You can make a professional church or nonprofit Web site for very little money using WordPress, and Conutant explains how in this Youtube video. Or you can look at Conutant’s other how-to videos on using WordPress to make your Web site here. And once you know something about making WordPress Web sites, check out a bunch of inexpensive themes for nonprofits here.
Education reform and technology
Are today’s young people, immersed in social media and similar technology, qualitatively different from the young people of twenty years ago? Many education reformers argue that young people are indeed different, and that we must reform educational practice so that we can engage them effectively.
However, Joe sent me a link to an online peer-reviewed journal article in which Grinnell Smith of San Jose State University “questions the validity of the claim that technology has changed our children in ways relevant to the way we should structure education” (“A critical look at the role of technology as a transformative agent,” THEN [technology, humanities, education and narrative] Journal, issue no. 8, winter, 2011). Smith begins by challenging the notion that children have been fundamentally changed by technology:
A typical approach to supporting the premise that children have been transformed by technology is not to refer to empirical evidence but rather to drag out a few suitably stunning statistics about the pace of technological breakthroughs or to provide a few overwhelming anecdotes illustrating the comfort of adolescents and young adults with regard to technology in the hope that the reader will leap to the “obvious” conclusion that today’s youth is qualitatively different….
Smith then argues that despite the prevalence of such anecdotes, there is little real evidence that young people are learning differently:
In the large view, rather than the creation of something entirely new, what our latest explosion of technological advances has done for us, by and large, is to provide us with new ways to do the same old things we’ve been doing since we drifted out of the Olduvai Gorge across the Serengeti and fanned out into Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Therefore, Smith says we should be skeptical of claims that today’s young people are all that different from the young people of a generation ago — and we should be skeptical of claims that we need extensive educational reform because of social media and/or other technological innovations.
Calvinism and the American League East
The Red Sox are in the cellar, sixteen and a half games behind Baltimore and the hated Yankees, who are tied for first in the division. The Sox are so bad that when manager Bobby Valentine was asked where the team could use help, he replied:
Are you kidding? This is the weakest roster we’ve ever had in September in the history of baseball. It could use help everywhere.
The Red Sox are obviously the virtuous team; so why have they been relegated to last place in their division? It is because of Calvinism: according to Calvinism, God does not choose the Elect based on any actual merit they may have. As this Web site on Calvinism puts it, “chooses the elect according to the kind intention of His will (Eph. 1:4-8; Rom. 9:11) without any consideration of merit within the individual.” The Yankees are in first place, not because of any merit they may have, but simply because God put them there.
No wonder I’m a Universalist.
Quote of the day
Here’s a quote about entrepreneurs, which may also apply to congregations:
Thinking like a business still seems to be something many entrepreneurs feel is beneath them. [Chris O’Brien, “Twitter bruised by wheels of industry,” San Jose Mercury-News, 24 August 2012, p. C1.]
See, some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs think all they have to do is create some beautiful new idea, and everything else will take care of itself. This is analogous to congregations that think all they have to do is religion (or not even religion, but mere community), and everything else will take care of itself.
But somehow the utility bills have to be paid, payroll has to be met, insuarnace has to be purchased, and so on. Much as we’d all like to think we’re above thinking like a business, we’re not.
Connected by water
Because someone asked, here’s the story we tell every two or three years as part of our Water Ritual service (a.k.a. “Water Communion”) in early September. I based this story on something Steve Hersey said in the Water Ritual service at the First Parish in Watertown, Massachusetts, circa 1995.
This story requires that you make two simple props. First, click on the images below, and print out the PDF files:
Now take the “602” sheet and tape 7 sheets of “,000” to the right hand edge; carefully fold the “,000” sheets behind the “602” sheet with an accordion fold. Then take the “22” sheet and tape 9 sheets of “,000” to the right hand edge; fold as above. Now you have the two props you will need.
