KEEPING ON WRITING...

Here you can read an article I translated from Italian into English concerning a pretty technical issue: absorption chillers. The article will be published in the proceedings book of an international conference about Solar Cooling. If you have any comments as far as grammar or style are concerned, please do not hesitate to post your comment!

Bye


USING HOT WATER TO COOL: INDIRECT- FIRED ABSORPTION CHILLERS

1. INTRODUCTION

The demand for cooling during summer, especially for what the tertiary is concerned, is growing steadily, both because more comfort is required and because of the noticeable rise of temperature in recent years. At the same time, the good traditional methods to allow a good comfort within the buildings seem to have been forgotten in the most recent construction techniques.
The growing use of cooling systems with compression chiller powered by electrical energy is certainly the main cause of the increase in the demand of electricity in summer, which sometimes leads to failures in power supply. The greenhouse gases, among which CO2, increase with energy production or with the loss of refrigerant fluids. Needless to say, this damages the environment and, at the same time, contributes to the vicious circle related to climatic changes. All this has lead to the need for real energy savings (D.L. 192) and to take into consideration the opportunity to use cooling systems with low primary energy needs which use renewable energy, such as thermal solar, biomass and photovoltaic systems.
There is ample choice of technologies for the passive cooling to improve indoor comfort and to drastically reduce the summer energetic need, both for buildings still to plan, and for existing building structures, both domestic and commercial.
Besides this, solar radiation is largely available in nature. The solar technologies for cooling are efficient and generally reliable both for the short and long term. These technologies do not make use of harmful refrigerant fluids (as a matter of fact, they generally use mixtures of water and LiBr) and have minimal energy consumptions in comparison to the traditional systems and therefore operating costs are lower.
Although absorption refrigerators powered by hot water –steam-combustible gases have been available to the market for more than a century, these were available only for elevated powers. In recent years the technology of the absorption cooling has made amazing progress, using new materials and electronic components, raising the quality standards both in terms of efficiency and reliability. Today we are witnessing a rapid development of enbloc frigorific absorption chillers of low power, hot water direct- fired (to 85-90°C). It is recognised that this opens interesting perspectives for their combined use with solar collectors.
It is impossible to foresee the course of the fuel prices of the traditional sources over a long period which is another element that has to be valued. These systems have a smaller environmental impact in comparison to the conventional systems of conditioning.

2. SPECIAL QUALITIES OF SYSTEMA’S ABSORPTION CHILLERS COMBINED WITH SOLAR COLLECTORS

Systema S.p.A. developed a unique absorption system in 2 different versions. The first one is an enbloc absorption chiller complete with all accessories (cooling tower, pumps, hydraulic connections, pipelines between absorption chiller and tower, valves, filters, pressure switch, differential pressure switch, control devices for temperature etc.). Being compact and completely enclosed, transport and installation are easy and fast. In the second version the cooling tower is separated from the absorption chiller and does not include the above mentioned accessories.

The absorption group must be selected according to needs of the building to be cooled, and to the quantity of hot water required.
The main advantages of using an absorption chiller powered by under vacuum solar collectors are:
• Use of thermal energy otherwise dissipated
The use of thermal energy allows lower costs and high energy savings. For these reasons absorption chillers are compared to energy recuperators;
• Environmental- friendly thanks to the use of a natural solution.
No harmful fluids are used. Furthermore, the energy used to power the absorption chiller has a low impact on the environment (low CO2 emissions);
• Low consumption of electric energy which is used exclusively for operation of circulation pumps;
• Simple and compact system thanks to enbloc equipment complete with all the necessary accessories, as a consequence, the installer will only have to connect pipelines for the hot water and conditioning systems. A further connection for makeup water must be provided to compensate for losses by evaporation from the cooling tower;
• Outdoor installation: space-saving solution;
• Modulation according to the thermal load thanks to inverters for managing the pumps. Thanks to Systema-Broad enbloc systems, frigorific power can be modulated from 20 to 100%. This allows water-supply/ electrical energy/ cooling water reduction, according to the customer’s needs;
• High efficiency (COP= 0,74)
The absorption chillers mod. SYBCTDH and SYBYDH have higher performances (COP= 0,74) than other conditioning systems of the same power which use hot water indirect-fired absorption chillers with low temperature (90°C);
• Long life-cycle and reduced need for maintenance: the reliability of the absorption chiller is due to minimal moving mechanical components and compressors;
• No noise and no vibration;
• Low fixed costs: since no electric cabin and transformer room are needed, the final user will have less fixed costs.
In order to satisfy several ranges of power capacity Systema can supply outdoor enbloc absorption chillers of high power or a series of absorption chillers can be installed using the cascade principle since the cooling tower is already included in the system.
The available powers capacity with temperature water of 98°C are: 45 kWs; 70 kWs; 175 kWs; 437 kWs; 656 kWs; 744 kWs; 875 kWs; 1094 kWs etc…

