Photo from FlickrThis week's e-tivity deals with social bookmarking, an easy way to store your bookmarks online rather than on your computer. I went to del.icio.us, registered as Alessandra_P and was ready to start exploring the site!
Social bookmarking involves saving your favourite websites on an online service such as del.icio.us. For each bookmark you need to provide the URL, a title, a description of the website (what del.icio.us calls "notes"), as well as tags. Tags are keywords which can be used to identify an Internet resource; they're particularly important because users browse all the different bookmarks hosted on del.icio.us according to the tags associated with each website. For this reason, tags should be chosen carefully.
On del.icio.us you can either save the most interesting websites you encounter, or browse what other users consider interesting. This is a good way to come across new resources on the Internet, or to re-discover interesting websites you visited maybe some time ago, and then couldn't find again.
In this way you can take advantage of websites found by other people , and don't have to rely only on your own web searches. You can also build your own network of people who share your interests, and keep an eye on their bookmarks.
A social bookmarking service is different than a search engine in that websites aren't chosen by software, but by people who understand the content of the resource; after a search on del.icio.us you should come up with items selected more carefully. In addition to that, del.icio.us shows how many people have already saved each item to their own bookmarks. Websites which have been selected by a high number of users can be trusted to be noteworthy, at the very least.
However, del.icio.us, has disadvantages, too. First of all, it takes some time to get accustomed to using it. Moreover, I had difficulties finding all of my peers' bookmarks, even though I'm sure we all used the same tag. In general, I suppose using social bookmarking services becomes more difficult when tags aren't used consistently by different users. This is a difficult problem to overcome because tagging depends on personal choice, and different people may choose different tags for similar resources.
I was surprised at the number of useful things you can come acros using del.icio.us. For example, I found Essay Writing Centre, a website containing suggestions and guidelines for different kinds of academic writing assignments. Here you can find accurate descriptions of each sort of essay, as well as examples and tips on improving your writing.
My peers, too, discovered many useful resources. Some deal with grammar and/or writing, such as Common Errors in English, saved by Ilaria and Tania. It is a list of recurring mistakes and often confused words in English. I suppose it mainly refers to errors made by native speakers who aren't very careful with their language, but I think it can be useful to us, too. At the bottom of the page you can find examples of correct usage which is often considered wrong, often misspelled words, and a list of other resources.
Ten Tips for Effective Internet Article Writing, bookmarked by Suzanne, provides suggestions on how to write articles for the Web. In fact, texts which are to be published online have different requirements than those which will be read on paper, and I think it is important for us to learn this distinction.
Other resources focus on pronounciation. Martina saved The Speech Accent Archive, a website devoted to collecting speech samples from people all over the world. These samples can be used for contrastive analysis. This could be a very interesting resource for our English Phonetics and Phonology course.
Other websites delve into vocabulary, especially colloquial language and/or slang. Several people saved The Best of British, a collection of British colloquial expressions explained to American speakers. It is easy to navigate and understand, and contains amusing cartoons.
As it is not always easy to find an English equivalent for linguistic terms we already know in Italian, here comes a Glossary of linguistic terms, found by Ilaria. All the links are on one page, you only have to click on the one you need. Useful.
Alessandra T. found a little gem: Word Spy, a collection of new words and phrases which appeared multiple times in newspaper, magazines, or websites. Each entry includes a definition, as well as an example quotation. I particularly appreciated it because I often come across unsual expression when reading articles on the Web, and I never know how to deal with them. I had been looking for such a thing for a long time, and I'm glad someone found this for me!
Another site I had found in the past but couldn't find my way back to is How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly and Learn Complex Material More Easily, found by Elena. It is a series of slides prepared by an American professor, cointaining useful tips for students who want to improve their writing, thinking and learning skills. Most suggestions are very basic, but still useful. I appreciated this because it reminded me of what my Italian high school teacher always told us: you can't write clearly if you don't think clearly.
And wouldn't it be nice to make some friends abroad: see FriendsAbroad, a community of language learners from all over the world, found by Alida. You can make your own profile and/or browse profiles of other people who share your interests. Nice.
I'm sure there are many other interesting websites, and that maybe some people haven't completed the etivity yet, but I'm afraid I won't be able to access the Internet until next Monday, so I'm posting this now (this post is already way too long...). See you next week!
