nina's blog

Last Evaluation…

2008-05-14T03:42:00.000-07:00

Being an Erasmus student, this project, and in fact the whole class, meant a whole different thing for me than for the others. The culture I was exploring wasn’t the American culture, but really more the Italian, which I knew so little about, as I found out when I came.

Working with Italian peers and talking about cultural issues twice a week really brought the inside of the Italian culture closer to me.

To be specific of what I actually learnt, I have to mention one of the biggest achievements of this year, finally understanding the university system here in Italy. I came here with not really thinking about the differences I will have to come across. I simply thought that since both CZ and Italy are in Europe, stand on the same cultural pillars and really aren’t so far from each other, not to mention many of my previous visits here and friendships with many Italians from time before, nothing will be so dramatically shocking. As it was shown the opposite was the truth and I, as everyone else, had to go through the famous cultural shock.

One of the biggest problems as in fact to understand the system of the university here. Luckily my group chose to explore the differences between university system in the USA and Italy, so I had the chance to really go deep into this issue and finally got it.
If there is anyone who ever gets in the same situation as I did, look at this page, things might get clearer:)!

Apart from that I learnt a lot of new expressions, thought of things that I would probably never make myself think about and many other things.

Not only did I learn about the environment around me and about the differences between Americans and Italians, I also learnt a lot about myself. For example, I never really reflected on my way of working before, but when working in a team, you have to cooperate with the others, therefore compromise with your habits as well. Fortunately for me, most of the members in our group work in a similar way as I do, which is just diving into the issue and caring about the structure later, but our poor American peer probably has a different style of working, therefore it created some misunderstandings at times.

There is so much more to be said about this experience, but maybe to sum everything up, I need some more time to step away from it and get the over all perspective of what it all meant to me. I’ll let you updated…:)

Final project ideas

2008-04-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

For this week etivity we are suppose to think of the one cultural field we would like to compare between the US and Italy.

While thinking over this, I came up with two different things I’d like to look more into and compare the two different approaches.

The first one is connected more in the academic way. Owing to my second major, pedagogy, comparative education is one of the subjects I’ll have to take next year. Therefore looking into the differences in education would be not only interesting but also quite useful. However I’d consider this option even if I didn’t have it connected with my further studies. I think the way we educate people in schools reflects very much the over-all values, habits and style of ‘doing things’ in the culture. Therefore seeing these dissimilarities might help us with understanding the other differences we come across.

My second suggestion is pointed more into my personal interests. FOOD. Food is the essential element in every culture. What we eat, how we eat, when we eat, with who we eat,… The answers to all these questions have their reason that leads towards the very center of the culture. For me this is highly interesting and I’d love to look more into it.

2 weeks of Italy

2008-03-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hey all of you!

I just got back from 2 weeks of travelling around Italy how greatis to be erasmus student:) ). The First week I spent in Rome and Napels, where I experienced absolutely crazy (but traditional) Easter,exploring the nearby village, style of life and yummy (some more some less) things to eat.

Here is a picture so you can imagine..:):

The second week was the absolute opposite of the first one:) I met my family and went skiing. After incredible 12 hours of traveling to Livigno(which really is not 12 hours away , but beeing a poor student I took only the regionale treni), I arrived in a beautiful region of high hills covered with fresh snow and sunshine. We had an amazing week of snowboarding and enjoying the local foods and drinks (I highly recommend the local favourite Bombardino, which is a great help if you aren't so skilled on the slopes) ..:)

So now with all the freshly gained energy let's get back to school and back to working...":)See you in class or somewhere else.

Comparing the media information from different countries.

2008-03-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

In this week’s task we are to compare approaches of medias from different countries on the topic of elections in the USA and in Italy. Because not much has happened, concerning the elections, in the last couple of days, I decided to report on the overall impression the different medias give and the coverage they provide. I have looked into the news in the two countries, which are having the elections, my home country, CZ, and the UK.