YouTube: learning while having fun!

Despite all the problems related to copyright violation, I think that YouTube is an extremely funny and interesting tool to learn foreign languages. As a matter of fact, not only it is possible to listen to native-speakers and non native-speakers’ accents, but you can also find out cultural differences or similarities. In class we had fun in seeing how English people depict the Italian (but also Spanish, French etc...) way of speaking.

Although at the beginning I had a negative opinion about YouTube because of all the videos about bullying that news on TV are used to report, now I changed my mind. I think that YouTube is a good tool for my PLE and last semester I used it regularly to find out more about the ‘topic of the week’ or simply to add something funny to my blog. I also enjoyed watching the videos posted by my peers. Needless to say, I agree on the fact that music can help our learning process. As a matter of fact, I added to my blog a video with the lyric of a song some time ago and I commented that we can learn English also listening to music. For example, I learnt many poetic expressions listening to English songs, such as “pouring rain”, “roll the dice”, “bed of roses”, “two steps behind”, “you can never hide from the shadow that is creeping up beside you”, “it’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart”, “you can light up the dark”, “there is a truth in your easy” and “it can’t get worst than yesterday”, just to mention some of them.

In conclusion, we can say that, if used properly, YouTube can open many new worlds. I hope that you too can take advantage of this tool!

Have a nice day!

MY PLE - REFLECTIVE POST

Hello everyone!

This is supposed to be our last post for this English course and I must admit that I am a bit sad because the years spent at the university seem to be almost over. Since I am not going to continue my studies (and thus my ‘formal learning’), I grasp the opportunity to reflect on my PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Needless to say, as Sarah (our English professor) told us, there is not a single definition of PLE and, since everyone has their own way of learning, there are no right or wrong solutions for our mind maps. In this post I would like to share with you my reflections as far as the English language is concerned and what could we do to achieve a higher level of competence.


In the image above you can see my mind map. I decided to use the world map as the background of my key concepts related to my learning process because English allows me to communicate with most of the people around the world. Therefore, our abilities and competences are the key to open new words and to discover new cultures. In today’s world more and more people do speak some sort of English (some people are native speakers, some use it as a second language and many other people learn it as a foreign language); as a consequence, English is becoming a global phenomenon and having a good command of it is, of course, extremely useful.


But the question is: is formal learning enough to learn a foreign language? Indeed, formal education such as school and university are important, but they are not the only tools available. I think that most of us had a narrow vision of the situations where we could learn a foreign language, and they coincided, more or less, with formal lessons, difficult translations, heavy grammar books and the like. And we were wrong. I wasn’t aware of the potential of Web 2.0 as a learning tool until this year. As my mind map reveals, the words that may be linked with formal learning are fewer if compared with other entries, such as Skype, YouTube, blogs etc.


