Education & Libraries
Technische Universität Graz
Graz University of Technology, founded in 1811
Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg
Founded: 1622
University of Art and Industrial Design
Linz
University of Innsbruck
Universität Klagenfurt
University of Klagenfurt
Universität Wien
Alma Mater Rudolphina, the University of Vienna, founded 1365

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
The Austrian National Library
Universitätsbibliothek Wien
Library of the Vienna University

ECIS Online Directory of International Schools - European Council of International Schools. Lists ECIS schools in German-speaking countries, some with Web sites.

Goethe Institute - Inter Nationes isn't a school or university, but it is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the German language and culture. Also in English.

Schulweb is an index of schools with Web sites (English, French, German) in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Schulen ans Netz (Schools onto the Net)

Transatlantisches Klassenzimmer - Logically, the Transatlantic Classroom links schools on both sides of the Atlantic.

Travel and Living Abroad - A very useful site from the US Department of State. Includes schools and education links. Also see: Office of Overseas Schools.

Online Schools in Austria (Schulweb)

ECIS/CIS International Schools - Select "Austria" in the pull-down menu to search for schools in Austria. You can also search by city.

Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium - Graz

Graz International Bilingual School

Vienna International School

Bundesrealgymnasium Waidhofen/Ybbs

Schools in Germany with Web sites (Schulweb).

Deutsche Schulen - German schools online. Find schools in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Munich, and other German cities (Schulweb).

ECIS/CIS International Schools - Select "Germany" in the pull-down menu to search for schools in Germany. You can also search by city.

Frankfurt International School - Founded in 1961.

Fichte-Gymnasium in Krefeld.

ECIS/CIS International Schools - Select "Switzerland" in the pull-down menu.

International School of Basel - Instruction in German, English, and (starting in fifth grade) French.

International School Winterthur - Offers IB. Serves the international population of Zurich and Winterthur. Founded in 2002.

Zurich International School - Formerly the American International School. Founded in 1963.

American International School of Vienna - Founded in 1955 by the American and Canadian ambassadors.

American International School of Zürich

Black Forest Academy is an international Canadian school located south of Freiburg, Germany.

Inter Nationes in Bonn isn't a university, but it is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the German language and culture.

The DINO's (Bildung) list of university Web sites by field of study or location is very extensive!

EduFind International - Find a school by country or category.

The Univ. of Alberta's Web links to universities and institutes in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

The Study Abroad - Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Uni-Online - Information and forums for German students and parents. Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich.

Univ. of Maryland - Schwaebisch Gmuend - Maryland's German program in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

WorldWide Classroom

Universität Bayreuth

Berlin - Freie Universität

Berlin - Humboldt Universität

Berlin - Technische Universität

Cologne (Köln)

Düsseldorf - Heinrich-Heine-Universität

Freiburg - Albert-Ludwigs-Universität

Hamburg - Also in English.

Heidelberg - Ruprecht-Karls-Universität

Hildesheim (German only)

Karlsruhe

Katholische Universität Eichstätt

Köln (Cologne)

Munich - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Munich - Technische Universität

Universität Passau

Saarbrücken

Schiller College has several international campuses.

Witten/Herdecke Universität also offers English and French versions of its Web site.

WorldWide Classroom - Germany

University of Basel

University of Berne

University of St. Gallen

University of Zurich

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)

WorldWide Classroom - Switzerland

Basel: GeZetera

Bayreuth: Der Tip

Chemnitz: Boomerang - Good design. Too bad it's now defunct, but see the archives.

Dresden: AdRem

Eichstätt: kuebel.net magazin

Heidelberg: Ruprecht - Also in English!

Karlsruhe: Ventil

Köln: Einblick

Wien (Vienna): Die Universität - Also in English and Spanish.

Die Profis: Audimax and Unicum

Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois has a very good German links page.

Bay Point Middle School in St. Petersburg, Florida. Herr Maseman's Web Page is quite something to see (and hear)!

German-American School of Portland, Oregon.

German-American School of San Francisco - Located in the midst of Silicon Valley in Menlo Park, California. Grades K-8. Planning to offer through grade 13 and the German Abitur.