The UK (BBC)
Even though we were supposed to choose only 3 sources, I decided to choose a fourth one, which represents one of the most viewed news broadcast in Europe, the BBC, mostly to see how this media covers the elections in Italy.

When I put the Italian elections in the browser and pressed search, pretty much nothing came out. The little information, which did come out was mostly concerning Prodi’s victory in 2006. Surprisingly to me, almost no articles or videos were dealing with the situation now, just few reported on the profiles of the two candidates, Berlusconi and Veltroni.

Talking about the elections in the US, it is a different story. There is an entire page dedicated to the primaries on BBC. It leads to other various themed pages all concerning the elections and the candidates. Brief summaries are offered in the main page, which gives a good over view in what has happened in the last weeks of the political battle.

The Czech Republic (various sources: ceske noviny , EurActiv )
Surprisingly to me, the situation in the Czech media is more satisfactory then in BBC. Even though I checked more then one source, I managed to get some over all introductions to the Italian problem. The news do not report in the same portion as they report about the election in the US, but at least those who are interested, can find some information about this issue.

Again, as in BBC, the situation dealing with the elections in the USA is incomparable. There are many sites trying to explain the entire system of the elections, introduce candidates and report on the current situation and the latest news.

The USA (NY Times)

NY Times seem to give a good over all introductions to the elections in Italy. Of course, any American periodic has been busy with reporting about their own elections, but from papers like NY Times, it is expected to give at least some information about the situation in other countries, which it with no doubt does.

Italy (Il Giornale )

As well as in the USA, of course, Italian medias seem to be more concentrated on the situation in their own country. Nevertheless, they are still far ahead of the USA news about the situation concerning other countries’ elections. As well as the British or Czech, they provide with overall information and daily update on the US primaries.

Differences are obvious in the coverage of the news. All of the medias I looked at are reporting about the US elections. The elections in Italy seem to be less important in the bigger picture of the international news. This fact might be disappointing, but understandable with the everyday overdose with news from all over the world.

2008-03-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

The time is simply running and so not only there is a new semester in progress already but also Easter break is almost here…soon I’ll be going back home and Erasmus will be over…how sad.

Anyways, another proof of this un-stoppable feature of time is these elections coming up. I haven’t been that familiar with the voting situation in Italy but I clearly remember the last presidential elections in the US...and it seems as a year ago not five.

My task for this week is to compare the left wings of both of these countries, their programs and ways to make people vote for them.

I just spent about an hour watching various videos on You Tube with Hillary Clinton. The ways these politicians try to get people on their side is very fascinating - the gestures, smiles, carefully chosen phrases, looks, tone of voice, diction, etc. George W. Bush being elected twice just proves how important these factors in the campaign are. Hillary Clinton, as well as all the other candidates, uses all of them and has one extra advantage, her feminine side, which is so new to the presidential elections. She uses it in her performances as a connector to her audience, as well as her jokes and facial expressions.

In her speeches she concentrates on health care, ending war in Iraq and winning war in Afganistan, economy and hard work, which is her main solution to all the problems that need to be solved. During her speeches she always turns to the individuals, who she met or experienced working with. It seems as some kind of American sentiment to do so, but it seems to work very well.

I honestly tried to listen to Veltroni’s speeches, which are on his webpage. However, it was very difficult to even follow, less so to try to understand what his message is. He does not use very much those techniques that will bring the attention on what he is trying to say, as the Americans do. I’ll be happy to read other’s posts about the Italian elections, because it is indeed difficult to comprehend…☹.

My PLE

2007-12-10T06:40:00.001-08:00

Here is a link to my PLE, created here in Padova for this semester. The big bubble around it isn't my intention, it appeared there and I don't have time anymore now to get rid of it...sorry:)

Creating the mindmap was surprisingly interesting. First I thought it would be sort of useless, just to draw a map of my learning habits, especially because I’m not really the mindmap fan (never found it useful for my studying). When I started though, it got to be quite exciting. I just kept on adding things and it made me realize how I actually perceive education in general.

