Evaluating Sources on the Web - Use Your Head

Hello,

Today I will give you a brief report of the strategies I’ve used so far when I was looking for good sources at the library or on the web.

While I was writing my thesis I used mainly printed articles and books, I did a very limited use of Internet sources. I had the prejudice that printed information is much more reliable than information you can find on the Internet. Later, I discovered I was wrong, since I realized I cannot discriminate among sources according to their form (printed or online).
These were the basic steps of my researches:

First, I collected some information on the author, the content, the kind of edition and who was the book addressed to. Second, I made a list of the suitable books’ titles; I did think about the key words which could allow me to find other interesting books as well. Third, I taped meaningful words into the slot of the Catalogo Padovano (online library source). In the end, I checked the shelves of the libraries and I borrowed some interesting books.

Doing my researches, I usually made a list of interesting books that could be useful- as to make them available in the future. Basically, you can evaluate a book at first sight according to the table of contents. Usually, if contents are clearly listed and structured, you expect the book to be good and meaningful. As for the reliability of a book, you trust the author according to the way he makes quotations and selects the bibliography. Therefore, the problem of evaluating the reliability of books seems quite easy to solve.

However, if I am asked to evaluate sources on the Web, the problem to tackle becomes more and more complex. Unfortunately, the information I need to know in order to evaluate a web source is not always specified in the homepage. So, the reader must look around in order to find:

• ‘Who is responsible for publishing the information provided by the source? What are the credentials and affiliation or sponsorship of any named individuals or organizations? How objective, reliable, and authoritative are they? Is the author or contact person listed with addresses (street, e-mail)?
• What can be said about the content, context, style, structure, completeness and accuracy of the information provided by the source? Are any conclusions offered? If so, based on what evidence and supported by what primary and secondary documentation? What is implied by the content? Are diverse perspectives represented? Is the content relevant to your information needs?
• When was the information provided by the source published? Is the information provided by the source in its original form or has it been revised? Is this information timely and is it updated regularly?
• Where else can the information provided by the source be found? Is this information authentic? Is this information unique or has it been copied?
• Why was the information provided by the source published? What are the perspectives, opinions, assumptions and biases of whoever is responsible for this information? Is anything being sold? Who is the intended audience?’ (Questions’ source).

Anyway, if I had to ask me all the questions every time I need to evaluate a web source I would spend my entire life evaluating website. Gosh! Not a happy life, indeed! So, just to make things easier, I checked out what I could find on the del.icio.us. Well, I found a fantastic article entitled “Seek and Ye Shall Find: How To Evaluate Sources on the Web”, written by Wendy Boswell. This article clearly sums up the three basic rules to find out the reliability of a web source; here they are:

• Who’s in charge?
• Are you telling me the truth?
• Are you selling me something?

That’s all, guys! I mean, that’s all someone needs to know about a web source. As Wendy Boswell says, basically people need to figure out if the website presents accurate information or not. If you manage to answer this question and the answer is positive, this means your source is good.
I’d like to give you a further tip that can help you to discriminate your web sources. On the University of Berkley’s website I found this excellent tutorial on ‘Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask’, published by UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops.

‘Evaluating web pages skilfully requires you to do two things at once:
1. Train your eye and your fingers to employ a series of techniques that help you quickly find what you need to know about web pages;
2. Train your mind to think critically, even suspiciously, by asking a series of questions that will help you decide how much a web page is to be trusted.’ (tips’ source).

In conclusion, if you want to find more on the subject this is the complete list of the useful website I found in my research:

Tips from Wendy Boswell
Tips from from the Milton Library at Johns Hopkins University
Tips from the University of Berkley
Tips from the University of Essex
Tips from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Tips from San Diego State University

Catch you soon
Martina

YouTube: the visual revolution!

What do I think about YouTube?

Well, I think that YouTube could replace television and radio as the main source of visual and oral entertainment. I know this is a strong statement but I honestly believe I’m not so far from the truth.

I discovered YouTube as a good source for language analysis. As a matter of fact, anybody says and writes what he/she thinks in a very, how can I say, direct way. Sometimes, people are too frank and they can post very rude comments, using foul language. I totally disagree with them, since straightforwardness does not mean vulgarity.