Social bookmarking involves saving your favourite websites on an online service such as del.icio.us. For each bookmark you need to provide the URL, a title, a description of the website (what del.icio.us calls "notes"), as well as tags. Tags are keywords which can be used to identify an Internet resource; they're particularly important because users browse all the different bookmarks hosted on del.icio.us according to the tags associated with each website. For this reason, tags should be chosen carefully.
On del.icio.us you can either save the most interesting websites you encounter, or browse what other users consider interesting. This is a good way to come across new resources on the Internet, or to re-discover interesting websites you visited maybe some time ago, and then couldn't find again.
In this way you can take advantage of websites found by other people , and don't have to rely only on your own web searches. You can also build your own network of people who share your interests, and keep an eye on their bookmarks.
A social bookmarking service is different than a search engine in that websites aren't chosen by software, but by people who understand the content of the resource; after a search on del.icio.us you should come up with items selected more carefully. In addition to that, del.icio.us shows how many people have already saved each item to their own bookmarks. Websites which have been selected by a high number of users can be trusted to be noteworthy, at the very least.
However, del.icio.us, has disadvantages, too. First of all, it takes some time to get accustomed to using it. Moreover, I had difficulties finding all of my peers' bookmarks, even though I'm sure we all used the same tag. In general, I suppose using social bookmarking services becomes more difficult when tags aren't used consistently by different users. This is a difficult problem to overcome because tagging depends on personal choice, and different people may choose different tags for similar resources.
I was surprised at the number of useful things you can come acros using del.icio.us. For example, I found Essay Writing Centre, a website containing suggestions and guidelines for different kinds of academic writing assignments. Here you can find accurate descriptions of each sort of essay, as well as examples and tips on improving your writing.
My peers, too, discovered many useful resources. Some deal with grammar and/or writing, such as Common Errors in English, saved by Ilaria and Tania. It is a list of recurring mistakes and often confused words in English. I suppose it mainly refers to errors made by native speakers who aren't very careful with their language, but I think it can be useful to us, too. At the bottom of the page you can find examples of correct usage which is often considered wrong, often misspelled words, and a list of other resources.
Ten Tips for Effective Internet Article Writing, bookmarked by Suzanne, provides suggestions on how to write articles for the Web. In fact, texts which are to be published online have different requirements than those which will be read on paper, and I think it is important for us to learn this distinction.
Other resources focus on pronounciation. Martina saved The Speech Accent Archive, a website devoted to collecting speech samples from people all over the world. These samples can be used for contrastive analysis. This could be a very interesting resource for our English Phonetics and Phonology course.
Other websites delve into vocabulary, especially colloquial language and/or slang. Several people saved The Best of British, a collection of British colloquial expressions explained to American speakers. It is easy to navigate and understand, and contains amusing cartoons.
As it is not always easy to find an English equivalent for linguistic terms we already know in Italian, here comes a Glossary of linguistic terms, found by Ilaria. All the links are on one page, you only have to click on the one you need. Useful.
Alessandra T. found a little gem: Word Spy, a collection of new words and phrases which appeared multiple times in newspaper, magazines, or websites. Each entry includes a definition, as well as an example quotation. I particularly appreciated it because I often come across unsual expression when reading articles on the Web, and I never know how to deal with them. I had been looking for such a thing for a long time, and I'm glad someone found this for me!
Another site I had found in the past but couldn't find my way back to is How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly and Learn Complex Material More Easily, found by Elena. It is a series of slides prepared by an American professor, cointaining useful tips for students who want to improve their writing, thinking and learning skills. Most suggestions are very basic, but still useful. I appreciated this because it reminded me of what my Italian high school teacher always told us: you can't write clearly if you don't think clearly.
And wouldn't it be nice to make some friends abroad: see FriendsAbroad, a community of language learners from all over the world, found by Alida. You can make your own profile and/or browse profiles of other people who share your interests. Nice.
I'm sure there are many other interesting websites, and that maybe some people haven't completed the etivity yet, but I'm afraid I won't be able to access the Internet until next Monday, so I'm posting this now (this post is already way too long...). See you next week!
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