So now that I am safely a German A2 student, I was wondering what I was going to do with myself now that I have to leave my Goethe-Institut Berlin Intensiv-8 course.  Well, I have been digging through the Goethe.de site for content for an SMNR that we’re building and I came upon this awesome resource and a serious motivator for dusting off my Apple lappie and logging in to Second Life, “In the weekly German course on the Goethe Island in Second Life you can improve your written German in a small group led by an experienced German teacher.” Are there any restrictions?  Well, “Previous knowledge of German to Level A2 is required.” Perfect!  I am right there!

“Second Life” is a three-dimensional online platform where members of the community communicate with each other using the keyboard or microphone and earphones (see technical requirements). Our package for German learners in Second Life incorporates a weekly German course and a daily get-together for learning German – both are free of charge.

Free weekly German course (Level A2)

In the weekly German course on the Goethe Island in Second Life you can improve your written German in a small group led by an experienced German teacher.

Daily get-together for learning German

The get-together for learning German is a conversation using a microphone and earphones, in which our experienced tutors practise speaking German with participants. Every day there is a new topic that is discussed in a small group.

Language requirements

You should already be able to speak a little German, so that you can hold a conversation about simple everyday themes (at least Level A2).
Information about the course levels

When?

• Every Monday 7:00 – 8:00 a.m. your local time
  (Sunday 10:00 PM Second Life Time).
• Every Tuesday 7:00 – 8:00 a.m. your local time
  (Monday 10:00 PM Second Life Time).
• Every Wednesday 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. your local time
  (Wednesday 11:00 AM Second Life Time).
• Every Thursday 7:00 – 8:00 a.m. your local time
  (Wednesday 10:00 PM Second Life Time).
• Every Friday 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. your local time
  (Friday 11:00 AM Second Life Time).
• Every Sunday 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. your local time
  (Sunday 11:00 AM Second Life Time).
• Duration: 1 hour

Visit the Goethe Island in Second Life!

Teleport to the Goethe Island in Second Life (requires Second Life software)

Technical requirements for visiting the Goethe Island in Second Life

I think community and conversation is the future of journalism.  I am platform agnostic.

What journalism did wrong is this:  journalists, reporters, and papers have started to let their contempt for their readers show.

They — print media and serious news papers — fancy us a bunch of dumbasses who don’t care, any more, about civics and duty and politics and so they have therefore holed themselves up, right next to the Academy, and have tried to write for and teach the readers they wished they had — or used to have — rather than the readers they are losing every day.

Here’s an analogy. After inviting your parish priest and your childrens’ Sunday school teacher over to your backyard BBQ a couple-few times, you may get tired of them judging you — telling you how you shouldn’t be drinking beer or eating pork — so you stop inviting them to the party after a spell.

Journalism and print media don’t give people the gifts they want, they try to force-feed us the gift they think we should have — and with social media the company store is no longer the monopoly that it once was and we don’t need to spend every morning poring over the paper — unless we’re boning up for the Foreign Service exam or are on assignment from our school marm for a civics class.

That’s the very basic tenet of market capitalism: give them what they want,  not what you think they need. Right?  (Actually, that’s generally good advice: give people the gift they want and not the gift you want, yourself.)

Well, the “stewards” of “our culture” are realizing that they cannot “maintain the culture” for us and also make a profit from advertising and subscriptions.