Friday, October 22, 2010

W4 Reading


Moral Voices of Women and Men in the Christian Liberal Arts College: links between views of self and views of God

By: Kaye V. Cook

Kaye Cook devised a study to determine how first year and senior year college students viewed themselves and viewed God. She was specifically examining whether their view was one of care, justice, or a combination of both. She studied 44 students, half male, half female, and an equal split between first year and senior year students. She hypothesized that women would show a greater tendency towards care and men towards justice, both in their view of self and in their view of God. Upon analyzing her results, she noticed that both men and women showed an overwhelming tendency towards justice and viewed God as an authoritative figure over a relational figure. When comparing first-year to senior-year students, she noted that the senior students were more likely to view God as both relational and authoritative than the first-year students.

Expelling God from the University

By: David French

David French writes a very passionate paper with the intent to explain why young Christians are leaving the faith as they move through college. In his paper, he places strong accusations on the gay-rights movements and blames first amendment violations for campus Christians. In this zealous article, French states that many of the Christian groups are not condemning homosexuals but they are excluding them from some of their groups based on moral principals that they choose to adhere to. This exclusion has caused numerous law-suits in hundreds of universities nationwide. French declares that student groups have the freedom to choose who can participate based on their code of ethics.

Disclaimer: I am only reviewing this article and do not necessarily share the beliefs of the author. If you are intrigued, I’d strongly suggest you read the article in it’s entirety. As a loving Christian adult, I would love to engage in a conversation with you regarding your thoughts.

Love of God and Neighbor: Religion and Volunteer Service Among College Students

By: Elizabeth Ozorak

Elizabeth Ozorak examines the relationship between religious commitments in students and their desire to volunteer. Upon examining her results, she determined that there was also a significant gender component towards likelihood to volunteer. She concluded that women were more likely to volunteer because they had an intrinsic motivation to be more nurturing than men did. She also found evidence that men in particular who were more religious had a much greater likelihood to volunteer.

Youth Ministry as Practical Theology

By: Clark Chap

Clark Chap outlines what practical theology is in his essay and how it applies to youth ministry. His purpose was to create practical theology for youth ministry because in his experience prior to 1990, youth ministry was just a branch of a theology degree and not a separate program in and of itself. Chap and other prominent youth leaders in the Denver area worked to create a youth ministry master’s program that, in 1990, was questioned by some of the leaders for it’s lack of continuity with the general theology degree. His focus was to create something that would reach youth while maintaining the Gospel message and as of 2008 the program was still thriving.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

PE6 Premiere Multi Camera Edit

All I can say is wow. I just learned something that could have saved me hours of time in past video editing. Of course, I didn't have access to Adobe Premiere at the time so it's a moot point, but I WILL be using this feature in the future.

I've done numerous multi-camera shoots for dance recitals, a wedding, ballets, plays, etc. and lining up the video from the various cameras is always tough. Using Premiere, I learned you can set a simple marker where you want on each clip, and then with one setting, have all the markers for the different cameras line up. While this would have been very helpful, this is not where the magic was in this lesson. The real magic came with the actual editing.

Take a look at the photo: there is a window in the foreground that shows 4 video clips on the left and a larger main clip on the right. These clips are from a music video tutorial on Lynda.com and they are currently synchronized. With Premiere, you can watch all the clips simultaneously and simply choose the clips you want to play by selecting them in real time. If after 3 seconds you want to switch to camera two, just click the camera two box. If you want to switch back to camera one after another 5 seconds, click back there. The edits are all done automatically. If you've never done multi-camera editing, you undoubtedly are saying "what's the big deal? This guy is a super nerd." While it's true I am a nerd, the big deal is the tremendous amount of time this type of editing can save because it allows you to see all camera views at the same time so you know which clip would look the best at each moment. Then you can make all your edits by simply clicking back and forth between the best shots while the video is playing. That means you can do an entire edit by just watching the show in real time vs. spending hours and hours switching between clips looking for the best one.

I'm so giddy about this that I'm even shocked how nerdy I am.