I confess that it was not so easy to organize all the tools and the opportunities I have at my disposal to improve my language skills and make progress. At first I decided to divide the key nodes according to the kind of materials used (audio- paper- visual- virtual etc.), but then I changed my mind and organized the mind map into four main sections: INFORMATION, PLACES AND PEOPLE, CULTURAL SKILLS and LANGUAGE SKILLS. In my opinion this is the best way to integrate both formal and informal learning experiences and to connect a range of resources within a personally-managed space. As a matter of fact in the section INFORMATION I listed how I collect information and how I save it. I gather information from my teachers, but I rely also on the Web (Wikipedia, Delicious, OPAC online...).A part from paper notes, everything is stored on the Internet or in my computer (blog, bookmarks, tags, GoogleDocs...). PLACES AND PEOPLE are important, too. My knowledge of English now depends on my university education, my job as a clerk in the export department of a leading company in the heating sector (a way of enriching my vocabulary with technical words such as gasket, control panel, lead, ignition probe etc.), experiences abroad (scholarship in Malta, courses in English in Broadstair, international trade fairs...) and a virtual place: the Web 2.0, where I can ‘meet’ bloggers and share my experience with other people on social networks. CULTURAL SKILLS too play a great role for those who want to have a good command of a foreign language; in this section I grouped both formal ways of learning (literature courses, formal lessons etc.), but also informal tools (YouTube, movies, chats and forums). The latter outnumber the former. Last, but not least, I created a section for ‘pure’ LANGUAGE SKILLS, where I listed the four main areas of a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening. In this big area, my job now has a leading position for the development of my abilities and helps me to interact in English more effectively. Films in the original language and videos on YouTube together with media Websites and music are other opportunities I have to improve.


I noticed that ‘formal learning’ is only a minor part of my learning process, so when I will finish the University I would not have any problems in keeping my English updated and this is great! I also realized that giving private lessons could be an interesting way to refresh some grammar issues. As we discussed in class, learning is up to us. We have no excuses for giving up!


To conclude, during this semester I had the opportunity to see that everyone’s learning can benefit from a savvy use of technology. Thanks to the many tools offered by the Internet we can take control of and manage our own learning without much effort. I strongly believe that reflecting on our language-learning process is extremely useful because it gives us the opportunity to understand our strengths and our weaknesses while setting our targets for the future.

I hope to hearing from you soon,

Break a leg!

Bye

Italy or UK?

MP'S EXPENSES...

What shall I do to avoid risks on the Internet?

Yesterday in class we dealt with a hotly debated issue: identity management and Internet risks. We listed some of the main problems related to the use (or abuse) of the Internet. These are: the risk of finding controversial information, privacy invasion, spam, viruses, online frauds but also sexual harassment, making inappropriate friendships online and Internet addiction.

In the Internet era, it seems that many people, especially young people, do not care for their privacy, yet we should bear in mind that the Internet is a public "place". Therefore, like in real life, on the Internet too it is important not to give out personal data such as telephone numbers, usernames and passwords and many other details that should be kept secret. I do not publish personal photos and do not register to websites that I don't think safe. Moreover, when possible, I use a nickname and change my passwords regularly. I believe that no one should have their personal and private information shared with other people without their explicit consent, but unfortunately, this is what happens on some social networks, such as Facebook (see also the article mentioned in E-tivity 8). Even if we do our best to protect our privacy online, some friends of ours may publish online our photos, write our habits on the Facebook wall and our professors do publish our marks on the Web.

Since the Internet is an extremely useful tool, I think that the solution to privacy violation is not stopping using it. I would never do without reading online newspapers, sending e-mails to my friends, looking for interesting information quickly and without too much effort and surfing the Net. In my opinion, we should rather use antispyware and antivirus softwares and firewalls in order to protect our computer and ourselves from unauthorized access and external attaks and be cautious with suspicious emails and websites.
Internet is a synonym of democracy, so we all must lend a helping hand to prevent its misuse.

How to prevent identity theft - a video taken from YouTube.

An e-tool a day keeps the doctor away...

This CONCISE reflecting blogging post aims to explain the features and potentialities of Google Docs.

