Ein erfolgreicher Kongress hat gestern in Wiesbaden stattgefunden. Zwar war die allgemeine Berichterstattung eher auf Volker Bouffier ausgerichtet (interessanterweise nicht so sehr auf Roland Koch, der auch da war…), aber wir haben viele interessante Gespräche geführt und spannende Vorträge gehört.

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Welcome to the first episode of a series of HTML/CSS tutorials that deal with the application of CSS techniques in a real life setting. The series is supposed to be used in an upcoming course at the University of Marburg, students will be able to try to figure out how to do this.

And this is what we are going to do in this episode: The Virtual Center for Teacher Training has introduced a so called Microprojects Feed, which in return got a box on its own on the left of the portal. We will design this box.

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Das VZL hat in dieser Woche ein paar Neuerungen erhalten, an denen wir in den letzten Wochen fieberhaft gearbeitet haben (wäre schneller gegangen, wenn immer alles gleich geklappt hätte).

• Der VZL Shop auf Prestashop-Basis bietet die Möglichkeit Arbeitsheft zu den Weiterbildungskursen zu bestellen und außerdem den Globalzugang (s.u.) zu buchen.
• Der Globalzugang bietet Zugang zu allen Virtuellen Sitzungen, aus denen die Kurse de VZL bestehen. Diese Option gibt es für hessische Lehrerinnen und Lehrer schon länger und ist jetzt für alle verfügbar.
• Und außerdem gibt es noch die sogenannten Mikroprojekte als RSS-Feed, kleinere Unterrichtsideen, die die Neuen Medien benutzen, natürlich gleich mit Beispielen.

Hey, a couple of things happened here. Yes, it’s the all new layout and design of my website. Plus: Dorky Design is somewhat dead and I will be working as a freelance designer in my own name.

Comments (especially nice ones) are very much appreciated.

(Oh my, now I know a lot more about WordPress than I did before )

I’m not writing as much as I would like to write in this blog. This is mainly because of the work I do at the University of Marburg and the courses I teach there. So here is a post about exactly that: the courses that I teach in summer semester, New Media in Foreign Language Education and Presenting Content.

The first one is supported by a blog I keep especially for the course and an online course at the VCT. The second is also a blended learning course with its online component at the VCT. Both are starting next week and therefore I will be off in a moment to go on preparing them

Aaaah! Finally.

Today sees the launch of the new portal of the Virtual Center for Teacher Training. Actually, it looks like the old one, but ask our programmer and he will tell you how much work he put in there.

Inform yourself about the site and its new features at the VCT.

So now the world has two important things going on on this date .

The courses I will teach in winter semester 2008/2009 are now online and ready to be signed up for (if you have registered for them already via the online Vorlesungsverzeichnis of the uni). I will teach the following courses (class pages in the Virtual Center for Teacher Training):

• New Media in Foreign Language Education (Group 1 and Group 2, both together with my colleague Anna Maria Gallus)
• Presenting Content
• Web Technologies

Additionally, I will be part of a group of three to teach the course “Techniques of Scientific Work”, which will be an online course with four in class session throughout the semester.

The New Media in FLE course is also accompanied by another blog I will keep for this course only, which is hosted at WordPress.com.

If you’re one of my students: See you in the first session the week after the next one.

My colleague Tobias Unger and I are in Jena at the moment. At 3 p.m. we’ll be holding a presentation on “Web 2.0 im Klassenzimmer – Ideen und Ausblicke”.

If you are interested, you can have a look at the Powerpoint slides and the handout in the About section. Scroll down for Presentations and you will find them.

Well, well, well, well, well… What’s this all about?

Google release a browser today and of course everybody is downloading it and commenting on it. I have to, too. Do I? I’d rather write about the high tides of hype that we are able to surf on once again.

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It’s time for a new edition of Interesting Links.

Nick La has gathered some very nice Single-Page Portfolio Sites at his Web Designer Wall. Some interesting concepts and a lot of high end use of web dev techniques. I personally love We Bleed Design for its fancy PNG effects and Fröjd for its simplicity.

Then, there is the Reverse Graffiti Project. If you don’t know what reverse graffiti is, go and have a look at the video. Incredible!

For those of you who haven’t heard this already: NASA has their photos online on a new website called NASA Images (you would have guessed) powered by Internet Archive. If you’re not into astronomy, you will still like the trippy images anyway…

And finally, especially for my students, there’s the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, “a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics.”

Well, isn’t there something here for everyone of you?