Kokomo High School - Kokomo, Indiana.

Rockwood School District (Missouri) - The German program of teacher Robert Shea. And don't miss Robert Shea's German Resources -- one of the best on the Web!

Colleges, Universities, Institutes

University of Alberta - Canada

Brown University's German Exchange Programs with links.

Creighton University - SCOLA has some excellent German Insta-Class materials. Includes streaming audio in German.

Mount Holyoke College - German Dept.

Mount Holyoke College - Links für Deutsch - Compiled by Donna C. Van Handle.

University of Victoria (Canada) - An interesting, eclectic list of German links.

Other related links

American and Canadian schools in Europe (above)

German @ About.com - Learn German online, find schools, and much more!

KET Distance Learning - German 1 and German 2 - from Kentucky Educational TV. Two well-presented online German courses!

Our Teachers and Students page - Tips and resources for teaching and learning German!

More Web links for the German-speaking world

Das Fenster - "Seit 1904 der Blick nach drüben" - Not really a "student" magazine but listed due to its German-American orientation. Request a free sample issue.

Das Jugendmagazin - A colorful, interactive site.

KINDERNET - A New Initiative in the Virtual School Austria
http://www.kindernet.at

The designers and tutors of Kindernet (http://www.kindernet.at) andwant to create curiosity and furthermore understanding for art and other cultures and ways of thinking. It is the goal to promote the interest in and openness for a discussion about current cultural issues.
Our projects are created in close cooperation with scientists and artists from universities, museums and more and are recommended by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.
Kindernet mainly addresses elementary kids and cooperates with all virtual schools, educations partners and non-profit organisation in the federal states of Austria. We offer educational games ("fun with animals") and are developing a search engine and an editorial office for kids.
Kids starting from the age of 10, teenager and people with young minds are the target group. Smart-art (http://www.smart-art.at) and i-books can be found in this area.
Smart-art publishes school projects that have the aim to enable the contact and interaction with foreign cultures as well as minorities and socially disadvantaged groups in their individualism and diversity in the form of virtual exhibitions in cooperation with the öks (Österreichischer KulturService) i-books are related to current exhibitions, accompany and supplement them. The curiosity to visit these exhibitions is provoked, visitors have the chance to deepen their knowledge and offer international users access to this information.
Further services are planned.

Contact: Elisabeth Zistler
January 2002

MUSEUM ONLINE
http://www.museumonline.at

The objective of Museum Online is it to enable pupils and teachers - within the scope of project instruction - to engage in intensive analysis of regional, national and international art and culture; participants are furthermore enabled to get involved in thorough investigations concerning world cultural heritage (UNESCO) as well as the dealing with information and communication technologies (IKT). Therefore Museum Online consciously pursues an interdisciplinary approach. Pupils and teachers in cooperation with qualified representatives of museums, artistic, and cultural institutions gather and compile adequate contents, which are to be presented multilingually in the Internet. The dealing with questions of diverse aspects, such as technical innovative, art-historical or museum-oriented matters, is being demanded.
More than 280 projects are online in different languages, made by different type of schools and under participation of Countries from Eastern Countries and other neighbour countries.

Contact: Elisabeth Zistler
Info: KL, Web: EZ, Date: January 2002

Notebook Project for Schools in Austria

Authentic experience about use of notebooks for didactic reasons is to be gained with an Austrian model experiment (trial run), starting with the schoolyear 2000-01. Nationwide about 40 schools are taking part in this project, in which schools will be equipped with notebook-PCs. Therefore and for comparative reasons suppliers of notebooks were asked to submit their offers concerning notebook-PCs, their prices and/or leasing conditions. After the purchase of the notebooks by the parents, they become personal property of the pupils - financial assistance (where required) can be granted by supportiv parents councils. A crucial aspect of such an experiment is extensive subject-related use of these tools. Depending on their educational objectives - related to specific type of school, curriculum and day to day educational usage - the respective schools deliver a didactic concept concerning the use of notebooks. Depending on the number of classes equipped with notebooks each school is granted 6000 - 10.000,- ? for the extension of their technical infrastructure. Parallel to this project further research will be conducted by the university.

