the marvellous world of marco

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

third skype exchange

hello world,

this time we did our third (and unfortunately my last) skype exchange with American students of Tulane university. I spoke for the second time with a girl called Lea.

We were suppposed to speak about alternative forms of energy in Italy and USA but at the end we spoke all the time about some other things. In fact, we spoke about the spring break week that American students had during last week.

I previously knew about it, because the brother of a friend of mine told us about it enthusiastically, speaking about big parties and a lot of fun that people had during that fantastic week. So, when I asked to Lea something about her holiday week, she said that she went to Bahamas and passed the whole week on the beach duribg the day and clubbing during the night: wow! Why don't we have something like this in Italy?

Anyway, luckily also here we are "approaching" to Easter holidays and to a little of "spring break" we will have in the Italian way!

Have a lot of fun!
il markello

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Some thoughts of the 21st of March

Hello world!
This time we had to look for information about the use of renewable sources of energy in Italy to put it on a wiki page: since we had to pay attention only to the structure we gave to that wiki page, this was quite an easy task to acomplish.

But reading a post written by one colleagues of mine (Alice) on her blog, I started thinking about what working on a wiki page is about. At the end, I came out with the idea that working in group on the web is a little bit frustrating: in fact, I can post something that seems to me well made and return the day after on the same page only to find out that my colleagues could have turn my work upside down as they like.

I am not complaining with someone for something. I am only saying that, even if I am not very good in writing in English language (I often find some mistakes by myself on my own posts simply by re-reading them!), I prefer by far writing on my own blog with the possibility that people can perchance read it and leave their comments without transforming my work, than writing on a wiki with the consciousness that my work could not be well done.

Probably in some occasions I did the same things with others and probably I will do the same things in the future, but I understood that working together is interesting but not very easy.
These were only some thoughts to be put on my "reflective blogging", because in spite of those little reflections working on a wiki is a good experience.

Marco

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

second skype exchange

hi people,

last monday we did the second skype exchange: during my first experience I spoke with Sarah whereas this time I changed peer and I spoke with Lea.

Lea asked me some questions on recycling that I answered basing on my experience: for example, I can surely say that Italian government doesn't listen so much to the environmentalists, partly because it has always other problems to solve (like problems of majority it is having in these times).

Another question that I was happy to answer to was something like if in Italy environment is protected or not: so, I told her about a "limit-situation" like the building of houses at the foot of Vesuvio in Naples or some buildings built without permission in some areas of the country.

So probably, I gave not a very good impression of the behaviour of Italian people towards the environment, but unfortunately that's the way it is!

Have a good week,
Marco

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Tulane Padova: step 1

Hi everybody,

yesterday we started the exchange via skype with some American students of the university of New Orleans in Louisiana.

Since they were a bit less than us (Italian students), we spoke with them one to one or in small groups: for example, I spoke with a girl called Sarah together with one of my colleagues whose name was Alice in a kind of little conference by phone.

After the presentations, we had to speak about recycling, a topic we had prepared in class before, but actually we spoke a little about that with Sarah because this topic was a good point to start speaking about some other things more connected with "cultural" facts.

In this way, we discovered that she lives in the campus of the university and she told us a little how the campus is organised and that there don't happen exactly the things we see in american movies: the life there is not so full of parties as we imagine in our mind.

Then, she told us that the life in New Orleans is not so easy because Louisiana state has not been able yet to clean up and reorganise the city after the disaster caused by hurricane Kathrina in august 2005.
In order to return a little on the topic we had to discuss, Sarah comes from Washington DC and she said that her state is richer than Louisiana, so therefore is able to organise the division of waste and the order of the city in a better way than the city of New Orleans does. By my point of view, this fact was a little funny, because when I think about a state I think about a quite little and single state as Italy is, and because of this fact I tend to forget that United States are a confederation of various states that are different politically and economically.

Well, that's all I have to say as regards my first experience in skype.
Bye
Marco