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.

Podcasts from FAZ

Yet another source of audio podcasts, this time from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. They can be found at  http://www.faz-podcast.de/ or you could subscribe to the RSS feed As well as downloading there is also the option to listen to the podcasts online.

They are not produced very often but the range of subjects covered is quite wide and interesting. Length varies between 7 and 17 minutes. I've just listened to one about climate change and I think this would be suitable as a listening exercise for intermediate level students.

Mammoth undertaking

Is it possible to bring extinct species back to life? I've just listened to a fascinating podcast on the subject - Schöpfung, zweiter Versuch - Das Mammut kehrt zurück.

Sie streiften in riesigen Herden über die Steppen der Nordhalbkugel, bis sie vor 10.000 Jahren, am Ende der Eiszeit, plötzlich verschwanden. Für immer, so glaubte man. Doch was, wenn es Wege gäbe, sie wiederauferstehen zu lassen?

What I heard was the second of two podcasts from the Deutschlandfunk series, Wissenschaft im Brennpunkt. I regularly download these from the RSS feed for the series but each is about 30 minutes long so quite demanding to listen to and I tend to be a couple of months behind with my listening fitting it in when I’m doing something else, like ironing my shirts. I quite enjoy listening to reports like this as they make scientific subjects reasonably accessible. What I had not previously realised was that if you click on the title above the blurb from the RSS feed you get the text for the whole programme. That does make it much easier to check out parts that were of particular interest and also to do some vocabulary work. The links for the two programmes are here Teil 1 - Teil 2 Instead of subscribing to the RSS feed you could look at the  recent programmes listing.

While I'm fascinated by the research being done, and this report includes something of the work of George Church, I'm not certain about the desirability of bringing extinct species back to life. Sind Sie für oder gegen?

Computers, Internet and Politics

I still have my first computer bought in 1980 and stored in the attic. With only 16KB of RAM (yes, KB) and the only storage a built in cassette tape recorder it took ages to do anything. There really wasn't much software around and I ended up writing my own programs. Try writing a compiler in just 16K! Things have moved on amazingly and I can barely keep track of progress, though I do try.

Sometimes I manage to link my interest in computers with learning German. One source of information is 3Sat neues and I subscribe to the RSS feed so I can watch their video podcasts Das Computermagazin. There's also the neues.blog

I've only just caught up with the last two episodes. The first of the year included an interview with a blogger called Markus Beckedahl. This is a really massive blog that can help you keep up with what's happening on the internet and political responses to the net. I'm now following netzpolitik.org and the quote below is from its Über dieses Blog page

netzpolitik.org ist ein Blog und eine politische Plattform für Freiheit und Offenheit im digitalen Zeitalter. Thema sind die wichtigen Fragestellungen der digitalen Welt und wir zeigen Wege auf, wie man sich selbst mit Hilfes des Netzes für digitale Freiheiten engagieren kann. netzpolitik.org wurde in einer Vorläuferversion 2002 gestartet und ist seit 2004 in der jetzigen Form online. Alles andere erschliesst sich aus dem Inhalt.

Luck - Learn German podcasts

Learn German podcast PG37 - Luck

A real lucky dip this one. Good fun as well. Ich bin ein Glückskind!

This is just one of a series of podcasts to help you learn some modern colloquial German and slang ... and probably some things you didn't even know in English.

Enjoy!

Cold Weather

The snow is beginning to go and I took the car out for the first time in 10 days - started at a touch, much to my great relief.

Having published posts on weather and climate change, I noticed that WDR are showing Fit für die Kälte this week - Quarks & Co (Tuesday and Saturday). I've seen this one before and recommend you download it. You can also download an accompanying PDF file with text and pictures covering the same ground as the video - useful if you need to look up some of the vocabulary used. Look for the words PDF zur Sendung in the sidebar on the right. A little further down you'll also find a link to a related PDF file on Das Wetter.

Save the world

Enough energy for half Europe - that’s what’s claimed for a new type of energy production, a hydroelectric scheme based on osmosis.

The driving force comes from the difference in the salinity (salt content) of river and sea water. In one container you have river water and in another sea water. They’re separated by a membrane. The river water penetrates the membrane to even out the salinity. That causes the water level in the second container to rise. The difference can be used to drive a water turbine. An advantage, if this proves commercially viable, is that it is not dependent on weather (Witterung).

I learnt about this in a short video downloaded from Projekt Zukunft: Das Wissenschaftsmagazin. You’ll find some details about it if you visit http://rss.dw-world.de/xml/podcast_projekt-zukunft and look at the video podcasts for 3 January 2010.

Another video you’ll find under the same date deals with a pilot project which uses micro-algae to bind with CO2 from the waste gases (Abgasen) of a brown coal fired power station.
 
For steps you can take to make your life more environmentally friendly (umweltfreunlich)  I recommend more video - this time podcasts from Quarks & Co which has  three episodes of Die Welt Retten in kleinen Schritten - Save the world in small steps - originally broadcast between 17.11.2009 and 01.12.2009.
 
Now let's have your ideas about saving the world.

Jobs

Listening to Germans speak is a great way to tune your ear to the language. I find this easier if speech is set in a visual context so I like to download and watch videos.

One of my favourite series has 15 minute videos intended for young people thinking about what sort of job they want and how they can train for it.
The series is called "Ich mach's". You'll find the video podcasts if you follow this link.

Each podcast listing has some information in German and at the bottom of the listing you'll see three button controls. The middle one (a down arrow) is for downloading. To start downloading: Right click on it and then choose "Save Target As..."

There is also some accompanying material available from http://www.ichmachs.com/. Just go to the foot of that page and click on Weiter mit: Berufe in Überblick to bring up an A-Z index of jobs. There is text, more video and Die wichtigsten Infos zum Beruf (the most important info about the job or profession)