Facebook vs. Twitter

Facebook and Twitter are two of the most famous social networks nowadays. They are widely used by global population, anyway there are some huge differences between them.

First of all Facebook has an intuitive layout that helps new users. On the other hand Twitter is more difficult and it takes some time to understand how it works.

Facebook is based on new and old friendships. It has an Instant Messaging in order to let users to have "real-like" conversations with their friends. Twitter is not based on friendship but helps the user to meet more people that are interested in what he says. So it is clear that Facebook is more private while Twitter is opened to more people. The difference is mirrored in the language register: the user should be more formal on Twitter rather than on Facebook.

Facebook focuses on life events, it is like a book of the user's life. The structure of Facebook emphasizes the user's profile with photos, videos and so on. Twitter focuses on what the user thinks. Personalization is not developed as well as on Facebook and it widely appeals to links to other websites. Links are used to reduce the number of types of the text since it is limited to 140. Facebook has no type limit.

The type limit of Twitter forces the user to sum up the concepts in a few sentences while Facebook is more dispersive. It does not imply that Twitter is faster than Facebook: the user has to think more on what he wants to say, so it results that the message is more clear and correct while texts on Facebook mostly represent a stream of ideas.

Last but not least Facebook gives a better chance to organize and advertise events than Twitter.

To sum up the difference between Facebook and Twitter is the difference between two concepts. The user who wants to keep in contact with his friend and to emphasize his personality and his life, as well as the one who wants to advertise a product or an event, should approach Facebook. On the other side the user who wants to emphasize his concepts and ideas should approach Twitter.

"Scuole aperte" as an opportunity for students and their parents

"Scuole aperte" is a project that gives everyone the opportunity to visit a school in order to decide what school is the most suitable for him. Does it really help the student in his decision?

First of all the student can watch and analyse the building: his structure, the function of the rooms, laboratories, library, green areas and so on. However the building is not the school, but only a part of it. In addition sometimes there are some aspects that the visitor cannot immediately perceive, for example acoustics in a crowded classroom.

The most important aspect of "scuole aperte" is to evaluate what does the school offer. The student is helped by other students of the school during his visit. At the end of the visit he should have understood what the key subjects are, how does the learning method work, if it offers extra activities and what the quality of learning is.  At the same time, people who work on "scuole aperte" try to amuse the visitors. For example there are a lot of experiments, images and sounds that catch the visitors' attention. On the other hand schools want to get the biggest number of students, so it is right to think that they may be unscrupulous in attracting students. So visitors may see something that does not concern the school, and so make up a wrong opinion.

Students should take in consideration schools before going to visit them since they may be deceived by what it is shown and explained there. They should go and visit a school only after they had chosen at least what kind of school they want to attend. In addition they should juxtapose more schools and find out which is the most suitable for him in terms of building and quality of learning.