Last Evaluation…

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!!

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