internet technologies. Sarah is really giving us a lot of helful tips, that enable us to become more familiar with the world wide network.

I had a look at the websites I regularly visit and I noticed that almost all of them have Syndicators; to be honest I've never payed attention to them before. Having then an account in bloglines I realized that I can save long time and keep up to date on things of interest to me.

C U

Halloween

HALLOWEEN FREAKS

Do you actually know what Halloween is? I didn't untill I took a sit in front of my computer this afternoon and I begann to look for information on the Internet. Well now I have some more knowledge of this feast.

"Hallowe’en” is an English word: all Hallows Eve. It means literally the evening before All Hallows Day or All Saints Day. In Italy the 2nd of November has traditionally been called “Il Giorno di Tutti Morti” which translates as the day of the dead. It’s a day where the dead are remembered and everybody goes to visit the graves of departed family and friends.

For the Irish Celts the 31st of October was called Samhain, which is Gaelic for "the end of the summer". It was the last day of the Celtic year. So it was actually New Year’s Eve. Samhain didn’t belong to the old year and neither did it belong to the new year, it was when death and life met and interchanged : the worlds of the living and the dead side by side. People believed that during this time the dead could enter the land of the living. The ancient Celts didn’t fear the dead and they would leave food out to welcome them. Neither did they believe in demons. In Irish legends there is no talk of evil demons and devils as such, only the evil of mankind. There wasn’t even a ‘god of the dead’.

But where do the different things such as the pumpkin or dressing up come from? First of all, there are no pumpkins in Ireland, there they have always used turnips (=rape). Legends tell us that when the dead wandered on the land, they carried a light with them; so it was tradition to dress up as a dead person and carry a light if you had to go out so that the actual dead would think you were one of them and wouldn't try to bring the living back with them . An interesting note (unknown to many Italians, me too) is that the use of hollowed pumpkins is documented in Emilia Romagna .

Halloween has become increasingly popular across Europe, although many people still say it is just an American custom that has got nothing to do with our culture. Moreover some clerics and conservatives complain it undermines our cultural identity. Personally I don't agree with them: all ancient races honoured their ancestors at some time or another and frequently in similar ways. People are free to celebrate as they want; we must not celebrate Halloween, I mean nobody is forcing us. If somebody does not like this feast because he/she thinks it is a manifestation of neo-paganism, well this person is free to just ignore it. But for the same freedom other people can celebrate it as they want.

As we discussed few days ago in class globalization does not necessary mean deprivation of identity. In my opinion we are living in a period of transition and that's why there are so many debates related to Halloween, this is just normal.

Halloween is a patchwork holiday; click on the link below to learn more:

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=R-VRAemIvbI