Lothar Thiel

by Lothar Thiel, Bilbao/Spain.

A new Comenius Project – “Our world is changing” – has begun and a lot of new students and teachers are for the first time in the trait d’union Editorial Office. Being the trait d’union Project Manager (not the Comenius General Coordinator – this is Mrs. Bozena Cudak from Kraków, Poland!) I want to tell you some rules & hints for the use of this platform (created in 2010). If – for whatever reason – these rules were not respected, from now on I feel free to correct ‘mistakes’ – for 2 reasons:

1. The trait d’union Editorial Office is not only a platform for the international teamwork, but also an online magazine, visible all over the world. So it has to correspond to some basic  aesthetic principles.
2. I am teacher, no professional webmaster. So I don’t have the time to ask every editor whether he agrees that I correct for example an orthopraphic mistake. Of course I don’t change the contents. But perhaps I add a picture, if the article doensn’t contain one. Then you are free to change it, but not to remove it without putting an alternative.

And now some basic information, especially (but not only) for the new members who joined trait d’union only recently:

• The trait d’union Editorial Office (EO) is a virtual platform for the communication and cooperation of our editors. But it is also a kind of public showroom: Every internet user in the whole world can watch your work in progress!
• Being open to non-members too (however, they can only read), the front page of the trait d’union EO is at the same time the entrance into the online edition of our magazine. Showing the beginning of each text – of at least 21 words! – that you post within your blog, it should start therefore indicating the name/s of the author/s and the town+country where they are from. (See above!)
• The headline has to be put into the headline field – not into the text field! Otherwise the title of your article cannot be seen within any list, and it will not be shown on the front page!
• It should contain as well at least one picture (photo, drawing, statistic or the like) in the landscape (horizontal) format, because this one will be automatically shown on the frontpage. (It doesn’t work with vertical or quadratic formats, PowerPoint or embedded videos!) See the detailed explanation of Mr. Tim Bormann! The front page must contain eye-catchers, so please like this:
  and not like that:
  
• Please use only pictures made by yourselves or at least public domain pictures like from Wikipedia! By the way: Never do here “copy & paste” with foreign contents, for example texts already published in the internet (except where the author has given you the right to do so)!
• If want to post only a little information like “Hi, our group arrived yesterday in X. We are so happy to be here.”, this should not be posted within your blog, but put on a wire. You can choose between many different wires, and accordingly to the respective recipient/s of your message, try to use the most suitable one! You can put your (public) communication on your own wire or on the wire of another member. There are also school team wires, exchange-group wires, topical wires, International Editorial Team wires etc.
• A lot of – important – activities, like public messages posted on the group wires, are not shown on the front page. So each member who really wants to work together with his friends from the other schools should look at least every two ore three days into the editors’ column Activity!
• Each member should only use one blog, entitled with his first name/s and his family name/s. Inside this post you can post as many articles as you like! So don’t create new blogs for each topic! This would not only overcharge technically this EO, it would be as well become quite confusing for everybody.
• For each article there has to be put a link by the author on the wire of his school team and on the wire of the group to which is topically related. Otherwise after some time it will be impossible to retrieve the articles! They would be lost for the printed edition of trait d’union “Do You Understand Me?”! So, even for the contributions made during the first project year: Each active member is solicited to put this double link!!!
• Please help to improve the dialog culture of our project, giving your constructive comments on the articles of your partners! You can express your opinion about them, you can even enlarge them, for example by adding some pictures to a text. Of course, even a critical comment must always be fair and never arrogant or even insulting! Comments like “Well done! Great job!” are pleasant, but they don’t really advance the contribution on which they are related.
• For any technical problem, please contact our Chief Administrator Jakob: michalka.jakob.a

Thanks for your attention! And now let’s work together!

Best wishes to everybody,

Lothar Thiel, the trait d’union Project Manager