“Power is knowledge shared” (by Reid G. Smith)
Here I am with a new post! Perhaps it’s a bit too long, but I assume it’s worth reading it! After Blogger, Technorati and Bloglines, this time I’ll tell you something about del.icio.us, that is to say social bookmarking!
Last week our English teacher, Sarah, taught us what social bookmarking is and how to use del.icio.us (see e-tivity 5). Social bookmarking means storing bookmarks (links to web pages) to a public website, such as del.icio.us, Google bookmarks, Yahoo Bookmarks, that offers a social bookmarking web service. This is really different from older ways of bookmarking. As I told you on my post “Subscribe to Bloglines? Yes, please”, before I saved URLs under Favorites in Internet Explorer; this implies that it was only me who could access my bookmarks and that I could see them only from my computer at home.
Well, why is social bookmarking so revolutionary? Quite straightforward! It’s social! This means not only that, as a del.icio.us user, you can easily save web pages you usually visit and access them from any computer with an Internet connection, but also – and even more important – that you can share your online bookmarks with other people. These are the main advantages of using social bookmarking!
Since online bookmark services are public, you can search them (they’re supposed to be more authoritative than search engines since the bookmarks have been filtered somehow by the people who have saved them), see who has stored a given bookmark, go to his/her page and look at his/her bookmarks. But you can also create a network of people that, let’s say, have your same interests and this allows you to see all the bookmarks that have been stored on your network. This is exactly what I did in my e-tivity 5: I built up a network with all the members of my group (group E), so that I can see all the URLs they bookmark on del.icio.us!
Another great advantage is that social bookmarks can be associated with a brief summary of their content and, above all, with tags (e.g. ‘language’, ‘phonetics’ ‘ESL’, podcast’) instead of being arranged into folders as it was with traditional bookmarking systems. That’s great! Because this enable you to narrow your search and retrieve only the bookmarks that have been joined to a given tag! And, in addition, you no longer have to remember in which folder you saved this or that URL among ‘Your Favorites’!
However, I read in Wikipedia that tag-based systems present some drawbacks, which I myself have actually experienced; for example, mistagging due to spelling mistakes or the fact that there is no standard: capitalization, singular vs. plural (‘idiom’ or ‘idioms’? ‘English’ or ‘english’?). Have you ever dealt with such a problem when tagging?
By the way, I mostly appreciated the ‘social side’ of del.icio.us! It’s a powerful tool to share your ‘discoveries on the Web’ with people who have your same interests…For example, in our class we all share the passion for foreign languages, of course; therefore, adding my group mates to my network enabled me to visit all the websites they bookmarked on del.icio.us that deal with language learning!
And now… I’ll give you a taste of what my mates found out!
Camilla: common mistakes
“It is a list of common mistakes in English. It looks like a short dictionary of common mistakes.”
Mistake is such an eye-catching word for ESL students like me! I‘ve been studying English for so many years, but I still make so silly mistakes. :-( That’s why I found this site so useful even for advanced language learners. It consists of pairs of words, alphabetically sorted, which are spelled similarly but have a completely different use and meaning; for example, to refresh my memory, I had a look at the difference between anyone/any one, continual/continuous, economic/economical, hanged/hung, sensual/sensuous.
Silvia: History Channel
“This website can be an useful tool for researching information and learning something more about history. It includes also interesting videos and you can listen to famous speeches.”
I’m fond of history and Silvia’s words struck me immediately! The History Channel is an effective tool not only to learn a bit more about our present and past history, but also to practice your listening skills with the language used on TV or radio programmes. This site is definitely absorbing: when you start watching videos, you’ll never stop! For example, I watched a video about the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, then one about the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, by the Soviet Union in 1951, and then a video about global warming too. Just out of curiosity: do you know that from 2000 to 2006 we lost 22% of the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro and that by 2020 it will have completely disappeared? So fearful!
Veronica: useful guide to English punctuation
“This is a helpful guide to English punctuation that describes the correct use of each punctuation mark and provides useful examples.”
I’m especially interested in punctuation and I found this site extremely thorough. I’d suggest you to read “Why Learn to Punctuate?”. Just two quotes from it that I consider very meaningful: ‘The problem with poor punctuation is that it makes life difficult for the reader who needs to read what you've written’; ‘every punctuation mark has one or more particular jobs to do, and every one should be used always and only to do those jobs.’
Marina: English Idioms
“A brief list of English idioms with clear descriptions and examples. There are quizzes as well.”
I chose this site because idioms are part of the language and the culture of a country, and it’s a lot of fun to see if and how Italian expressions can be translated idiomatically into English or vice versa! In addition, examples make it easier to remember idioms because you can see how they are used in context.
Martina: British Council's site
“The site connects people with learning opportunities and creative ideas. You can find opportunities and news on the UK and the English learning.”
I’ve never been to England so I was quite interested in this site! There I found a lot of information on learning opportunities in the U.K., exchange programmes, how to study English in Great Britain, costs and possible sources of funding. My attention was drawn to the section ‘About postgraduate study’, which let me know what a MA, MSc, MRes, Mphil, MBA or a PhD is, and to the section ‘Living in the U.K.’, which provides a lot of tips on ‘surviving’ in England (accommodation, health and safety, contacting home,…).
Absolutely del.icio.us, isn’t it?
Bye,
Elena
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