Posts from — March 2009

when suddenly
all the love songs
make sense
and the love scenes
in the movies
make me cry
then it doesn’t matter
that there is an ocean
between us

than at least
we are here
at the same time
and have found
us

© Julia Nickel

After a few weeks of not writing at all (shame on me!) I found an inspiring new way of writing. I had read in quite a lot of books that one shouldn’t write in several files but one big one. I had made the same experience when I tried to keep track of all the little snippets gathered on my computer. So I tried to write on the one big file – and what happened? I stopped writing! Because every time I wanted to start I found myself re-reading the previous stuff, editing it or even worse: deleting it. So last night I thought, hey, why not write a snippet in a new file (now named “write it!”) and then cut and paste it into the big file. Voila! It worked wonders. In no time at all I had written several pages.

And to make life even easier I decided to put the “write it”-file online, so I have access to it from where ever I am. I love this modern technology!

You may have heard about the collapsed building in Cologne. The historic archive, a 4-storey building collapsed this afternoon, at least 3 people are still missing. More about the story at the CNN-webpage.

I had been right there at the end of December 07, so this is a bit spooky for me… Here is the Google map:

Größere Kartenansicht

But what I really want to write about is, how much getting information or news has changed for me. Normally I would have just read a local webpage while I was at work and then watch the news on TV. But today I first read about it at twitter, and then switched on iTunes to listen to a local radio station, reading the local webpage plus following SamZidat on twitter who lives nearby and provides pictures taken on his balcony. SamZidat has the most recent news, but obviously he can’t provide interviews or further background knowledge the way TV/radio can do. So instead of relaying only on TV or radio in a very passive way I actively collect and select the information I want from the different sources (not to forget Google maps!).

Is this the new age of communication? And how do we learn and teach this much needed “Medienkompetenz” (media competence)??

Let us pray for the rescue of the people who might still be in the building and hope that as many historical documents as possible can be saved after the rescue mission.