In honor of the 4th of July and the wonderful season of summer, here’s a link to an awesome site (iSoaker.com) with a visual history of everyone’s favorite water gun, the SuperSoaker. It’s like a timeline of my years in ministry, I’ve seen a lot of those guns show up at Water Wars and Dye War events. They also have a great section of water games.
LInks: SuperSoaker History, Visual Timeline, Games
Originally Post at my other Blog: YouthMinistryGeek.com
With Summer Camp season upon us, here are some great thoughts about commitment nights at camp. It from Chuck Bomar over at CollegeMinistryThoughts.com.
last night was “commitment” night here at Hume SD. it turned out to be a good night. what i mean by that is i felt like i accurately communicated the gospel – that’s all my job entailed.
i’m always a little afraid of these nights, and especially with jr highers. in my opinion, we take these nights too seriously.
I really like what he has to say about manipulation and the youth workers role after the commitment.
As part of the Simply Youth Ministry / Youthministry.com 40 / 40 /40 sale you can download 40 free backgrounds. I think they look pretty good.
Apple announced this week their summer day camps for kids 8 – 12 yrs old. I stumbled across these camps last summer during a visit to my local Apple store. They looked like super fun. I know my daughter would love the photo one, but she still has to wait a year. They offer camps in photography (iPhoto), video (iMovie), music (GarageBand), and presentations (keynote).
Could be a great opportunity to expose any Jr Highers you work with to media arts.
As youthworkers we often wear many hats. One of those is often that of designer. It seems like there’s always something to create: flyers, handouts, calendars, slides, or even web pages. But I know I’m no designer by any means. Seth Godin posted some tips for amateur designers:
- If you want professional results, hire a professional.
- Don’t use the built-in fonts that come with your PC. (Type is cheap. Invest.)
- Headlines in sans serif. Body in serif. (Easy tip—headlines are bold and condensed.)
- Black type/Light background. Don’t screw around unless you have some sort of design point to make. (Goth bands, it’s all yours).
- Headlines look great reversed. With two caveats: 1. don’t overdo it. 2. make sure you leave plenty of black around the border.
- TYPE SIZE! Too big is good. Too small is good.Just right might be a problem.
- Line spacing! Use less or more than the automatic. 14 point type probably deserves 15 or 16 point spacing.
Do you agree? What other tips would you add?
I’ve been on a quest to find a great mobile site for accessing the Bible. I was after a site that I could so I could use my iPod touch in church instead of carrying my Bible. (OK, no commentary please) I’ve used google’s mobile site converter to access the Biblegateway and Zondervan’s online version, but it wasn’t quite there. I know that Laridian has a pay service, but I really didn’t want to pay even though their offering is great.
This last week I found YouVersion’s mobile version. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. It works great on my ipod, my treo, and even my old iPaq. The thing that really won me over was the versions that are available. It has the ones I regularly use – NIV, TNIV, the Message. If it had the NIV readers version it would be perfect.
Check out the YouVersion blog for more info.
While reading through my twitter feed today I came across this statement:
“We need to be as proud of our middle schools as we are of our universities and colleges.”
- Robert Ballard #TED (@factoryjoe)
This statement was made during a talk at the TED Aspen conference. As one who works with middle school students I couldn’t agree more. It seems like that age group is so often overlooked. It was very refreshing to see such a noted scholar recognize that as well.
They are a little later than i would have liked, but here are the notes from our gathering at the Nation Youth Ministry Conference:
Questions you would like answers to:
What would i need to do some basic video work?
iMovie is an easy great way to easily edit videos, comes with your mac
I would recommend the middle MacBook, with as much ram as you can afford.
refurbished products from apple a good way to save some money
CDW for non-profits,
iPhoto great way to organize you pictures, make albums, slideshows
Mac will integrate into a PC network pretty easily. Also run windows on your mac can be on it,
Wireless networking makes it even easier
For printers, if it doesn’t find it, use the IP address
Shelby alternatives: fellowshipone.com (online app works with the mac), youth tracker, tuggle
Cool and easy software
iWork / office alternatives:
openoffice, neo office, Google apps
Best tools you’ve found for ministry:
Quicksilver (app launcher),
learn keystrokes
Presentation Software:
live worship
Propresenter
iWorship
Video Tools:
handbrake (rip dvd to video file)
visual hub / isquint
Perian (video plugins for quicktime) / flip for mac (windows media)
Quicktime Pro (worth the upgrade)
Productivity:
backpack from 37 signals
MacNews:
macforums.com, macrumors.com, maccentral.com, tuaw.com, maccast.com,
Free training: screencastsonline.com
Paid training: totaltraining.com, lynda.com
search for podcasts on finalcut, photoshop, any app
smcfancontrol.com – control fan of computer to keep it cool
Web: sandvox
In addition to these also check out my resource page with lots of other software links.
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