In our last lab lesson we learnt something more about Google Docs, an online tool that enables people to share documents and collaborate using the Internet. One of the main advantages of this relatively new online resource is that people can have access to their files anywhere and anytime, provided they have an Internet connection. Working with Google Docs means simplify your work, especially if you cooperate with other people. Saving your documents, spreadsheets,and presentations on Google Docs makes you free to make changes to what you wrote while having the possibility to go back to previous versions you edited. As a matter of fact, like in Wiki pages, a section called "history" is always available. Unlike a wiki page, this web-based word processor is a close system. This means that in order to share files you must be invited from someone. This, of course, protects both the privacy and the data safety. It is clear that we do not want certain documents to be read - and maybe stolen - by anyone. Another difference between Google Docs and Wiki pages, is that with the former more than one people at a time can edit the same page and this is a great advantage!

During the second part of the lesson we tried to practice both with Google Docs and with APA style. We edited a file written by Professor Sarah Guth and Professor Francesca Helm and tried to improve the style of the references they used. Though this was not an easy task (also because of some problems with the access to the shared file "E-tivity 7" and with difficult kinds of sources to reference), Elena, Francesca and I managed to edit the works cited respecting the APA conventions for referencing. We noticed that the most difficult sources to list in the "Works Cited" section were web pages and the transcript of interviews pubished on-line, while books are relatively simple to referecing, provided you take care of punctuation, capital letters, italics and spacing... and all the rest ;-)

We noticed that Google Docs is not like Word, since it has less options and functionalities, but it is quite easy to use. All things considered, I think that this new tool could be useful when I have to work in group or when I have to discuss a Power Point presentation in different places. Since there is no more need of pen sticks and bulky attachments to store or share our files, I believe that more and more people will take advantage of this free word processor. It might have been extremely useful at the end of last semester, when I had to work together with some peers of mine to prepare our final Power Point presentation. Unfortunatly, we did not know that Google Docs existed and could also be used for free!

APA and MLA: PROVIDING REFERENCES IN DIFFERENT STYLES

(Image taken from Flickr - by Linda Cronin)

Referencing styles are not very easy to use, probably because we are not used to writing many academic papers. Though both of the websites suggested in E-tivity 6 were clear, I still feel unsure about how to properly write a reference. In my opinion, a good university student should have no doubts about how to quote other people’s works at the end of their five-year course, but I think that the majority of Italian students still face problems in dealing with citations.
Exploring APA and MLA websites, I learned that all ‘important’ words (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs) must be capitalised when quoting (this was a question I have been asking myself for a long time). Moreover, I found out that in the format by APA if you quote longer works you should either use italics or underline the title, but if you want to cite a shorter work, you are supposed to use quotation marks. Honestly speaking, I find this difference quite silly. Yet, if this is the general rule, I will do my best to follow it! Personally, I prefer using italics rather than underlining, but surprise surprise... according to MLA style the contrary would be much better. I agree with Modern Language Association when it suggests people use “Work Cited” or “Annotated Works Cited” instead of the more generic “Bibliography”. I finally learned that indentation of a long quotation must be five spaces from the left margin and the double-spacing should be maintained. Needless to say, APA and MLA are quite different: here below I would like to mention just a couple of examples. MLA thinks that one should not abbreviate the name of the authors, while according to APA it is preferable to write the authors’ surnames first and then their names’ initials. Also the right place for the year of publication of a work is different: while according to MLA it must be written at the very end, in the APA style it should be inserted after the author’s name. Last but not least, the use of ‘&’ before the last author’s name is suggested by the Modern Language Association, but the American Psychological Association believes that in such a case an ‘and’ would be definitely more appropriate.
In my B.A. thesis I followed my supervisor’s advice and used the single-spacing for long quotation and, as far as indentation was concerned, I did it according to my own taste. I did not used ampersands because I feel that they are more used in commercial contexts, rather than in academic ones. All things considered, the style I used was a mix of APA and MLA styles.

In conclusion, I believe that we should practice a lot not just before our final dissertation, but also on other occasions. Writing academic pieces of work is not an easy task at all and, beside being careful, you also have to carve our plenty of time in order to come up with a clear and precise work. I hope to learn how to quote correctly as soon as possible.

