e-tivity 6: feedback

I don’t know about you all, but I really enjoyed hearing your voices online. It was a nice change to listen to your ideas and impressions rather than read them. You seem to have all discovered that the “podcastsphere”, as Alice alls it, is just as vast as the blogosphere and that it takes time and a critical eye to sort through all the podcasts online to find some worth listening to. It’s interesting that many of you chose the same podcasts – must mean they’re goog. Furthermore, you, but I as well, found new resources by reading about the different podcasts everyone found. (Just so you know, the CLA spent months building up a repository of good resources for language learning while all they needed to do was to get you guys to do it for them!)
Some of you mentioned that people seem to speak slowly on podcasts and that some were relatively easy, but if we collect all of your selections in del.icio.us I’m sure there’s something useful for everyone.

Annalisa found a site where there are videos from www.youtube.com. This site is similar to Flickr in that it is a repository where people place their video clips and tag them, but rather than images it is all about video. Just as is the case in Flickr, you can copy videos from YouTube into your personal blogs. It’s not an assignment, but I suggest you do a little searching for tags in YouTube and see if you find anything that interests you. There’s a lot out there and you could even add something to your blogs! By the way, anyone know why it’s called YouTube?

Finally, Barbara says she hates recording her voice, as do I. I know it’s difficult and I know what it feels like to listen to one’s own recorded voice but having audio on a blog really does add a human element.

If you’ve got time when you’re not doing e-tivity 7, since we couldn’t meet this week, I’d love to hear your impressions on recording your voices and listening to your colleagues’ voices online. What do you think about adding audio files to blogs? Please send comments if you get the time.

Job well done, everyone!

Sarah

P.S. Svjetlana, if you are having technical problems with uploading an odeo file, let me know and I’ll see if I can help!

e-tivity 7

The genre of wikis

Now that we’ve analyzed blogs and websites, we’re going to take a look at another new online phenomenon: wiki. A wiki is basically a virtual space (website) for collaborative writing, i.e. a place where we can “build” texts together. One of us makes an entry in the wiki, then the next person comes along and adds to, removes or in any other way edits what the first person has written, and so on. Our aim is going to be to start developing a wiki on genres and social softwares for language learning. Students from both Blogging English courses will be contributing to the wiki as will your colleagues in the next semester, the one after that, etc. A wiki is a never-ending project! But before we start “wiki-ing”, we need to understand what a wiki is and consider what characterizes it as a genre.

Purpose: To start exploring the world of wikis, understand what they are, how they work and what characterizes them as a genre.

Task:

1 – Do some background reading. Go to the most famous wiki, wikipedia, and read what it has to say about wikis. Click here. Then read their page on wikiquette. Editing someone else’s work can be a very productive exercise in collaboration and building knowledge, but it can also be a delicate procedure. The word “wikiquette” comes from wiki + the English word “etiquette”, i.e. how to behave appropriately. Click here.

2 – Listen to an online video course entitled “Why wiki” presented by the University of Wisconsin. Click here.

3 – Explore wikipedia, and any other wiki you may find on the Net (by now your search skills should be pretty good!) and take notes on purpose, audience, language, characteristics, etc. just as you have done for blogs and websites.

4 - Write a few paragraphs in which you discuss the genre of wikis based on your analysis. N.B. Please pay close attention to the organization of the information in your post. Clearly divide the information into separate paragraphs, each with a clear topic sentence that is subsequently developed within the paragraph. The beginning of the text should indicate the overall idea of the text and the end should offer some sort of conclusion. Be concise.

5 - Post your analysis to your personal blogs.

Respond: Go to your peers’ personal blogs (you can do this via the blogroll on our course blog or your bloglines if you’ve made a playlist) and read their analyses. Comment on their analyses where and when you have something to add or critique. Remember that you don’t only have to give positive feedback – constructive criticism is quite important as well!

Timeline: Friday, December 1 (task), Monday, December 4 (respond)

No class next Tuesday

For those of you who were not present this past Tuesday, I will not be able to come to lesson next Tuesday as I will be away for work. Obviously, I will post your next e-tivity before leaving.

Don't hesitate to write with questions as I will most likely have access to e-mail while I'm away.

All this assuming I get better in the next few days - I've been sick :-(

See you all online!

Sarah

e-tivity 5: summary

Some of you did very thorough analyses of your two websites while others did more superficial ones but all in all you more or less came to similar conclusions. Reading all of your blog posts on the genre of websites I was able to find some common characteristics which should help us develop a definition of the genre of websites. For example, some characteristics on home pages are:

- overall syntactic compression and minimalism

- links in the form of simple noun phrases, post-modified noun phrases, imperative verb forms and gerunds

- (large numbers of) hyperlinks (characterized as above) in lists

- simple sentences using above all the present simple (giving a sort of timelessness)

- images to support the links and overall navigation

- color coding

Then, most of you found that once you clicked on the links, the language found in the other pages of the websites was more descriptive and complex. Many of you noted that the intended audience changes the register of the language used. For example, the more ‘institutional’ websites like the BBC with an expected global audience tended more towards formal language while other sites aimed more towards a specifically younger audience used more informal language.