As regards my YouTube experience, I can say that, while searching on YouTube for funny videos to post in my blog, I come across some comments which were absolutely out of the world! I have always been told that orthography and grammar are the supreme 'laws' which enable us to learn a new language. Actually, I see that some native speakers do not care about grammar and orthography at all!

I think the language of ICT- information and communication technology can make us aware of how new words and new habits enter a language. For example, last Wednesday, Sarah told us how frequently some American students misspell some expressions and write "your" rather than "you are" or even "their" rather than "they are", in our forum about the Padova-Albany Exchange.

In my opinion, it’s important to distinguish among the kind of videos you can find on YouTube.
I mean, you can find everything; so we must pay attention to what we came across. Some videos are really weird! I think that YouTube, as any other tool, is a good resource if you use it the right way. On the contrary, it becomes very dangerous if people use it just to post insulting and offensive videos.

Before hearing about YouTube, I used to listen to BBC broadcast. I must say that on the BBC site you can listen to some very good programs and have a look at the scripts; but the spoken words are not supported by visual images. In one sense, the visual elements allow ideas to work with the full range of the human imagination.

As a consequence, this powerful tool will enable us to change our way to perceive information, communication and even learning. People are so used to communicating through digital materials that living without such technologies would be upsetting!

In conclusion, YouTube has become very popular and I think this is partly due to its high accessibly. Anybody can put almost anything on this site and the fact that people can rate the videos contributes to award high or low popularity to these videos.

I think YouTube is not only ‘a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips.’ (wikipedia) but also a way to communicate, exchange ideas and improve our language skills!

(photo source)

What only British dare! - 2nd part

Comic Relief - Catherine Tate & David Tennant




CATHERINE: Are you English, Sir?
DAVID: No I'm Scottish.
CATHERINE: So, you aren't English then!
DAVID: No I'm British.
CATHERINE: So you aren't English then!

Surfing on the web and searching for interesting and humorous videos on YouTube, I found this hilarious video played by Catherine Tate and David Tennant.

David Tennant is a very well-known theatre actor. 'He was ranked the 24th most influential person in the UK's media, on the 9 July 2007 Media Guardian supplement of The Guardian. Tennant also appeared in the paper's annual media rankings in 2006.' (Wikipedia)

In September, I heard about him for the first time. My friend Karen invited me to go to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see Hamlet, played by the Royal Shakespeare Company and by David Tennant (of course!). I still don't know whether I'll be able to go there or not, but I'm sure Karen will give me a very rich and detailed report about Hamlet (and David Tennant)! =) lol

If you want to read an article about the event, click here. Please, remember to send me you comments!

Cheers!

What only British dare! - 1st part

Catherine Tate: 7 languages interpreter




First, I am Italian, and I think that English accents sound better then ours. Anyway, every accent of a specific language may sound weird to someone who doesn't speak that language. In this video, Ms.Tate is extremely talented, and she does manage to reproduce foreign languages' intonation very well. Actually, she also make fun of them!

(I have to admit that if I weren't an Italian native speaker I could have recognized her as an Italian speaker! lol)

Anyway, just like British try to pull of foreign accents, I’d be glad to listen to someone trying to pull of British accent! I think it’s extremely difficult!

Catch you later, guys!

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, a part of Poland under Russia, on the 3rd of December 1657. Typical of Conrad’s work are the atmosphere of adventure and the distant and exotic settings. The sea is the main ingredient of most of his novels and this is obviously a result of his own seafaring adventures as a youth and his experience with the merchant navy.

Conrad’s deep pessimism, which he inherited from the unhappy political situation of his birth country, is often evident in his works. He saw man in the lap of un unforeseen estiny which had the power of revealing his true, often negative, identity. Among his best works there is Heart of Darkness. I read this book three or four times and each time I found a new interesting topic that makes me think about colonialism. I think a certain kind of colonialism still exists in the present-day society. As you can see from the plot summary I will provide you below, the story told in the novel is not so far form the events in our contemporary ‘civilized’ world.

Heart of Darkness

tells the experiences of the main character, Marlow, during a journey up the river Congo in Africa as a commander of a steamer for a Belgian trading company. The experience he tells itself to different levels of interpretation. The darkness of the title, in fact, refers both to the physical journey into Africa and to a journey into Marlow’s unconscious, whereby the more he penetrates into Africa the more he gets a deeper understanding of himself and the world surrounding him.

