Unobserved

Should we all be able to communicate on the internet without what we write or say being observed? Chaos Computer Club is unhappy about Vorratsdatenspeicherung in Deutschland. For more on this and the text of an open letter to the German Justice Minister see http://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2010/offener-brief-leuti-schnarri

Treasures of the World

Schätze der Welt tells the stories of world heritage sites protected by UNESCO. As well as text there are plenty of pictures and videos for which you'll need RealPlayer. The website lets users make choices on the basis of Kontinent - A-Z Länder - A-Z Denkmäler or by keyword Stichwortsuche. Each Denkmal appears to have associated links for further information.

radioWissen

radioWissen from Bayern 2 brings together audio and reference material for schools and it includes worksheets and other material to download. You'll find most school subjects, including Deutsch represented on this website. You can look at the offerings by subject (Fächer) or type of school (Schularten) and also A-Z.

When you select one of the subjects you're presented with a list of all that's available for the topic. Click on one of these and you'll get an overview (Übersicht). To reach the audio and other material you have to use the sidebar navigation. I show an example to the left but do bear in mind the navigation varies with the topics and some entries may, for example, not have Arbeitsblätter.

The audio material can be played or downloaded as mp3 files.

With material suited to pupils of different sorts of school, there should be something at a level to suit most people learning German. And you can always pick on a subject that where your Wortschatz is a bit limited.

Politicians and the internet

Only this morning did I get around to watching Sunday evening's edition of neues from 3Sat. I can't read or watch everything at once! A large part of the programme was reporting on the use of the internet by politicians and political parties during the election campaign in NRW. Sunday was election day and the result would not have pleased the CDU. I can't say I was excited by this election but the reporting on the use of blogs, Twitter, etc. was interesting.

The interviews with the candidates were brief and did not go into their political views. There were also interviews with young people who expressed views about the lack of opportunity to interact with the politicians. This is all good listening material and there were also some journalistic blogs mentioned that have a definite regional emphasis. To understand the German speaking world (DACH as it's sometimes called. Work it out - Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you sometimes have to get down to regional level or even more local. Identity and culture have great variation and richness.

Politiker im Online Wahlkampf gives written comment from neues and you can view a short video report on the same page. Some YouTube links you might like to follow are: Die Macht der Blogs and Interview mit Alfons Pieper.  You can also download the whole half hour video

Offline - Web 0.0

On Sunday the 3Sat programme neues included reportage from their presenter after spending almost a week offline. I've always enjoyed watching the videos (a little under 30 minutes) which help keep me up to date on consumer electronics in Germany and usually has some amusing elements and a nice light touch in the way information is presented. How did she get on? You can read Yve offline ... oder Web 0.0 or go to neues im Mediathek to access the video.

I'm going to take time out as well. No blogging for the rest of the month! I need to go back to basics with vocabulary and grammar. I'm taking some time off work, have some other plans but also want to make sure I work steadily on some of the material I already have instead of spending quite so much time online looking for something new.

Please be patient. I'll be back online on the first of May.