italian festival @ montclair

Italy’s malaise (see my previous post) may not be cured by the Italian Festival of the Arts and Humanities, but it will bring a series of stimulating, alluring, satisfying and entertaining events to the University in the Spring 2008 semester.
Maybe you may find something (everything is free, except for the production of Hey Girl, [...]

Is facebook public?

OK, next.
A NY Times article of a few days ago has me extremely interested on how this will pan out from an ethics perspective. New technological tool, new forum for conducting academic research, right? So here we have Facebook, the ultimate in social networking and a new means for data collection from participants unknowingly.
At my institution, [...]

oral vs. written

I have finally finished, more than 30 minutes late, the last of the oral exit interviews for my intermediate Italian students (47 in total). These brief interviews, the second part of their formal oral evaluation for the course, was not as rewarding or fulfilling for a professor of foreign language.The class is, unfortunately, populated by [...]

Presentations…using PowerPoint (or Keynote or anything else)

A presentation that uses a software program like PowerPoint can enhance a talk by providing visual cues for elaboration and development, and aiding people who maximize understanding with seeing what is being said rather than just hearing it.
When the software is not used effectively, it becomes a page of written text in which the audience [...]

Twitter’s “what are you doing?” is making families

Months ago, when I first turned onto Twitter, I had a question … who cares what you or I are doing? In October, following my Twitter friends, I stumbled upon a post We are family from @stefigno that was so striking as it gave me an answer to my question. And I really want to [...]

Something new for me

Through friends and their blogs, this novice blogger has discovered many things…and unearthed some unknown talents while so doing. Much earlier this year, a friend posted a quiz on American geography. After taking the challenge (which truly was a challenge because I am not American ), I started to investigate the script of the [...]