More information about prices , school addresses and didactical conceptions:
http://www.bmuk.gv.at/pschulen/laptop.htm
http://www.htl.rennweg.at/bmbwk/notebook.htm
http://www.schlosswagrain.asn-linz.ac.at/notebook

January 2001

The Tyrolean school network
In 1999, the Tyrolean government selected Daten Verarbeitung Tirol Ltd (DVT) to implement the integration of schools and authorities into a country-wide network. Regarding schools, within two years about 300 schools were connected by permanent wiede-band lines, creating the Tyrolean school network (TSN). Even schools run by the federal government switched from the Austrian to the local Tyrolean network. This will lead to a single education network based on TSN. It is anticipated that until mid-2001, 350 schools or about 50% of all Tyrolean schools will participate in TSN. Primary schools, poly technical schools, which is the 9th grade before joining vocational training, and some specialised schools shall join the TSN until 2002.

Common services
TSN is connecting schools by permanent lines to a single hub located in Innsbruck, bandwidth is sufficient or more than that. The services offered include e-mail services for all pupils and teachers, web services for schools, specific educational projects, connecting pedagogic institutions and serveral organisations related to education . The hub serves as gateway to the Austrian Academie backbone (Aconet), thus providing Internet Access. Access is supplied via Proxy servers and firewalls to prevent unauthorised acceess and to block harmful and illegal content

Content filtering
Harmful and illegal content is filtered via the standard proxy server. Up from the start of the services, a second proxy is offered to schools without any filtering. The decision how to connect is up to schools, selecting on the two ports on a local proxy set up within each school. The filtering software is Smart Filter, a contract is set up for this brand for two years at the moment.
Performance could be a problem regarding the number of open connections. DVT is encountering this by powerful server hardware (IBM RS6000) running AIX).
The idea behind this set up was a central technical solution to reduce cost of hard- and software and the required amount of permanent service for a single school. Maintenance of the configuration is done once a week without any request necessary by an individual school. The standard filter may be amended manually. Administrators have quite some rang of configuring the software according to actual (and varying) requirements. Possible drawbacks - as with any filtering software - are a time delay until recently occurring unwanted content is blocked, and anyone is aware that software filtering will never provide a 100%-solution. For DVT, a technical problem remains enforcing a daily restart during night time which is run automatically.

The reception by schools
It is up to the schools to decide if the common filter is used, if an individual filter set up is implemented or if the "open access"-proxy is selected. All possibilities are in use actually, and schools may switch. Probably this is the reason why no criticism occurrend so far and no individual handling problems are reported. Obviously, each school is defining its need based on specific situation, local know-how and a broad understanding of the limitations mentioned above. It should be stated that only standard Internet contend is filtered, leaving e-mail unaffected.

(Erwin Weitlaner/Peter Marhold)

Virtual ECDL-education for teachers and trainers at the Ski Commercial School in Schladming

To teach and to learn with the use of the new media of information and communication technologies is becoming more and more important in educational institutions. However a successful use of these new technologies requires a sound knowledge and experience with the computer on the teacher's side. Therefore the Ski Commercial School of Schladming offers to all teachers and trainers of this institution the opportunity to pass the European Computer Driver's License (ECDL) during the school year of 2000-2001. Within one year all teachers will gain a sound education in the areas of the internet, of integrated office-software and operating systems.

The ECDL-education is handled as a web-based distance-learning project. Teacher and ECDL-students mainly meet online, through the virtual ECDL-classroom of the Ski Commercial School Schladming. In this classroom learning programs and exercises will be worked through. Additionally to these virtual meetings some real-life meetings will also occur. All participants will be able to experience virtual learning on a personal level. For Schladming this aspect is especially interesting as already now distance-learning is a reality, even though still handled in a conventional manner during the training and races-period of the winter semester.

The project started in mid-September 2000 with the introductory chapters of presentation software and the internet. Many colleagues who so far have not worked with computer-supported presentations are excited and have tons of ideas as to how they can integrate their newly gained knowledge in their lessons. The project seems very promising and we hope to be able to pass the first part-exams still during the month of October.

http://www.schladming.org

http://www.europeanmultimediaschool.com

http://emm.seiten.ccc