The novel is a strong attack on the abuses and devastation caused by colonialism. No sooner, in fact, does Marlow arrive at the Central Station than he realizes the ruin and degeneration colonial enterprises both to the land and to the natives. The latter, in fact, are reduced to mere shades, phantoms without a glimpse of life in them.
A device Conrad uses in his denunciation of colonialism is irony, by means of which what is written contrasts with what is really meant. In Heart of Darkness colonialism reveals all his evil aspects, not only because of the economic exploitation it implies but also because of the power it has to free man’s most brutal forces.

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola directed a film: Apocalypse Now. It was inspired by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The film is set during the Vietnam War. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has been charged by the American secret services to discharge Captain Kurtz (Marlon Brando) of his command. The latter, in fact, has escaped into Cambodia and has created a personal army in the jungle, where he is worshipped as a god. Eventually, Captain Willard succeeds in finding Captain Kurtz, after a terrible voyage up a river amid of devastations, death and ruins.

(photo sources)

Podcasts are great fun!!

What is a podcast? Never heard before? Don’t worry, it seems a difficult tool but actually it’s very simple! 'A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.' (Wikipedia)

Last Wednesday, I looked for funny podcasts in many different websites. Some podcasts were absolutely AMAZING!!! That’s why I downloaded them onto my computer; I added them into my favourite websites on del.icio.us; and finally, I added them to my podcast playlist on bloglines. I will briefly describe you the most useful and hilarious podcasts I found. While listening to these podcasts, I can learn English and have fun as well! It’s unbelievable, guys! These are the podcasts I selected for you:


1. Lesson 111- Seattle.
2. Lesson 109- Chomsky. (The Bob and Rob Show)
3. Proofreading tips. (Grammar Girl)
4.Rethinking Teacher training. (ELSPod.com).

My first choice was The Bob and Rob Show. The Bob and Rob Show is a variety show aimed at intermediate to advanced learners of English. It takes a very unconventional approach to teaching English because the programs deal with current exciting and unusual topics. As Bob and Rob point out, their show is definitely a hodgepodge!

Now, I give you few details about the speakers. Bob is from the West Coast of the United States. He lived in California until he was six, and then spent the next 16 years living in Oregon and Washington State. Rob is from North London. Although he is British, he has dual nationality because his parents are Italian. Now, Bob and Rob live in Japan, and they both teach English at the same university. In each podcast, these two bizarre speakers teach us idioms, grammar, and slang in both American and English flavours.

I can say that their accents are extremely funny and make me laugh a lot. Both the Seattle and Chomsky lessons are not serious and boring academic lessons at all. So, if you want to spend some minutes having fun...just listen to them, guys!

Grammar Girl is a completely different website. There, you’ll mostly find podcasts about grammar rules, common mistakes, tips to improve your oral and written English. Maybe, you read the post I sent some weeks ago to my blog where I explained some useful suggestions we had come up with in class. These suggestions dealt with the basic rules in order to make a good post. Well, most of the rules I listed are described by Grammar Girl, too. For example, Grammar Girl says that it’s always helpful to read your work out loud. (I stated the same thing in my post entitled ‘Making a good post’). Then, she also gives us further suggestions which hadn’t come in my mind. For example, she suggests to:

1) ‘Read your work backwards, starting with the last sentence and working your way in reverse order to the beginning. Supposedly this works better than reading through from the beginning because your brain knows what you meant to write, so you tend to skip over errors when you're reading forwards.

2) Always proofread a printed version of your work. I don't know why, but if I try to proofread on a computer monitor I always miss more errors than if I print out a copy and go over it on paper.

3) Give yourself some time. If possible, let your work sit for a while before you proofread it. It seems to me that if you are able to clear your mind and approach the writing from a fresh perspective, then your brain is more able to focus on the actual words, rather than seeing the words you think you wrote.’ (Mignon Fogarty).

Mignon Fogarty, the creator of Grammar Girl, believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. She strives to be a friendly guide in the writing world. Actually, she really manages to provide short, friendly tips to improve our writing. The thing I like best in this website is that Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help us recall and apply some troublesome grammar rules.