Monday, October 18, 2010

PE5 Soundbooth Audio Correction

I'm continuing my lessons in Adobe Premiere and just learned an amazing trick for audio correction. Through Premiere, you can right click an audio file and have it open in Soundbooth. From there you can select the waveform to show the red (at the bottom of the photo). From here you can treat the audio the same way photoshop works and "heal" loud noises in the file. I also applied a noise reduction filter that almost completely removed the wind noise. I overdid it in this example so it now sounds like I'm singing from a tunnel but by toning it down a little and spending more time on the "heal" function, I can do a respectable job removing most of the wind noise. What an awesome tool! To hear the different, click this LINK.

PE4 Premiere Audio Censoring


I'm continuing my education of Adobe Premiere by going through the audio effects. This is a relatively simple one but I chose to add it because in iMovie it's much more difficult. With Premier, I learned that you can add a simple "bars and tones" pre-made sequence over any clip to get a bleep sound. By dragging only the audio, you can keep your video in tack. When I tried to do this in iMovie, I had to find a beep sound on the internet and size it appropriately which took a lot of extra work. With Premiere, it's as simple as clicking and dragging. See the finished effect by clicking this LINK.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

W3 Reading



IDENTIFYING THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL MINISTRY WITH CATHOLIC YOUTH

By: Charoltte McCorquodale & Leigh Sterten*

Charoltte and Leigh used the same NSYR research findings that Sharon Ketcham did but analyzed the data with a focus on Catholic youth. Her analysis showed that there is a disconnect between how Catholic youth verbalize the importance of their faith and how they live it out with regards to their church attendance. One of her key points was that youth programs are typically separate from adult programs. She believes that this disconnect is creating part of the problem because youth do not feel connected to the adult way of worship. Her conclusion was that this was because adults are no longer as engaged in their faith as they had been in the past and that youth engagement was a reflection of parent engagement.

Has Facebook Finally Figured Out Privacy?

By: Ian Paul

Ian Paul examined the new privacy settings that Facebook implemented. He reviewed each of the three changes made and noted that the Center for Democracy and Technology heralded Facebook for their privacy changes. The changes involved were: the ability to create a group and allow only those in the group certain privileges, the ability to download all your personal data, photos, and videos onto your computer via a zip-file, and the ability to see how 3rd party group are accessing your personal data. Ian believed that these changes would help alleviate the concerns that people have with privacy on Facebook.

Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students’ Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation

By: Sebastian Valenzuela

Sebasian Valenzuela studied the relationship between college Facebook users and their happiness, trust, and civic and political participation. His study included a random sample of students from two different Texas colleges. Upon analyzing his results, he concluded that social network users did not have a withdrawal from society like cyberpessimists suggest. In fact, the opposite was true. However, there was no statistical significance in the difference between life satisfaction and trust between users and non-users of social networks. There did happen to be a relationship between increased civic and political engagement and the use of Facebook groups. While this relationship exists, the author suggests that the correlation was not strong enough to suggest that this could be a means to increase social engagement.

Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions.

By: Lee Canipe

Lee Canipe reviews a study completed by Robert Benne on religious institutions. The study took place at many colleges and institutions of higher learning all across the country. Benne was trying to determine if it was possible for religiously affiliated institutions to maintain their religious beliefs while still demanding academic excellence. His conclusion was that there are not many religious institutions that do this effectively. He states that non-religious ideas can compromise the mission of religious colleges. His encouragement was that there are a few institutions that regularly review their content and compare it with the teachings of the gospel to ensure that all content areas are faith-referenced. These institutions can be models for others that want to get back to their faith-based roots.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

BP12 OMM PBWorks

My most recent one-minute-movie on PBWorks, another great wiki. This time I chose to do a love-song rendition. Once again, do NOT watch it in this blog. Click this LINK to be taken directly to the higher quality version so you can read the text in the video.





