..."del.icio.us"... ;-)

Hi everybody!

How are you doing? I hope you had fun searching for blogs and websites about English…I really did :-)
As soon as I read the text of “e-tivity 5” I felt just like last week with “e-tivity 4”, which means quite disoriented and worried; but in the end everything turned out to be quite simple…Well, I am getting more and more confident with these technologies, isn’t that GREAT??? ;-)

I think “del.icio.us” is another useful tool I had never heard about before; it allows us to make a list of the websites we are mostly interested in and to share them with the members of our network. This is the big advantage of “social bookmarking“: you create a sort of “community” where you can exchange ideas and links with other people. It is a good example of how you can interact on the Web with someone who has your same interests. I also liked the possibility to narrow the search field by searching for blogs and websites only on “del.icio.us”: in this way you do not get so many results as you would do if you searched on the whole Net.

This time we were supposed to find web pages about English learning or subject matters we study; I noticed that most of us focused on English, especially on slang, proverbs and idiomatic expressions. Almost all of my peers (me included) chose at least one website which has to do with listening and pronunciation exercises; for example, in my group K there are three of us who chose “Lello”, a very well-structured website that can really help us improve our understanding skills.
So I guess the majority of us concentrated on this ability because it is the most difficult one to exercise if you do not live in an English-speaking environment…Nevertheless, we all agree it is extremely important to be able to understand as much as possible when native speakers talk… :-)
Many of us also chose the “BBC Learning English Homepage”; I think this is one of the best ways to learn English online and to test your improvements. I got to know this site since someone suggested it in “e-tivity 1” and I find it fantastic…And it seems I am not the only one who thinks so!

My first impression is that most students picked websites which are more or less similar; however, some people’s choices reflect their specific interests. For example, I put a website about Business English among my favorites, while Enrico chose a website about philosophy, which I liked a lot as it explained quite complicated matters with simple words. Nina also has a link to a page about psychology and to a great website where you can listen to narrations taken from books…That really impressed me, I never thought it would exist something similar.
One last thing: I asked myself if in “del.icio.us.“ you can organize your links into different folders as in “Bloglines”…Well, I do not think so (but I might be wrong...) and I must say it is a real shame :-( Of course thanks to tags you can filter the information as well, but…It is not the same anyway!

Ok, see you soon!
BYE