WEB AGGREGATORS

Photo from flickr

You might be wondering why I chose this picture for introducing our e-tivity of the week. As I have already told you I am not very good with computers but when I am given the task of exploring new tools I get curious about them and start playing around - the way children do! I love to be astonished by new things because you never really stop learning. That's why I sometimes go into trouble... Some days ago I modified a word on the post I had already published and when I checked it your comments where no longer there, even though on 'my hidden page' I can see that you left 8 comments but I cannot get them back. I looked for FAQs about blogs on del.icio.us. but my search was not successful up to now. Maybe you can help me but I fear I lost them :(

So you might understand why I hope that web aggregators, such as bloglines, are going to be the last tool we are exploring. An aggregator allows you to monitor all feeds you saved and check their updates instead of opening every single site. This means that you are going to spare huge amounts of time especially if you need to check often for updates, e.g. because you are monitoring markets, checking student's homework, your friend's blogs and so on. What I did was adding all classmates to my feeds and create my playlist. Now I am using it in the course but being the tool userfriendly I will use it for personal purposes too. Moreover, it is up to you to decide if you want the software installed on your computer or not. I think that online versions are really good because you can look for updates from every computer and spare memory on your pc, which is very important to me because my computer is not powerful at all! All I said is possible due to RSS (Really Simple Syndacation), which is the format used by web aggregators, that allows you to check frequently updated content such as blogs, podcasts and news feeds. (That's why it appeared at the bottom of the blog!)

Hope to hearing from you soon!
alexandra

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

Photo from flickr

I love bookmarks - real ones I mean! I have never considered collecting them but I should as I own a great huge! When I read the e-tivity of the week I did not know what social bookmarking did mean that's why I started surfing the net in order to get more information about it. So I learnt that it is a very useful and popular tool that allows you to store, classify and share sites you think are interesting or you might have difficulty finding again. Moreover, social bookmarking is more selective than search engines like google because people have already evaluated the sites!

One of the most well-known social bookmarking websites is del.icio.us. - a quite easy site to browse although it took me some time to get used to it because I am not very good with computers! Once you signed in you can search the information you need by typing keywords - called tags - and look around if some sites match your request. As all the sites show how many people saved them on their favorites you can easily assess their reliability.

But what is more is that social bookmarking has several advantages. First of all you do not need your own browser as you can get your bookmarks from everywhere - home, school, office. Second you can create your network where you can add people's names who might have found sites you really like. Third the whole website is userfriendly so it won't take you too much time to get used to it!

Some sites that might help you with your English are: language teaching, slang, listening, writing, pronunciation, essay writing, meeting friends online, misunderstandings
I wrote some notes on them that you can check on del.icio.us.

alexandra

ABOUT MY BLOG EXPERIENCE

What am I gonna to do?!?!

Blogging is new to me as I have never taken into consideration all those emails by friends inviting me to share their blogs - that's why I was not ready for this experience! But after spending the whole afternoon surfing the net trying to get answers I realized that it is a funny and interesting way to keep in touch with many people at the same time. You can share doubts, give suggestions, express feelings and thoughts... Or just browse through blogs!

Blogs are your personal space on the net where you can do almost everything - upload images, audio files, videos, music, post messages and replies - but what's more you can give it your personal touch by changing the layout, deciding which sections you want there, choosing topics and updating it whenever you want. This might be the reason why they became so popular over the years! I must say that I am spending huge time online looking for everything that catches my attention - as blog owner's aim is to make their space fetching - and often I really get lost! But I learnt that one of blogs' function is that they work as filters so you can easily avoid spending time exploring websites you do not need.

But the aspect I appreciate most about blogging is that people from all over the world can get in touch and the language they would use is English. For students of languages, like me, this is one of the best ways to learn everyday English despite spending time abroad. You can learn idiomatic expressions, new words, improve your language knowledge... And have fun as well as you can learn slang! You can find out more at the link below.

I love travelling and the blog I'm creating will be about it because I'd like to share experiences with you! My last journey took place two weeks ago when I travelled to Vancouver with my best friend who moved there because of her boyfriend.
I put some pictures on my blog maybe I will arouse your curiosity :)))))))))))
Feel free to ask questions about the city and add your experiences!

Cheers
alexandra