HOW TO MAKE POSTS READABLE. A COMMENT ON AN ACADEMIC ARTICLE BY GIMENEZ

Writing well is not an easy task at all. I can read extensive articles, even dealing with specific or technical issues, yet I find it difficult to write a good text. It is common knowledge that a text (posts, e-mails, academic articles etc.) must have an introduction, a well-developed body supporting your ideas and has to round up with an appropriate conclusion. Actually what happens most of the time is that I want to convey so many things that either I get lost or I write pages and pages. In this post I will try to summarize some general opinions about what “readable” means, analysing a scholarly article I found on the Web.

Last week in class we discussed how to make posts readable. We all agreed on the fact that cohesion and coherence are two essential elements. Thanks to a neatly laid out text that avoids redundant repetition and uses synonyms or pronouns when possible, these two goals can be easily achieved. Needless to say, structure and links in the right place are also important. Generally speaking, short sentences are preferable to longer and more complex ones, even if Italians tend to be long-winded. English is widely recognized as a writer-responsible language: this means that the writer has to do their best to make a text logical and easy to follow. Furthermore, one should not forget that font, colour and paragraphs are visual tools that have to be used properly. If the background is black, you cannot write your text in dark grey, for example. Though these might seem just trivial details, it is true that readers can be discouraged to read what you wrote if the font is too small or if there are no paragraphs at all.

“Business e-mail communication: some emerging tendencies in register” (url no longer available) is an article written by Julio C. Gimenez in 2000. Its structure is really very clear since the article follows the hourglass structure. In the introduction, which is divided into three paragraphs, Gimenez explains the aims of his research after having provided a short background on the electronic communication. Of course the article has a logical flow of ideas: first of all the author tells about the origins of e-mail, then he analyses the electronic discourse focussing on register, style and contextual aspects of e-mails. For each aspect he provides statistical data (diagrams, data, and real example taken from a corpus of e-mails). These make the article trustworthy and support Gimenez’s statements. Before concluding the article, Gimenez draws his attention to the main differences between business e-mail and commercial letters and to the implications for teaching. The conclusion sums up the most important evidence and findings of the article and mentions the limitations of his research. The text is undoubtely cohesive thanks to the use of pronouns, repetitions and demonstratives:

• “The present paper attempts to investigate whether the spoken nature of e-mail messages has already started to affect business communication. It looks at... This paper also considers some of the implications...”;
• “The language of e-mail messages, as asserted in Fig1 contains... It also shows a liking for... In the commercial e-mails analysed, this is illustrated by examples, such as...”

The writing is easy to understand: sentences are short (generally no more than three-lines long) and do not have too many subordinates. The terms used are not specialistic, the style is formal but clear. The text’s assumed audience is people interested in linguistic and in this kind of texts. As a matter of fact, Gimenez in the introduction mentions previous research and specialized journals (ESP Journal and English Today). As a consequence, the author takes for granted that the readers already know what register means and do not explain the concept.

In conclusion, writing academic papers does not mean writing complex sentences difficult to understand. Language does not need to be august to be formal and it is better if we keep things simple and straightforward rather than long and obscure. I strongly believe that the pattern introduction- body- conclusion should be respected for every text and that the writer has to be concise, yet exhaustive and accurate. From now on I will try to simplify more and more in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions.

PLAGIARISM

(Flickr.com - Image by Make Studio)

There is indeed an increasing concern raised by authors and publishers regarding texts, images as well as music on the Internet and intellectual property rights (IPR) associated with them. The already existing legal frameworks which discipline the use of texts, images and, generally speaking, artistic pieces of work (both published and not) has to cope with the spread of the Internet. Establishing legal jurisdiction is sometimes difficult, as the article “As rights clash on YouTube, some music vanishes” by Tim Arango (The New York Time, 22nd March 2009) clearly state.
According to the definition given by Oxford Monolingual Dictionary, plagiarize means “to copy another person’s ideas, words or work and pretend that they are your own”. This is the reason why, as discussed in class, plagiarism is considered wrong, unethical and in the USA, it may lead dishonest students to fail an exam or - even worse - to get expelled from the University they are attending. In order to avoid plagiarism and showing respect for other people’s work, all students and anyone who publishes something must document the sources used for their work, writing a detailed and accurate bibliography/ webliography listing the references, the name of the author, the year of publication of the book/article and any other data that could be considered useful to trace the original work.


