An Opportunity for Italy?

May 12, 2008 · Filed Under Italy, Uncategorized · 9 Comments 

As I mentioned in my previous post, Rajab is coming to study Italian in Italy this summer.

Now why should this present an opportunity for Italy? Well, Italy is very well placed geographically to receive bright young things from north Africa, which is an area, unlike central and southern Africa, alas, which appears to be moving ahead, silently, but quickly.

In some respects, north Africa could be compared to India - which is another area which is on the up and up.

If Italy played its cards right, it could set up plenty of facilities to satisfy the craving for education the youngsters from these areas appear to have.

Not only this, but Italy could end up with some bright new talent too.

As Man of Roma pointed out in his ‘The Southern Shores of the Mediterranean‘ post, Italians are more closely related to those on the other side of the Med than perhaps many would like to admit. Which means that those on the other side of the Med can be made to feel quite at home here.

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I’m Sorry, I don’t Understand….

March 18, 2008 · Filed Under Life in Italy · 6 Comments 

….why schools in Milan are short of cash.

Few would deny that Italy has some of the highest tax levels in Europe. Yet, despite the, apparently increasing, tax income, the schools in Milan actually ask parents for, in some instances, monthly contributions to help bolster funds. Read more

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Moodling 2

June 1, 2007 · Filed Under Technology and Gadgets · Comment 

I have now got Moodle running on my PC locally after installing it using a very useful Joomla standalone server set-up called JSAS.  Although I did manage to lock myself out of phpmyadmin for a while as a result of setting up a password!  I edited the config file, after I found the thing, and all is hunky dory once more.

Anyway, Moodle, which installed without a hitch, is up and running and I have been playing with the css files and creating a ‘corporate’ colour scheme using my handy stylesheet editor Style Master (very nice piece of kit).

I have also set myself up as an administrator, course creator, teacher and student for testing purposes, so I’m feeling wee bit schizophrenic at the moment.  I’ve sourced documentation from the exhaustive resources to be found all over the main Moodle site and have been toying with Moodle settings and have already set up an example listening exercise which has been added to a course.

At the moment I’m feeling similar to when I first installed and fired up Joomla, a little overawed, but, hey, that’s learning for you.  No pain, no gain.

Anyway, Moodle looks very promising and its very easy to understand how it has generated a worldwide following.  Now, ‘all’ I have to do is come up with a few concrete ideas for useful courses and have a few guinea pigs test them out for me.  There is lots to do, but this is stuff I love doing and if I end up with something which helps English language learners progress more quickly, then I will be happy.

Lunch time.  That’s all for the moment from this here webmaster, cum webdesigner, cum teacher, cum photographer, cum course planner, cum content designer, cum geek.  Over and out for a minute.

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