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!