I believe that quoting pieces of others’ work is a good thing to do, since it shows that your research is based on extensive reading and you incorporated content taken from different sources. Yet, if you do not want to commit fraud, you must make explicit reference to the sources used. Paraphrasing, summarizing and, last but not least, direct quoting must be followed by a precise reference. As far as links are concerned, a good student should also mention the last visit on the Website. Personally, I prefer using parenthetical references instead of footnotes. This means that I mention the reference immediately after the quotation and then I write the complete reference at the end of the paper, in the bibliography. It seems to me that writing footnotes is more a time-consuming activity than inserting parenthetical references.


For what my blog is concerned, I use images taken from Flickr and I write below the images the name or nickname of the photographer in order to avoid copyright problems. When I quote something I make reference to the link/book/article from where I got the information. The only doubt I have is about YouTube. As a matter of fact, the article by Arango made me think that sometimes people do not respect copyright involuntary: in my opinion, adding a song as a background for a message could not be considered as plagiarism or copyright violation, since Juliet Weybret (the teacher whose video was removed from YouTube) was not using that piece of music to earn money. I am wondering if I can leave the videos I downloaded from YouTube in my blog... According to me there is nothing wrong with that, but it would be unpleasant to be fined for the violation of copyright!


In my opinion, thanks to the Internet plagiarism is becoming more and more widespread since having access to many articles and works, as well as to online books is extremely easy. This is also asserted here: “It [plagiarism] has increased with the rise of technological advances and individual access to technology. The average person has access to multiple, global sources of information, increasing opportunities for plagiarism to occur” (www.ncwiseowl.org.it/plagiarism/default.htm, last visited: 14th April 2009). Therefore, everyone should be careful and honest enough to avoid plagiarism. Being fair is only up to us!

HAPPY EASTER DAY

Easter is coming and I'd just like to say I am happy to share it with you.
Happy Easter!

How to learn English with music...

I HAVE MY OWN WAY OF LEARNING

The e-tivity we did in class last week gave me the opportunity to discuss with my peers how to critically evaluate online sources. Since on the Internet there is a lot of junk, we have to skim and scan in order to come up with serious, trustworthy and reliable articles that can suite our research purposes. We agreed on the fact that the author of the piece of writing and the reason why the article was published are two of the main questions we all should pose ourselves when using materials downloaded from the Web. In our evaluations, references, external links and layout play a great role, too. I also understood that blogs run by experts are a good starting point for our research because they provide interesting links and references; moreover, bloggers often refer to other sources enabling the reader to have an exhaustive ‘picture’ of the matter.

In the lab we dug into “personal learning environment” and I found out that there is not a single definition for this relatively new concept, since it is something strictly personal and there are not hard and fast rules. Learning is up to us and people are supposed to find strategies and tools that go beyond academic lessons in order to improve a foreign language. The process of learning is thus under the control of the learners that can choose among a wide variety of approaches and systems to improve their skills. Blogs, books as well as many websites deal with this issue and try to examine it from different viewpoints. On Delicious I shared some of the bookmarks on this topic; I think they might be useful for you, too. Unfortunately, many scholar articles that seemed to be useful and interesting for PLE are not free and all you can see is a short abstract.

On Thursday we continued our discussion about critical reading. I think that the questions we have to pose when we come across a research article are very similar to the one we posed in e-tivity 5. Since I am interested in the language of e-mails for business purposes, I looked for an article dealing with this issue and I tried to answer the ten preliminary questions.