As you can see on the map, I didn’t distinguish formal and informal education right from the start. I didn’t for a reason that these two kinds of education for me just come on together, influence each other and at the end mean one thing. I think it is important to be able to take both of these experiences and use them together.

For that reason I thought of the factors that influence my learning and then developed them more. At the end it helped me organize my head a little bit, which is especially helpful now before the exams☺

Ok…more in class☺
Bye everyone
Nina

Group K, I'm sorry!!

2007-12-06T07:51:00.000-08:00

Everybody from group K, except Eleonora, let me please apologize for the lack of my responses for your last posts. The internet situation around my house and other places, where I go with my computer has been absolutely dreadful resently and it was just simply imposible to get online and do my homework. Now things will get hopefully better so I'll work on the responses!

Sorry again, have a good weekend everybody!!
ciao, Nina

Italian Gestures...:)

2007-11-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is the video that I wrote abou in my post. Tell me if you really use these gestures..:)!

ciao, Nina

2007-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

What...Why…When…Who..do we judge ?

I often judge in general and I don’t necessarily like that part of myself. However, deciding what sources to use or not is quite crucial going through our academic life. Judging, therefore, is right on the spot here and we shouldn’t be easy on them.

After surfing through the sides Sarah has suggested to us ( UE, SD SU, OWL) and thinking myself what criteria I normally follow, I came up with a very simple and short list of the least things we should consider before using any source in our own work.

Here it comes:

Who are the authors and how involved are they in the problem (why not google them right away)?
On what kind of side is the source posted and who is responsible for it?
When was it written?
Why was it written?

Of course the first thing we should notice is how it is written, but concerning the fact that we want to use this resource in our own work, it’s quite pointless to put that on the list…we are naturally careful about that.

…quite simple I think, isn’t it? It almost feels, as pretty much in all we judge, we should ask ourselves these lovely four Ws.
It’s definitely important to always have them ready, never forget them because sometimes it is very easy to get carried away, isn’t it…?!

2007-11-25T04:12:00.000-08:00

Let’s YouTube…again!

The last tool we were introduced to is paradoxically the one that we all probably know the best, YouTube. Who has never wasted hours surfing through funny videos, bits of show that we like, etc.? We probably all have, am I right?

On the other hand, YouTube as we can see, can be used in totally different ways. Lot of people would at this point think of the incidents that have been repeatedly occurring on the news… Nevertheless as Enrico has already written about this fact on his blog, I won’t ruin my Sunday with all this ‘crap’ that is happening around the world and rather concentrate on the positive factors of this popular tool.

As I have said most of us use this technological device only for amusement. However I don’t want to seem that I’m looking at YouTube as something that just wastes our time, I’ve just never really thought or taken it in this benefiting way before. So what I’m looking at are the educational assets of using YouTube - the ways which teachers can spice up their lessons and students can experience the new side of learning. I have noticed that this tool has already soaked through into the normal everyday lessons here in Padova, which is amazing. For example, the other day in my Italian class we watched an YouTube video explaining Italian gestures☺. It was funny but definitely useful for all of us freaks from foreign cultures.

So let’s use this last tool, as we used the others, in a benefiting way that can help us and other students improve our language skills or learn something useful in a new, alternative way , while having fun :)!

Podcasts

2007-11-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

Hi to you all,

Let me first apologize for this delay of my homework. I could not get online recently and so that’s why I am posting e-tivity 6 this late. So let’s look at the podcasts I found for you.

I have never listened to podcasts so this was all brand new to me and took me a bit more time then I expected it. Again I found out that there is still so much on the Internet that I have no idea about. I didn’t really know where to start from so I just looked at some of my interests and this came out:

NPR Movies – You can listen to reviews, discussions, interview and bits of new movies coming out each month. It’s great to be updated through this kind of means; especially for me, due to the lack of going out to see movies here in Italy.

National Geography news - I love reading this magazine, even though it can get a bit pricey if you buy it each month. Well here is a small solution to the financial problem, just without looking at the gorgeus pictures. You can listen to news each week about what is going on around the world that you will not normally see in the usuall news.