Does this sound more or less like a summary of your analyses? If I missed anything, please provide feedback in the form of a comment.

It was also interesting that many of you chose the same websites. I presume this means you have similar needs and are interested in similar aspects of your English language learning at this point.

Regarding language, this time I’ve done the opposite of what I’ve done in the past, i.e. rather than highlight mistakes and have you make corrections, I’ve made corrections and would like you to analyze them. Please download and print this pdf file and consider the corrections made not only on your post but on the other ones as well since we always have something to learn not only from our own mistakes but from others’ mistakes too. Try and understand what the mistakes were and why I corrected them in a given way. If there is anything you are uncertain of or do not understand, please write a comment-question back to this post. You are then, of course, welcome to go correct your posts accordingly.

I hope you found this e-tivity useful and found that it helped you better understand the two websites you chose. I personally feel that this e-tivity is a good example that we really do have things to learn from each other!

Sarah

How to Odeo

If you don't already have an account, go to odeo and sign up for an account (top right hand corner of the window).

Once you have an account, go to odeo studio to record.

Once you’ve clicked there, you should see a window like this:

and click on “Record New Audio”.

This takes you to the recording studio. It will ask you a question and you respond "consenti".

Record your audio and save it.

When you're happy with your recording, push on the save button. At that point you'll go to a page where you can give a title to your audio, etc. What interests us is what's at the bottom of the page. You should see something like:

Copy the contents in the “Put this Audio on your Web site”, go to Blogger, create a post and rather than writing the post click on the html button and paste the html code you copied from odeo.

Publish the post, like always! You should see something like this (click on the play button, it works! You can hear my beautiful tongue twister!):

powered by ODEO

Confused? Sound like to much? Don’t worry, you can do it. If you have troubles, just write a comment to this post.

e-tivity 6

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 it 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 and to enter the world of podcasts by creating your own.

Task:

1 - Search for podcasts that might be useful for English listening practice. Do a search for the words “podcast” and another word like “English”, “education”, etc. 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!) and save them in del.icio.us.

3 – Take notes on what the podcasts you chose offer and how they could be helpful.

4 – 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 upload an audio message created in odeo to the post (see post in course blog on using odeo) giving your impressions of the world of podcasts.

Respond: Read the other students’ messages and go visit at least one of the podcasts they have suggested. Then write a comment to their blogs giving your impressions.

Timeline: Friday, November 24 (task), Monday, November 27 (respond).

Here’s an example of a vocabulary learning podcast I found in odeo. You can either put the link or embed the player into your blog. You can also subscribe to the blog and podcast via RSS feeds.


powered by ODEO

RSS feeds

Imagine that there are several Web sites and Weblogs you want to follow. The traditional approach is to bookmark each site (e.g. using del.icio.us) or link them to your blog, and then visit them daily. They may or may not offer new items each day. Wouldn't it be much better to use just one technology that would visit all of these Web sites, 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 vist 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, 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.

Optional assignment:

Build up resources on your aggregator. Use the bloglines account you created in class: first, subscribe to all of the personal blogs in your course; second, subscribe to any other intersting sites you find during your online searches; third, create playlists. Since we looked at how to do all this in class, I won't describe it here. But, if you've got questions or doubts, don't hesitate to write a comment to this post with it!

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

e-tivity 5

The genre of websites

The word ‘genre’ is used to indicate different kinds of literary and artistic works. What we’re interested in, obviously, is how the word is used in language learning. To start looking at genre, it might be helpful to see how it is different from the word ‘register’. Whereas register regards formal properties of grammar and lexis, genre is more closely related to the concept of communicative purpose. According to Swales (1990), genre can be used to describe established communicative conventions that are shared among “discourse communities”. In other words, for example, in the world of business, members of this community have certain ways of writing memos, emails and reports and new members to the community have to learn these conventions if they want to effectively be part of this discourse community. It is important to note that since genre deals with conventions and communities it can change depending on culture.

Some typical genres are: business letters, scientific papers, narrative, descriptive, expository and argumentative essays, diaries, emails, recipes, personal statements, etc. Internet has led to the development of new genres, e.g. websites, blogs, e-mail, etc. We have already tried to find some of the identifying characteristics of blogs (their purpose and the typical language used) and in the next few weeks we are going to do so for some other genres. This week’s genre is going to be the website.

Sarah

Purpose: It’s difficult to talk about the genre of websites for two reasons: 1 - they’re a relatively new genre and in continuous evolution; 2 – there are many different types of websites. Together we are going to attempt to consider what might characterize the genre of websites.