The last but not the least: ESLPod.com. This website is run by a team of experienced English as a Second Language professors with over 30 years of experience. Dr. Lucy Tse writes scripts and story ideas for the podcasts, and records many of the dialogues and stories. The host for the podcast is Dr. Jeff McQuillan, who helps read the scripts and provides explanations for them.

The podcast I selected for you deals with a topic I am particularly interested in: rethinking teacher training. As I told you in my welcome post, my dream job is to become a teacher. Therefore, everything that is concerned with teaching is absolutely important to me! Especially, in the podcast you can listen to the reasons why many teachers decide to give up their job.

While listening to the podcast I came across a word I had never heard before: attrition. In my Collins COBUILD dictionary, I found that attrition means ‘the decrease in number of students or employees caused by people leaving and not being replaced’. The speaker states that teacher attrition happens when teachers quit their jobs and start a new career. This is a huge problem in the U.S., since as many as 50% of all teachers leave teaching in their first five years. Some leave because the pay is not very high, but many leave due to the stress involved in being a teacher nowadays.

This podcast is very popular because many people listened to it and sent their comments about the situation of teachers in US, in Germany, in Spain and in Russia. Concerned with this subject, there is an interesting article entitled Rethinking How to Teach the New Teachers by Denise Caruso, published in The New York Times. Caruso states that one option to solve the problem is to start teacher education students in front of the classroom teaching right away, instead of waiting until the end of their training.

In conclusion, podcasts are a great resource indeed. They enable you to listen to conversations and discussions on very interesting topics. So, it’s a very good way to improve our English.

It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s very powerful!

Hope it helps! Catch you later.

(photo sources)

Del.icio.us is delicious!

Try del.icio.us- you’ll love it! I still think of the time when I was looking for studies that really work, authentic articles, and effective information but rather than finding them straightaway, I was obliged to search for them for hours and hours. After spending so many energies searching on the web, the result was pretty unsatisfactory. But now, that time is over because now I can count on del.icio.us!

Del.icio.us is a useful way of 'filtering' the overload of information on the Internet and a very effective way of using Internet for my learning and searches. This week Sarah introduced the class into the world of SOCIAL BOOKMARKING. As she said, social bookmarking is not only a way to store and save your favourite website online, but also a way to share them with people you know or with people who have your same interests. Google can help you to find a huge amount of information but it doesn’t suggest you which site is good for you and why it is useful.

By using social bookmarking, you can highlight what is special about a site and why it’s worthwhile to have a look at it! In addition, if you create a personal network of people who share your interests it’ll be very easy to find out some new interesting sites, just by clicking on the sites they added. To search for websites and blogs that might interest you will become as easy as it has never been before!

As a matter of fact, websites are an immensely popular cultural form of communication and they don’t have to be read from the beginning to the end because you can find interesting only some chunks of them. Despite their popularity and accessibility, they are not organized in a hierarchic way. All that said, it’s difficult to estimate the degree of effectiveness of each site; it’s not easy to guess from the title or from the url how much meaningful a certain site is for you. Del.icio.us is the solution! It's simple, it's easy! The easy-to-read format of delicious does not mean that it is not carefully crafted. In this site you can find everything about a website: its title, its url, its brief description, some notes and tags. In addition, you can also retrieve the name of the people who added it into del.icio.us.

In my group, many peers chose educational websites. This is partly due to the contents we always are looking for: English learning, dictionaries, grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and so on. I had a look at some websites and I will briefly describe what I liked most.

• Camilla’s choice: informal English dictionary
  “This is a simple and useful dictionary of informal English”. (Camilla)


• Elena’s choice: English Pronunciation
  “An useful site to practice English phonetics and improve your pronunciation. You can work on the most difficult English sounds through videos and dictations, by comparing minimal pairs, listening and recording conversations, or by trying your hand at tong”. (Elena)


• Marina’s choice: schematic rules for English punctuation
  “A helpful list of the different parts of punctuation when writing in English”. (Marina)


• Silvia’s choice: wordreference
  “This website contains free online dictionaries. It can be very useful when you're translating! As a matter of fact, it contains both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.” (Silvia)


• Veronica’s choice: Free online English dictionary
  “This free online English dictionary can be a useful tool when translating a text into English. This monolingual dictionary not only explains the meaning and the grammatical function of the word you are interested in, but also its ethymology.” (Veronica)

