Why?

The idea of this blog sprang from a seminar at Dortmund University of Technology called “becoming e-literate: language learning in an electronic age” in spring/ summer 2009. The aim of this seminar is to discover ways of using media in language teaching and learning.

As university seminars often seem to lack tangible creative output, students and the instructor decided to come up with a presentable piece of work towards the end of the class. As several students were preparing for their year abroad, it was soon decided to work on an online project aiming at introducing international students to the city and university of Dortmund. Thus, students would on the one hand gain experience with working in a new medium, and on the other hand have valuable material for advertising Dortmund while abroad.

A major focus of the project will be laid on Dortmund being part of the Ruhrgebiet as Europe’s cultural capital in 2010. Which brings us to this blog:

2010 will offer a number of cultural events dealing with theater, art, industrial culture, etc. The aspect I will concentrate on is the festival Transindustriale. This festival wants to go beyond the image of the Ruhrgebiet as an industrial area and underline the significance of parks for its past, present and future. Similar to the Industrial Heritage Trail the final aim of the festival is to create a path of parks not only through Dortmund, but the whole metropolitan area.

In the course of the following weeks, various green places in Dortmund will be presented in this blog. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about and potentially walking through them yourself!