Task:

1 – Read the background reading handed out in class. If you weren’t in class, send me an e-mail (sarah.guth@unipd.it) and I can send you the readings. Maria Chiara has also found a good resource for us on her del.icio.us searches: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.

2 - Take a look at the websites we’ve all put into del.icio.us. Choose the two that you think you might use most often and that would be most helpful for your language learning.

3 – Identify the purposes (Who is the intended audience and what do the creators of the website hope this audience will get out of the website? Is it aimed at a specific discourse community?)

4 – Identify the language features of the different types (i.e. How does it reach it’s purpose? e.g. through language that is formal, informal, descriptive, narrative, present tense, only noun phrases, complete sentences, paragraphs, lots of hyperlinks, action verbs, state verbs, etc.). You can provide examples.

5 – Write a few paragraphs in which you discuss the genre of websites based on your analysis of the two you’ve chosen. Please pay close attention to the organization of the information in your post. Clearly divide the information into separate paragraphs, each with a clear topic sentence that is subsequently developed within the paragraph. The beginning of the text should indicate the overall idea of the text and the end should offer some sort of conclusion. Post your analysis to your personal blogs.

Respond: Go to your peers’ personal blogs (you can do this via the blogroll on our course blog) and read their analyses. Comment on their analyses where and when you have something to add or critique.

Timeline: Friday, November 17 (task), Monday, November 20 (respond)

Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

e-tivity 4: feedback

Well, it’s taken me awhile, but I’ve gone through all your bookmarks and commentaries. Just think, I found several sites that would be useful for my teaching. I’ve always said we have a lot to learn from our students!

You all seem to have enjoyed exploring the world of social bookmarking (in the end at least), understand how it works, and see how it might benefit you in your lifelong process of learning English. Many of you have identified some of the drawbacks, e.g. the need to be critical, but being aware of the drawbacks helps you use the system better.

This week I’ve sent individual feedback to each of your personal blogs - go read your comments there.

I’ve copied a few comments from your blog posts which I think summarize the experience:

there is a some sort of selection. (Sve)

one may find also links that are worth reading about the argument they are looking for: this is also the reason why one usually finds interesting links of good quality. (Marco)

The real problem was to understand if they were valid or not! (Giorgia)

I think that this activity is particularly helpful for us because it "obliges" us to reflect upon what we read online, in order to "perceive" its usefulness (or uselessness): each of us is, in a certain sense, responsible for the success of the whole process, as every single contributor classifies a set of web sources deemed to be of common interest. Therefore, what is initially a personal choice, it becomes inevitably part of a wider project. (Maria Chiara)

Since del.icio.us is a sort of community it is more probable that what you find there is more interesting and relevant to what you are loooking for because other people examined that website before you. (Alice)

this is a type of collaboration among people whose primary concern is to share useful information by using a simple method. (Francesca)

moreover social bookmarking is a way to find people with your same interests, to discover new interesting sites, to publish your own bookmarks...(Annalisa)

I think that this activity is extremely helpful and useful: an effective resource, especially because you can create a real repository of websites which can help you in your English learning. It can also be a quick and easy alternative to search engines like Google … (Annalisa)

Job well done, all of you!

Sarah

Question for Sarah

Dear Sarah,

Me and Annalisa have got a problem. We are not able to add our social bookmarks to your network. We are registered as fans....(moreover we can only display Maria Chiara, Svjetlana, Lucrezia, and Alice bookmarks). We hope that you understand our problem.

Thanks,
Francesca and Annalisa

e-tivity 3: Focus on language

Dear all,

I carefully read your blogs, and as I said in the summary, enjoyed them all. I tried to identify the language mistakes that you should not be making and should try and avoid in the future. I listed the words/phrases where there were mistakes but did NOT correct the mistakes and I tried to make a personal checklist (what to check before you post your messages) for each one of you based on your mistakes. For those of you who were not present in class, we worked in pairs to try and understand what the mistakes were and correct them. In order to make sure you’ve made (or will make) the right corrections, I’ve posted your lists of mistakes to your personal blogs as a comment to your posts. Please go and send another comment with your corrections so that I can check them and let you know if you have or have not understood your mistakes.

We also tried to develop a checklist of things you need to check when you re-read your blog posts before posting them. Here’s a general checklist:

• Verb tenses (esp. present perfect vs. simple past, present simple vs. present continuous and will)
• Verb forms (followed by a verb with –ing, to, or infinitive without to)
• Phrasal verbs
• Vocabulary (if you use new words, google them in the .edu domain to see if they’re commonly used)
• Word order (more or less: subject-verb-object-everything else)
• Articles (if you don’t know “which one”, if you can’t specify the word, don’t use “the”)
• Pronouns (make sure your pronoun reference is clear and correct)
• Sentence length (better to have several short sentences than 1 6-line sentence)
• Punctuation (we’ll work on this together in class, but here’s a good resource for a starting point)

Hope this helps! We’ll see in your blog entries for e-tivity 4!