Jamie Oliver - Don’t you just love him☺? I know it can be a bit cheesy and bit too much sometimes but he is just so much fun to look at and listen too while actually learning some pretty good tricks in the kitchen.

As you have notice, I am sure, I chose none of the podcasts about English language. Well as I have seen yours, you found so many of them that I thought of taking it for granted and doing something different this time. I hope you enjoy my choices!!

Sorry again for being late!

Isn't it DELICIOUS...?

2007-11-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

To all of you who aren’t members of our blogging English class and accidentally ended up on my blog:

Don’t be scared and go log in to del.icio.us, it’s simply great!!

I seriously found this site wonderful. This whole concept of sharing what we find interesting on web is just so helpful. I’d call myself a bad researcher in general. Normally when I look for something online, I end up wasting hours, looking at something totally different than I first aimed for. Del.icio.us seems to prevent it all and it has already saved a lot of time for me, just in a week of using it.

Now some comments about the choices my group friends made:
I loved searching though all your choices. They will surely be of great use soon!
Here are some I liked in particular:

Alessia:
I liked your choice of the book review website. It seems like there is everything you need to know about new books and their authors. Thanks for looking it up for us!

Elena:
The site with the proverbs and their explanations was a unique choice of all that I’ve seen on other people’s profiles. I like reading proverbs but often it takes some energy to really understand what they mean. This site does all the thinking for us☺.

Enrico:
It was funny when I looked at your bookmarks, because I saw some of the sites that I was also looking at when I was searching the delicious, especially the sites about writing and philosophy. Nevertheless the site with the demotivators made me day☺.

Caroline:
You made some good choices☺. However, the phonetics site made me most excited out of all. I took phonetics last semester and now I wish I knew about this site when I was getting ready for my exam☺. Since I had to study the proper British pronunciation, it is nice to see the American as well. Thanks for sharing☺!

Anna:
The BBC site was the most interesting for me. I like their style of teaching English language with all the possible tools you can get to have fun while really learning something.

Chiara:
I appreciated the site about how to think and write more clearly. When I first saw it I got very excited, because I often feel like that is exactly what I need to learn. I liked how they broke the ‘instructions’ into small sections. It seems like the perfect demonstration of what they are trying to say: take small steps, be patient and you’ll get pretty far!

Great job everybody!

Another step into the blogging world..

2007-11-04T09:37:00.000-08:00

It’s incredible how easy it is to do things you didn’t even know that existed before, with the company of Internet. I didn’t go to class last week and never heard of feeds nor feed aggregators, yet in about fifteen minutes I clearly knew what it was all about; and I did it.

I guess it’s not that fascinating because we often don’t know how to do things before we try to do them, but in this case I feel like the technological world really takes over. Read the task, watch the video, do it. It’s as simple as that.
I’m not quite sure how do I feel about it. I guess I feel all right☺. In fact, it is amazing, but it is just a little bit scary.
I know; I’m bragging here about the same think I was already last week. And it’s great that we have all these tools to help us to do our work quicker, easier and more efficient. Where will it end though?
I’m talking about the overruling of technology in our everyday lives. I have noticed, recently, that people are starting to hide behind their computers, which, in my opinion, is exactly what this is caused by. We present ourselves on our personal pages, we meet people through matching websites, we shop online, we travel online…we can do anything online, behind our little shining screen.
So will we need others in the future or are we just going to end up like little machines plugged to our laptops, not able to do anything without its great protection?

I suppose I got way too far from the assigned topic, and I don’t want it to sound that I’m against all of these great new tools. Of course I appreciate them, as we all do, and I’ll be happy to use them. I’m just little skeptical about this great excitement of how wonderful and helpful the new technological world is. What happened to the simple living?

About the use of feeds and playlists: apart from what I’ve just said, it works great. Only one thing I haven’t been able to figure out. Can we also read the comments through the bloglines or do we have to go to the individual blogs to get them?

