About Katherine

I am currently working as part of a team at the Queensland LOTE (Languages other than English) Centre developing language curriculum materials. I teach German at the Institute of Modern Languages and my teaching experience in schools also includes Mathematics and ESL. I un occasional workshops on how to create interactive online exercises. If this is one of your interests, you might like to look at my online presentation about Design and Learning Considerations in writing Interactive WWW-Exercises. If you would like me to run a workshop for your school/organisation, please contact me. I enjoy reading science-fiction, learning languages and singing in Canticum Chamber Choir.

About this website

Ultimately, I hand-code everything! I like knowing just how the HTML and CSS work. There are, however, various tools and online services that I'd like to give credit to.

  • I use an old version of Macromedia Dreamweaver because its templates feature makes global changes across the more than 230 HTML pages painless. Being able to find and replace across a directory of source code is also very useful when people change the server hosting the exercises I've linked to!
  • Hot Potatoes (shareware) is my preferred interactive exercise creator. The writers of this software understand language teaching and have produced a features-rich software suite that is incredibly customisable.
  • Virtually all of the graphics are my own work. I use an old version of Paint Shop Pro as a general editor, but am starting to appreciate how much can be done with GIMP. A (free) online tool was used to create the favicon. Some of the photos used in the bingo games are from online photo galleries. If I have breached your copyright, please let me know.
  • The menu uses pure css - no Javascript.
  • Copyright protection is done with Copyscape on public pages and encrypting with HTML Guardian for subscription-only pages.
  • The feedback form is currently handled for free by Allforms. I like their anti-spam feature and seamless website integration without advertisements.
  • The site search is done through Google.
  • Online payment for subscriptions and goods is processed by Paypal Australia.
  • The website makes use of several search engines, online dictionaries and translation tools.
  • Xenu Link Sleuth is a very simple (free) link-checker that checks internal and external links extremely quickly.
  • The site is hosted by PolurNET.