Overall, I think the websites my peers chose aim to promote specialist English learning in the field of on-line learning. They focus on specific aspects of language use in one or several languages and provide valuable insights into language and communication research. As we pointed out in class, punctuation is a very complex subject for Italian students who learn English and we still make too many mistakes. Marina wisely put on del.icio.us a website where we can find schematic rules in order to correctly use English punctuation. Elena suggested us a very good site which can help us to improve our pronunciation. Camilla, Veronica and Silvia are interested in dictionaries: on the one hand, Camilla wants to know more on informal English; on the other hand, Silvia and Veronica looks for a good online resource for translation’s aims. In my opinion, the basic features of online dictionaries should be: to help me to understand the differences in meaning between words with similar meanings; to provide detailed definitions and natural examples; to suggest the correct use of a word; to give some example sentences which are taken from authentic spoken English.

In conclusion, I really liked the work my peers done. By exploiting the websites they suggested me, I hope I’ll gain confidence in using new vocabulary!

Thank you girls for your contributions on del.icio.us!
Social bookmarking is a very useful resource and I hope we’ll take advantage of it!

(photo source)

ezra pound

About two weeks ago, it was the anniversary of Ezra Pound’s birthday (on 30th October1885). So far, I’ve not read so many poems by this author but I’d like to read more on the subject. Here for you, some information on his life, his career and his poetics.

"Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot. His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry--stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of the Little Review in 1917. In 1924, he moved to Italy; during this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in Fascist politics, and did not return to the United States until 1945, when he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War. In 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement, the jury of the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (1948). After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972." These notes are taken from a website on poets, if you want to find more click here.

(photo source)

Remarkable movies

While searching information about movies I watched during my course of 'Letterature Comparate', I found a blog on Greta Garbo called 'Great Garbo lives'. It's written by philippe who is not a movie critic but is very fond of Greta Garbo. Go and have a look at his blog! It's definitely worthwhile a visit!

Here for you, the reviews of two masterpieces which are all-time classics by Ernst Lubitsch: Ninotchka and To be or not to be. I think that Lubitsch is incredibly brilliant because in To be or not to be he manages to provide a biting satire of the Nazis and the movie itself is priceless. Ninotchka is a very moving and witty love story; Lubitsch has a very gentle touch and he manages to represent the story in a very subtle way.
In my opinion, these are fantastic movies, indeed.

Ninotchka (1939)

'Garbo laughs. So read the advertising for the star's first outright comedy, and it brilliantly sums up the appeal of this remarkable film. Director Ernst Lubitsch has the actress gracefully step down from her pedestal as the stern Communist who warms to the appeal of Paris champagne and playboy Melvyn Douglas. Combining farce, romance and satire, yet still maintaining moments of that soaring Garbo intensity, NINOTCHKA is special indeed.
When three Soviet emissaries (Bressart, Rumann, Granach, whose work could not possibly be bettered) arrive in Paris on a mission, it's not long before Paris arrives on them instead. And so, super efficient Comrade Ninotchka (Garbo) appears to retrieve jewelry in the possession of the former Grand Duchess Swana (Claire). It is the Soviet government's contention that the property of the aristocrats properly belongs to the people. The two women's tussle over the goods becomes complicated, however, when Swana's swain Leon (Douglas) becomes infatuated with the frosty commissar.
Many of Garbo's films rely on her presence alone for their appeal. That's not the case here. Working from a brittle, witty script by no less than Wilder, Brackett, and Reisch, the gifted Lubitsch brings his patented "touch" to scene after scene. From the bumbling emissaries' arithmetic about ringing for hotel maids to Ninotchka's hilarious "execution scene" the film bubbles merrily throughout. Garbo rarely had a paramour as adroit as Douglas, who wears a dinner jacket with the flair of Astaire and the polish of Powell. He plays the gushy romantic dialogue early on with the perfect combination of conviction and playfulness, and one of the film's beauties is watching Garbo shift gears into this mode herself. The lovely scene in a cafe where Douglas cracks Ninotchka up only when he falls off his chair remains a highlight of both film comedy and screen romance.
An adroit satire of both Communism and capitalism, NINOTCHKA still manages a healthy heartiness and a sweet sadness.'

