Education in a Digital Age

Another way around to HTML

2020-12-08T22:20:00+01:00

While HTML has become the basic language of the internet there are several ways to get there. Historically one could simply create a HTML document by writing pure HTML code, though over time this has become less important as other more user friendly approaches took over. Most common in our time are Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress (WP) but there are also less known systems for specific applications like EGOCMS used by the OvGU.

A nerd definition of user friendly

In all honesty, my approach is not exactly user friendly to the average user but then my personal work flow is also different from what most users would do. Specifically I decided against classic dynamic site generator like WordPress for several reasons. One of them being the need to keep a dynamic site generator always up to date, to make sure existing security flaws like cross-site scripting issues are addressed. This is where a static site generator has its main advantages, the site is compiled once, then uploaded to a server and finally delivered the same as any classic HTML page of the past. No updated need. No future maintenance once the content has been created.

Further technical details can be found as part of the first Welcome posting in this blog.

This page will be removed at the end of the current semester. It’s mere purpose is to demonstrate a html redirect/refresh functionality and to act as an alternative way to present content.

Crisis is an opportunity

2020-11-14T14:19:00+01:00

Let’s face it, none of us expected 2020 to be like this and to be honest looking back at my own decisions over the last years, I feel blessed by the way things have worked out. How so you may ask? Well, after having worked as a freelancer for the last 16 years, the time was right to give my field of work a new trajectory. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy with my profession but at the same time I never completed a degree. Do I need one at this point in my life? Probably not, yet at the same time it has to do with proving something to myself while at the same time (literally) enjoying an education in a field I have not mastered yet. In my experience, the key to change is to be proactive and less reactive. “People only change, if their pain threshold has been reached.” is one of those quotes I feel is very much the foundation of change in general. Talking motivations, not everybody has enough intrinsic motivation to make the necessary changes on their own.

Making the most of it

Eine Krise ist ein produktiver Zustand,
man muss ihr nur den Beigeschmack der Katastrophe nehmen.
-Max Frisch

This is one of my favorite quotes for this year. It describes very well where we are right now and that it is our chance, to embrace the situation. Of course you can be pessimistic and mourn the lack of socialization because you miss party, friends and generally personal interaction - or you can look at this as a necessary approach, during which you can make all those things happen that you may have pushed off because “it wasn’t time”.

For me this means, I am tackling this on several fronts in parallel. One side being my university education, which is just perfect timing as the home office enables me to achieve more with less hassle as my time management is more effective. On the personal side, I am taking more time for hobbies that have been vacant for a while - for example I managed to make some awesome photography projects happen lately.

Why being a student right now is exactly the right time

It may sound weird at first, but being a student right now is in fact exactly the right time. The digital age has been announced again and again over the years, schools and universities have made steps towards digital education - yet that never actually happened all across the board. When talking about change, we are always looking at intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivations. Change requires motives to change first, in many cases those triggers come from the outside and in our case it is a pandemic few people saw coming. Our society was not prepared for this, not in a medical sense and certainly not in an educational sense either.

Those of you studying towards a teaching degree or in the general field of education will likely see a change in their fiels towards more digital applications and us getting a first hand experience right this moment is our unique chance to profit from these unforeseen and dire circumstances.

Look beyond

Let’s embrace the change, instead of fighting it. The practical knowledge all of us are collection at the moment will benefit us down the road through our professional (and personal) life. You can use this opportunity to reflect everything starting with methods and tools to interactions with other students as well as faculty. While academics and tutors around us are trying their best, some attempts will naturally fail and that is part of the process from which we can and likely will all learn. I am going to share a piece of advise I got a few years ago.

There are two types of mistakes. Those others make, which you can observer and learn from for free, and then there are those you make yourself. The latter are the ones most costly to yourself and at the same time also most educational. In addition, it is possibly nobody else made them, so you may very will have an advantage by making them.

Now this statement came from a business professional I worked with and in a business sense, keeping such failures to oneself may be a wise choice (as it gives you an advantage over your competition). Personally, I prefer sharing my mistakes, so others can learn from them and we (as a society) can thrive from our combined experiences.

I am looking at each and every session, those I give as well as the ones I attend, with open eyes. What worked, what didn’t. What can or would I change in order to improve the teaching and learning experience. You can do the same. Most of us will at some point teach some way or another, let’s make sure we can create the best experience for our students and ourselves. This brings me to my personal mantra.

Love it. Change it. Leave it.

Loving what we do is key and while there will always be situations where some attempts will fail, this merely implies that one should change the approach and look beyond what has been done. We all have our own kit of methods and tools from which we choose, some come naturally to us and some require more effort. Then there are those influences by others and which we possibly lean to use and adapt along our journey. Not everything is going to produce the results we anticipated and at the same time, those approaches are not lost. They do provide us with more experience as to what has not worked and lets us choose a different tool in our kit.

This is our time, let’s make the most of it!

Welcome!

2020-11-08T19:29:00+01:00

The Nerd Stuff
Changes & Wishlist

So what exactly is this blog about? While the initial idea existed for a few months already, the threshold to make this happen was notably lowered in my course Digital Media in the Arts (Digitale Medien in den Geisteswissenschaften). This project will be part of my performance record, which means I can easily mix business with pleasure. ;)

The intended long term goal is to collect my experiences from both sides of the classroom, as a student as well as a teacher. For the time being, this will mostly reflect university life, though as soon as we’re done with the COVID-19 limitations I do expect to get back to my day job - in adult education, training users in automotive related hard- and software as well as other fields.

The Nerd Stuff

This website is being created using Jekyll, an open source static site generator. All content is hosted on GitLab, using GitLab Runners utilizing their Continues Integration (CI) and Continues Deployment (CD) to generate and deploy the pages to a hosted server (ALL-INKL.COM). The design is based on klisé, a minimalistic Jekyll theme by Mahendrata Harpi.

Changes & Wishlist

An imprint/privacy page, which addresses the legal side of having your own website in accordance with German law (§5 TMG).
Added the jekyll-target-blank to make sure external links open in new windows/tabs. This also ensures external links use the noopener and noreferrer attributes, which adds another security layer.
Local (self hosted) FontAwesome files, to reduce the amount of possible tracking in order to increase user privacy.
Social media links in the footer and about/contact page, utilizing FontAwesome logos.
Include detailed project description and course related information (theoretical background, communication goals and intentions)
Embedding YouTube Videos & Twitter Feeds

To be continued…