Sarah

e-tivity 4

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way to store and share your favorite websites and blogs online instead of on your computer. “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:
1 – Explore. Go to del.icio.us and explore. Click around to get an idea of what the website is all about.

2 – Log in. If you weren’t in class, you will have to register to use del.icio.us (obviously it’s free!). 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. If you do install them, go on to the third step as well.

3 – Search for websites and blogs that might interest you by typing key words in the tag box. For example, in this course you might be interested in English, learning, listening, writing, genre, 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.

4 – Post your new bookmarks. 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 bloggingenglish1 or bloggingenglish2. That way we’ll always have a way to find our course bookmarks.

Respond: Choose 1 bookmark from each of your classmate’s 5 bookmarks based on the description in “notes” (find them by searching for the bloggingenglish tags). Write a post in your personal blog about your impressions of social bookmarking and your classmates’ choices.

Timeline: Friday, November 10 (task), Monday, November 13 (respond).

e-tivity 3: summary

Your reflections were very interesting and stimulating for me and you’ve done a great job at creating your own blogs.

You all seem very positive and enthusiastic, and motivation is the number one key factor in learning, so you’re at a good point! You used words like “dynamic” and “stimulating” to describe your journeys through the blogosphere in English so far.

You have found out that a large part of using blogs is reading and the English you are reading is quite often very informal and colloquial. Though some of you are cautious since not everything you find is in correct English, you all seem to appreciate that you can improve your informal writing (and speaking) skills (e.g. increased vocabulary, idiomatic expressions) through reading other blogs. It seems to be quite a change from the more traditional, grammar-based and translation-based English courses you are used to.

Many of you also mention the fact that the simple act of having to write a lot, nearly everyday, to complete your e-tivities is in and of itself helpful in improving your English. Part of blogging is also trying to make your written words catch the attention of your readers so you have to be creative and articulate your thoughts clearly and concisely in informal English.

Some of you spoke of having become a part of this global community which is the blogosphere and that you are happy to participate in it.

Finally, though not always easy, many of you appreciate having to work on the computer as it helps you develop your computer skills while working on your English.

I’m glad to know you’re enjoying the experience and I hope you continue to enjoy our journey just as much in the future. If you keep up this level of enthusiasm you are certain to learn a lot!

You’ve all done an exceptional job!

Sarah

Francesca's blog!!

Hi everybody,

this is the address of my blog
http://francydibiblog.blogspot.com/

I wait for you.......come and visit it!!

see you soon,
bye bye

Francesca

Hi people!

During our e-tivity 2 one of my collegues and I have found blogs from MY SPACE.
I'm here to give you some infomation about it.

My Space is a big community that presents itself as "an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends". Everybody can create a private community on MySpace and share photos, journals and interests with their growing network of mutual friends!

My space is for everyone:

• Single people who want to meet other Singles
  
  
• Friends who want to talk Online
  
  
• Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
• Families who want to keep in touch--map your Family Tree
• Business people and co-workers interested in networking
• Classmates and study partners
• Anyone looking for long lost friends!

There are also many links about films, music, videos, comedy...

Bye, bye. Svjetlana

Welcome to Annalisa's blog!

Hello people!

If you want to see my blog....
Just click on

http://annalisag.blogspot.com/

I hope you'll like it!! And If you have something to say just leave your comment!

Annalisa

Hi people!

This is the address of my blog:
http://sve-blog.blogspot.com/

Svjetlana

Do you want to visit Alice's blog?

Hi everybody!!

Come and visit my blog...

I wait for you all ... at least I hope ^_^

Bye
Alice

Question for Sarah

Dear Sarah,
I have a question: in order to create my personal blog I entered with my account and my password in the page where we have the link for "Blogging English 2" and from there I clicked on "crea nuovo blog"; in fact now under the link "Blogging English 2" there is the link to my personal blog "Giorgia's new adventure on blog". Is it right or should I have had to create my new blog from the first home page www.blogger.com entering with a new account and a new password?
Thank you
Bye
Giorgia

entering the marvellous world of Marco

hello everybody!

this is the link to enter to my blog: www.ilmarkello.blogspot.com

In theory everything should be working properly...

have a lot of fun!
Marco

GIORGIA'S BLOG

Hello everybody!!

I don't believe it! i have just creted MY personal blog!

If you are interested in exploring it...click here..Giorgia's new adventure on blog! (the complete address is http://blogginggiorgia.blogspot.com/) And please, if you find something wrong or...I hope something interesting comment on it!

Have a nice week
Bye
Giorgia