THIS IS ME! (e-tivity 1)

Hello everybody and thank you for visiting my blog!

This post will help you to know a bit more about me and my interests.

Please, feel free to comment on whatever you want and to let me know your opinion on what I write in my blog!

In order to introduce myself, I decided to post the picture of a cat

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/pansaram/257641756/)

... one of the most fascinating animals in the world. In spite of what most people usually think, cats are able to give you a lot and they don't expect anything from you in return... I love cats because they are smart and independent. Moreover, they are able to perceive dangerous situations and to avoid them...Since I was a toddler, I had always been accostumed to relate to cats and therefore I learned to respect them (and of course to respect animals in general - I'm an animal-rights supporter).

At the moment, I live with a beautiful kitten named Summer (what a beautiful name, isn't it?) and I'm hopelessly devoted to her...she is my alarm clock in the morning. She generally has a good sense of time but sometimes she get confused and ends up waking me at unusual times...such as 5 o' clock in the morning......but don't worry: I do have a real alarm clock too!

Here you have my favourite websites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

This website is probably well known by everybody...I particularly appreciate the possibility to "Have your say"

http://curledup.com/

I "discovered" this website a couple of years ago...it periodically suggests you good books to read...very useful

http://wikipedia.org/

I visit this website everytime I need to have a quick definition of something. The idea of building an online encyclopedia to which eveybody is allowed to contribute is really awesome!

http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp

This website works as an online library: it enables you to read a whole book online but even to search the words you don't know ...just as if you were reading a real book... I think it is a powerful tool if you can't go to the library but of course there's nothing better than curling up with a book in my sofa...

Reflecting on e-learning (e-tivity 3)

Hello Everybody!

I'd never thought about the idea of having my own blog in English...and now...HERE IT IS!!! Up until recently the "relationship" with my computer was restricted to a couple of basic functions and the most abused buttons I used to press were "ctrl+alt+canc" because I was always in trouble.

Then -during the triennio at the university- I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of e-learning, thanks to the use of First Class courseware. I even ended up writing a dissertation on the effects of e-learning on second language acquisition...

I'm not saying that I've now become an expert in ICT (there are still so many things to learn!) but surely I have been learning to appreciate the new perspectives this world is opening up in front of us! To make a long story short, I had long been totally unaware of the potential of new technologies...maybe just because I was too lazy to learn how to exploit these huge materials!

During these first two weeks of blogging, I had the opportunity to become even more familiar with the concept of electronic environment and to realize its positive effects on our learning process. I think that taking part to an online community is a challenging and enriching experience since you have the chance to use the English language to perform real tasks and, potentially, to communicate with people from all other the world.

Moreover, I think that blogging will enable us to come into contacts with the real English spoken by real people. As a matter of fact, university lectures or academic books offer us a rather stiff and standard variety of a language which is actually much more lively! I've been using a blog for only a couple of weeks but I realised that the key words of such online communities are above all collaboration, sharing and real world!