Self-observation of two weeks of blogging (E - tivity 3)

2007-10-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

B l o g g i n g !
What a new way of life, style of communication and exchanging information and ideas. Isn’t it a bit scary though?

I have to say, I’m a bit intimidated. One writes something that might not be exactly the best thought of his/her day and anyone in the world can just read it. Not that I’m afraid of judgment but it is just a little scary, don’t you think?

Anyways, these two past weeks have definitely been a big contribution to my knowledge of Internet and the way to get around it. It is impressive how much time you can spend there without even noticing it, and unfortunately that has been happening to me the last couple of weeks. I like it though. The reading part is great, the writing and posting part I still need some time to get used to. Nevertheless, I guess this new experience will really help me (us?) to learn how to more easily express my thoughts, opinions and ideas.

Concerning the language learning, I think it also has a great impact. The reading of almost all-possible styles of English (I guess I should start working on my style as well) is, especially, very interesting and good for development of our capacity to recognize them and to work with them.

So let's jump into this blogging world. It's waiting for us:)!

Blogs (E-tivity 2)

2007-10-19T04:51:00.000-07:00

..uf, I just got back from very long trip around the blogosphere. I have to say that I do feel overwhelmed with information right now. There is just so much out there to explore, read and learn about. After (literary) hours of clicking from one link to another, feeling a bit lost in space, I want to show you the blogs that are pretty nice and interesting.

The first one is a blog about anthropology. You can find many interesting articles about any topic that concerns anthropology. This might sound a bit confusing due to the big variety that the field offers; however it is not. They use a very useful system of adding a ‘filed under’ and ‘tags’ section under each article. So then you can easily find the way to the blogs or articles that concern your interest. I’ve looked at the article called On the Evaluation of Language, which lead me to other Linguistic Anthropology blogs.
The design of this blog is very simple and neat. Usages of simple colors, not overwhelming readers with too many links, colors and other ‘things to click on’ at once make the blog look very well organized.

Have Fun * Do Good is the second blog to be presented. From the title you can pretty much guess what it is about. It is “a blog for people who want to make the world a better place AND have fun!", as it is explained in the bolg itself. This blog really made a great impression on me. It is also very well organized. It uses some nice techniques that I didn’t see in other blogs, like the elements ‘Blogs I read’ and ‘Podcasts I listens to’, so you can see what the author is interested in and with whom he or she works, in other words, you get more into it☺. I highly recommend this blog to anyone who is interested into human rights!

My observation about the language used in blogs is mixed. I haven’t seen a blog only using formal language, for example. I feel like the language differs from post to post and it really depends what the author writes about, to whom he addresses the message and what is his/her general aim.

Welcome!

2007-10-17T06:29:00.001-07:00

Hi to you all, who have just found this little new blog that will soon grow (hopefully) into something a bit more interesting than it is right now. I hope you won't regret opening it..I'm trying my best:)
Enjoy..Nina

picture that represents me (E-tivity 1)

2007-10-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

Photo by Daniel T. Shmitt

Hello to everybody,

Even though Sarah said that all of you already know each other, there is always an exception. Well this time it would be me. I am an Erasmus student here in Padova and I will stay for this whole academic year. I suppose you wonder where I am from. I was born in Prague, CZ and have lived there for most of my life.

The picture I chose is supposed to represent my passion for traveling. Being a student it usually ends up just like in the picture..:)

I was thinking of some websites that could be useful for you but most of the ones I browse through are in Czech (sorry). Anyways being in Italy with very little knowledge of the Italian language I found this smart website, where you can translate anything in whatever language.
http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/
As a student of linguistics I have to stress the fact that the translation is rather rough, so don’t get too excited! It is great though when you want to know at least the idea of what the text you are looking at is talking about.

The second wesite that I use very often and you might be interested in is the skyeurope.com. The prices are simply amazing and you can get pretty much all over Europe!

If you'd like to meet other Erasmus students check out the Erasmus association in Padova . There are lot of activities organized for erasmus students which you can join as well and get to know people from all around Europe.