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.

Read the whole post…

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?

No no no, not what you think. Business Week (sic!) publishes an article this week called The Ten Commandments of Web Design. They had asked gurus ranging from John Maeda to Jeffrey Zeldman to give their input into this. Do we all now have to print this out in decorative letters on precious paper and pin it to the wall above our 24″ iMacs?

I am currently teaching a course on Web Design at the University of Marburg. The first sessions were used to build paper prototypes of a fictitious redesign of MySpace.com (not that they need one… ). I found the submissions my students came up with quite good considering they’re not even design students. Here are some photos.
Read the whole post…

Every once in a while there’s an online application which really blows your mind. And here’s this while’s mind-blowing online application:

FontStruct

Read the whole post…

Ich werde bei der GML² Tagung in Berlin am 13. und 14. März zum Thema „Lerninhalte designen – Was Lehrende vom Web 2.0 lernen können“ ein Poster präsentieren. Weitere Infos gibt’s auf der Homepage der Tagung.

Das Poster wird dann auch noch mal als Blog-Eintrag auf ELearning-Blog.org zu finden sein. Pssst, wir planen den Launch entgültig zum 1. April (kein Scherz!).

Über Feedback zum Poster und zum Artikel würde ich mich sehr freuen.