The researcher of “Business e-mail communication: some emerging tendencies in register” is Julio C. Gimenez, an ESP instructor at Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21 in Cordoba, Argentina and has a M.A. in Teaching English as Foreign Language. When the article first appeared on the web, on 27th March 2000, he was working towards a Ph.D. By now, I think he has completed it. From the abstract I could understand that the aim of his research was to investigate the language of e-mails and see if its spoken nature has already started to affect business communication. The data collected were qualitative, since the author analysed more than 63 business e-mails and 40 business letters. The study was done on a relatively small scale since the total amount of texts analysed was 103 and the business e-mails/letters came from a single company that is not mentioned in the abstract. In the conclusion, Gimenez highlighted the fact that e-mails are becoming more and more informal and personalized, since their language is extremely flexible and, unlike for business letters, there are any ‘how tos’ and rules for e-mails (a part from some general rules called ‘netiquette’). Among the limitations of the research, the author mentioned: “The data used is too small, however, to make any firm generalisations or to conclude that business e-mail communication represents a new genre as described by Swales (1990). Besides, even if the e-mails analysed in this paper can be said to exemplify the use of e-mails in business, they were all taken from the same source and mostly sent to the same receiver, thus not allowing for a more exhaustive cross-sectional analysis of business e-mail practices”.

I choose love

SIMPLY… DELICIOUS!!!

Hi,

the key words from now on are SIMPLIFY and BACK TO THE BASIS, so this post will be brief and concise, yet accurate and proofread (at least I hope so!).

Last week in class we found out the potentialities of Delicious, a tool that enables people to share their bookmarks and take advantage of the research other people did. Clearly, looking for something in Delicious is easier than searching in Google. As a matter of fact, in Google there is everything and anything, while Delicious is something more reduced and specific because it connects you with other users. Needless to say, the power of the community is one of the main strengths of this digital tool.

I added in Delicious some bookmarks that I believe may be useful for my peers and for anyone who wants to practice their English and learning online. I definitely love the ‘Teacher section’ in the BBC website because it gives you the opportunity to learn something new in an amusing way. Having a look at my peers’ bookmarks, I found out that we share the same interests, above all for what foreign languages are concerned. As a consequence, some websites of famous radios, online dictionaries, and, generally speaking, websites offering tools for improving our knowledge of the English language are among our favourite bookmarks.

Elena’s bookmark about MAD TV is really hilarious: it has a full variety of sketches and parodies of famous people and many images and videos. Francesca Maniero’s choice, on the contrary, fell on BBC Homepage, an interesting and serious website where you can learn more about national and international issues and reflect on important matters.

Before the parting salutations, I would like to say thanks to Professor Guth for her accurate corrections; I think they are extremely useful and I hope not to repeat the same mistakes. The lesson we had on Thursday was really interesting, since it gave me the opportunity to reflect on my mistakes and on my heavy long constructions when I write in English. Therefore, SIMPLIFY ;-)

I wish you a nice weekend,
Bye,

Francesca M.

Twittering

PURPLE

It seems that most of us love purple, since the majority of blogs are pink or purple...
Here you are a present for you!

Francesca M.

Building up resources on my aggregator...

Hi!

This week’s post is about feed aggregators. For people like me, who do not know exactly what they are, here you are the definition I found on Wikipedia:
“a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and blogs in a single location for easy viewing. Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates”.


Being an efficient and quick way to read blogs, I think they will be extremely useful during our English course. As a matter of fact, it was rather frustrating visiting my peers’ blogs regularly in order to find out weather they had updated their page to send them a comment. I am convinced that aggregators will help me to save much more time and to interact with my peers in real time. Sending them comments to their posts as soon as they publish them will enable us to exchange information simultaneously. Not only do I think that feed aggregators may simplify my life as a blogger, but I believe they are an added value to my IT skills. I am only afraid of the fact that, if I subscribe too many websites which have feeds, I will receive a huge amount of updates that would be difficult to handle, yet I suppose it is up to us to manage the use of feeds properly. Moreover bloglines gives you the opportunity to choose if you want to receive complete updates or just a summary of the posts. I decided to receive the full post for my peers’ posts, but just the summary of the news, because I think they are too long to read and if I am interesting in something in particular I can visit the website to find the complete article.