Continue reading “Connected by water”Shower planter
We had to trim our pothos plant. Rather than compost the trimmings, Carol decided to make a home for them in the shower. She got me to cut a big round hole in the side of a plastic soda water bottle using my pocket knife; then she got me to drill two holes at the top of the bottle so we could hang it; I drilled those two holes using the awl in my pocket knife. She attached the bottle to the shower rod using a big twist tie left over from something, added some water, and put the pothos cuttings through the big round hole.
Over the next few days, the pothos cuttings twisted towards the light, and their butt ends pulled out of the water. So I drilled two small holes about an inch back of the big round hole on either side, above the water level, and threaded a piece of straight brass wire through; the wire keeps the pothos cuttings aimed down at the water.
Our shower planter has been up for a month now. Here’s what it looks like:
Games sampler
A bunch of games for you to play, as presented at Pot of Gold Religious Education Conference today.
What are games? Games are FUN. Games have AN OUTCOME. Games are SOCIAL.
Some types of games useful in UU groups:
— Icebreaker and name games: for whenever you have a newcomer
— Classic kid games: for any age, just to have fun
— Fantasy games: unleashing fantasy and creativity
— Active games: get up and get moving
— Simulation or teaching games: learning by doing
— Theatre games: awareness of self, awareness of others
— Energy breaks: very short activities designed to regulate the group’s energy level
Every game-playing group of which I’ve been a part — from Sunday school classes with little kids to adult groups — usually has one or two games that they love best, and the group can play that game over and over again. My goal with every group is to try a bunch of games until I find at least one game we want to play over and over again. Of course I want to play lots of different games, but if there are one or two favorites, then when all other plans fail, we all know that at least we can play our favorite game. The games below marked “Fave Game” been a favorite game of at least one group I’ve led or been a part of.
Please note that rules of games are mutable — you may know one or more of these games with slightly different rules. The rules given here are rules that I know work, but you should change and adapt them as you wish.
Easy bubble juice
I’m going to be leading a workshop tomorrow at the “Pot of Gold” religious education conference. For the workshop, I’ll be demonstrating bubble juice that makes medium (9-12 in.) soap bubbles. Below is a recipe, and instructions for making a bubble wand.
Easy bubble juice for 9-12″ bubbles
Ingredients:
4 oz. very hot (not boiling) water
3 oz. Dawn brand Ultra Concentrated dishwashing detergent
3 oz. personal lubricating jelly (K-Y Jelly or any generic brand)
water to make up approx. 1 quart, about 22 oz.
Rainbow
It rarely rains in the Bay area in summer time, but today we had a few scattered rain showers.
Just now, I was sitting at my desk, and happened to look up at the sky. I can’t see much of the sky from where I sit: trees and buildings limit my view. But there, in the small portion of the sky I could see, was part of a rainbow. I stepped outside to look at it. There was one small rain shower coming down from the clouds to the east — I could see the gray streaks of rain — and a little patch of sunlight just happened to light up that portion of the sky, causing a rainbow that encompassed about fifteen degrees of a complete circle.
I stood and watched it for about five minutes. At its brightest, there was the main spectrum, then immediately under it a smaller spectrum, the blue of the larger one fading directly into the red of the smaller one, and under that an even smaller spectrum. But soon the rain shower drifted out of the patch of sun, and the rainbow faded away.
It’s that time of year
It’s that depressing time of year. The Red Sox not only just got their butts whipped by our local American League team, the A’s — the Sox are also 15 games back in their division with little hope of even breaking .500 this year. To make matters worse, the SF Giants have been rocked by yet another PED scandal, so that every time I see orange and black I think it’s an ad for steroids.
The baseball season is coming to another sad, wheezing end for me. Sadly, baseball teams keep trading players so fast I can’t even keep track of who is on the team, which means I’m merely depressed by the abysmal performance of the Red Sox without the luxury of enjoying watching longtime favorites like Yaz, Jim Rice, and Tim Wakefield. And do I want to invest any time into following someone like Daisuke Matsuzaka, knowing that the Sox will probably trade him just when I’m beginning to like him?
Worst of all, football is beginning to take over the front page of the sports section. Why would I want to look at steroid-enhanced, brain-damaged football players, when I can look at a bunch of steroid-enhanced — oh, never mind.