To be or not to be (1942)

'A masterpiece of satire and one of the more controversial films of its day, TO BE OR NOT TO BE is a brilliant example of how comedy can be as effective in raising social and political awareness as a serious propaganda film, while still providing hilarious entertainment.
The film begins in Poland, 1939, where Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), a tremendously vain Polish actor, and his wife, Maria (Carole Lombard), a conceited national institution in Warsaw, are starring in an anti-Nazi stage play that subsequently is censored and replaced with a production of "Hamlet." Maria has taken a fancy to a young Polish fighter pilot, Sobinski (Robert Stack), who is called to duty when Germany invades Poland. In England, he and his fellow pilots in the Polish squadron of the RAF bid farewell to their much-loved mentor, Prof. Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who confides to them that he is on a secret mission to Warsaw. Sobinski, however, begins to suspect that Siletsky is a spy and flies to Warsaw to stop him from keeping an appointment with Nazi colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Rumann)--an appointment that will destroy the Warsaw underground. There, Sobinski enlists the aid and special talents of the Tura's theater group to save and protect the Resistance.
A satire built around a rather complex spy plot and directed with genius by Ernst Lubitsch, TO BE OR NOT TO BE lampoons the Nazis and paints the Poles as brave patriots fighting for their land, for whom Hamlet's question "To be or not to be" takes on national implications. Released in 1942, in the midst of America's involvement in WWII, the film drew a great deal of criticism from people who felt that Lubitsch, a German (though he left long before Hitler's rise), was somehow making fun of the Poles. TO BE OR NOT TO BE is also remembered as the last screen appearance for the dazzling Lombard, who, just after the film's completion, was killed in a plane crash while on her way to Hollywood for a war bonds spot on Benny's radio show. TO BE was a perfect and brash finale to Lombard's great comic genius, especially because of it's examination of play-acting. Was there ever as playful a spirit on a movie set as Lombard? The film came from an idea by Melchior Lengyel--as did NINOTCHKA. Mel Brooks's remake of the story was released in 1983, with Brooks and Anne Bancroft playing the leads. While not as good, it's a perfectly watchable, if unecessary, tribute to the original, with Bancroft faring better than Brooks.'

(photo and reviews source)

What's special about Bloglines?

(photo source)

Hello,

Today I’ll start with a brief summary of what I’ve learnt about Bloglines so far. Last week, I learnt how to subscribe to the personal blogs in my group; how to subscribe to any other interesting sites I found during my online searches; how to create playlists.

It was great fun and it was definitely useful. I didn’t know how to create an account on Bloglines; how to subscribe to all of my peers’ personal blogs; how to organize a playlist. These are nice tools to organize information and a good way to organize my work. Due to the fact that in our everyday life we are constantly urged to save time (and money), we need to find what we need - quickly.

The strong point using an aggregator is that each time the sites you subscribed to are updated with new information, you receive the update. Therefore, you’ll save so much time and you’ll receive information quickly. In my opinion, it’s vital to have such a tool because it enables us to tidy up our collection of blogs.

If you want to find more about aggregators, have a look to Using An "Aggregator" To Capture RSS Feeds: A Technology For Keeping Up-To-Date, a very interesting article by Bell Steven. I carefully read through it and I realized that life is easier for those who master technology (I’m clearly experiencing it now in my work!).

Last week, I had a look also to the site of npr, which Sarah suggested us. I had a look at this site because I could find much information on:

• News


• Politics and society


• Business


• People and places

• Health and science

• Books


• Music


• Arts and culture


• Diversions


• Opinions
  

In addition, I can also access hourly news summaries and 24-hours programme stream. It’ amazing! It’s a good way to improve my English, to be constantly up-to-date and have fun!

Finally, as you can guess from the title of my post, I want to point out what is special about Bloglines:

• I can effortlessly blend and monitor the development of my peer’s personal blogs


• I can add to my personal playlist whatever I like


• I don’t have to be an expert blogger to find a way to check everything I need without getting lost


• I can be an active explorer of blogs and save them in new playlists, giving them a title


• I can learn real-world English by accessing information on the web


• I can be inspired by fresh and exciting contents I read on the blogs


• Therefore it’s easy for me to do my work and to save time.
  
  
  Before leaving, here it is a little piece of wisdom, just for you!
  

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself!
(Chinese proverb)

See you!
Martina