Subscribing to feeders is also a good way to ‘force’ yourself to read something in English every day and this could be a tool to learn more about the language of journalism (if you subscirbe to online newspapers) or the looser language used in some blogs, where accuracy is not highly regarded. Im conviced that, as soon as I acquire more confidence with bloglines, feed aggregators, Technorati and similar tools, I will become a perfect blogger. The thing that impressed me most was that many useful websites students at the University of Padua use regularly do not have any feeds. That is a non-sense, since it happens that a lesson is cancelled and if you do not check the website regularly you risk just to waste time going up and down in Padua. Needless to say, using feeders I will be no longer busy as a bee looking for new posts and that’s great!


On Thursday I enjoyed visiting many webpages of the most popular English and American newspapers. I started looking for feeds, but then I looked at the many interesting news. I noticed that there is a great deal of sites which have a section dedicated to job offers or to give advice on how to write a good resumé... But, once again I believe it is just an obsession of mine, since I have carved out plenty of time in the past few weeks to complete my CVs and write a short academic paper about this topic. I also explored the blogosphere and I have to say that it seems to me that I am a bit more acquainted with this new tool.
I wish you all a nice weekend and keep you constantly update without much effort with aggregator feeders!


Francesca M.

My reflective blogging post

The goals I would like to achieve as far as my English language knowledge are to improve my listening skills, enrich my vocabulary with new words and expressions and develop better speaking skills. In order to do all this I know I will have to work hard, not only during the lessons, but also at home. In my opinion, the materials I need in order to speak and write better in English are: dictionaries, the Internet and its tools (blogs, on-line radios, videos, interactive exercises...), films in English and a great amount of will. I strongly believe that the activities done in class will help me, too. Needless to say, the blogosphere with its many resources will provide me with useful materials and articles, as well as with new idiomatic forms and expressions. Moreover, my peers’ work and my own work will raise important grammatical issues and will encourage me to interact actively writing on their blogs and thus practising my writing and reading skills.

I think I will be able to devote about 10 hours a week to achieve my target and a greater accuracy in what I say/write.

Honestly speaking, last week I was in Frankfurt for a trade fair, so I could attend just one of the four lessons we have every week. When I came back to the hotel I watched programmes in English and I was in contact with people that spoke English all the time. Along with this, I also watched a film in American English and I am trying to do my best to keep up with the homework assigned for next week. I hope to manage to achieve my targets...

See you soon,

Francesca M.

My first experience with blogging

Hi!

It’s me again. In this brief post I’d like just to share with you my first experience with blogging. Needless to say, blogging is not as easy as it might seem because the blogosphere is so huge that it is very rare to find what you are looking for right away. Hence, if you do not want to get lost in the labyrinth of blogs and posts on the Internet you have to be a bit patient and practice a lot surfing the web regularly. On one hand, blogging can be rather confusing at first, but on the other hand Web 2.0 gives us the opportunity to share our experience and develop a noticeable critical ability.

It is also worth noting that blogging in English can influence our learning process, not only because it makes us aware of our achievements (in the same web page it is possible to see many posts written in different periods), but also because blogging gives us the opportunity to explore a different kind of language: the informal, spontaneous written language that has short constructions, phrasal repetitions and a looser sentence construction. Moreover, when you blog you often find many links or clickable words that enables you to read more about a particular topic. Indeed this is also a good way to read in English and to enrich our vocabulary with new expression either formal or informal. All this helps us to get acquainted with the intriguing, rather new and hybrid language used in the blogs. Everything put aside, blogging deals with reading: in order to write a thoughtful comment you must read the post carefully. Do you agree?

Bye,

Francesca M.

Welcome

I warmly welcome you to my page!

Hi!

This is my first experience with blogs and I am curious to learn how to create a good blog that can catch the reader’s attention and stimulate discussion among students. I am eager to share my point of view with you and I look forward to receiving your comments.

For me it was quite difficult to explore the blogosphere, but I hope to develop my IT skills and to have an eye for detail so that my blog will be something pleasant to read.

I want to take full advantage of the opportunity to create and run a blog during this semester and I am waiting for your posts. Your comments would be highly appreciated, as well as your suggestions for ways of improve my page (and my language, too)!

Please be patient because my blog is still under construction :-(

Bye,

Francesca