Tuesday, October 12, 2010

PE3 Adobe Premiere Garbage

My last personal experience post this week is on applying garbage mats to Premiere. You can use these to emphasize your subjects in the footage by applying the mat to black video, the applying a gaussian blur to the mat and reducing it's opacity. As you can see by the example, I did a horrible job making this look smooth but the potential is there. You can also apply a sixteen point garbage mat for greater control which would allow you to hug the subjects more. Having the mat follow the subjects required key framing which you can see in the left of the photo. The dots represent the different places I moved the various points on the black mat. I can see using this effect in conjunction with desaturation of colors and reduction of overall brightness to make the mat less obvious. It would also be easier to use if the subjects were relatively still. Please visit this LINK to see the before and after.

Monday, October 11, 2010

BP11 Comment to Judy De Lost Santos


Please click this LINK to see my comments on Judy's blog.

PE2 Adobe Premiere

The second Personal Experience I chose to research was utilizing color correction and vignettes within Adobe Premiere. I’m using the same footage I did in my PE1 post for continuity and to maintain the comparison between footage with the 3:2 pulldown and footage without.

I learned through the Lynda tutorials how to do a three-way color correction and adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights towards various colors on the color wheel to achieve the look I was going for in the “rap” video I created for my OMM. To do this, I reduced saturation down to 65%, pulled the shadows and highlights towards orange and the midtones towards blue. This reduced the happy bright colors that I had in the camera and gave it more of a grunge rap video type look.

I also used the RGB curves effect and brought the shadows down and the highlights up to create more of a contrast within the video.

The last adjustment I made was to add a vignette. I wouldn’t keep the vignette in this footage normally because the continuous skyline gives it away and actually tends to draw the eye away from the kickin’ rappers. However, I wanted to put it in as part of my review because it can add a nice effect, especially if you want to bring out a subject in the center.

Please visit this LINK to see the footage.

BP10 Comment to Tom Turner


Here is a LINK to my comment on Tom Turner's blog.

BP9 PBWorks


PBWorks is a wiki site that is absolutely perfect for teachers that want to set up an online class. The level of customization is awesome for teachers. After watching some of the tutorials, I’ve learned that I can set up the main page as my course outlook or syllabus. I can invite my students to my pbworks site and give them permission to edit pages, which is perfect for creating notes pages or working on a class document. The only problem is now that they have edit privileges, they can edit my syllabus. This problem is resolved by clicking the “key” at the right side of the page. I can then select an option to only give the administrator access to edit. The major downside to this is that the option is only available if you’re paying the $99/year subscription. This is actually one site that I would consider doing that for if I had sufficient student computer access. Another feature that I really liked about PBWorks is the sidebar. The sidebar is part of the navigation menu that takes up the right quarter of the screen. In the sidebar, you can put a link, or text, or photo, or anything else you want and it will stay visible no matter what page you edit. The other features that stay on the right quarter are the Navigator, which allows you to quickly go from page to page, and the Recent Activity, which shows who did what to each page. This is helpful because it allows you to see what students made changes. I still haven’t figured out if there is a nice way to list the student names and show how many changes they made but this wiki tool is a research in progress. I look forward to learning more about it’s capabilities and determining if it’s truly worth paying the $99/year for greater access and control.

PE1 Adobe After Effects


My dream job would be to teach a video productions class in a high school so I really want to strengthen up my software repertoire. Therefore, the thing I chose to research for my Practical Experience is Adobe After Effects. In my first one-minute-movie, I realized too late that I was going to have a problem with interlaced frames in my final export because I filmed in 24PF and didn't do the 3:2 pulldown.

Filming in 24PF is available on some video cameras and it allows you to film using 24 frames per second (which is the way Hollywood feature films are shot). Upon importing the footage the computer interpolates the footage into 30 frames per second. In order to do this, it splits every 2nd and 3rd frame and meshes them together to get extra frames to fit the 30 frames per second timeline. This is called interlacing. If you were to watch this on a standard TV, you would never notice because they automatically de-interlace footage. However, if watching on a computer screen or progressive scan TV (most new HDTVs), then you will see the interlaced footage and it will look funky with every 2nd and 3rd frame having split images (horizontal lines).

To get the footage back to a true 24 frames per second, you can import it into Adobe After Effects and choose "Interpret Footage", then remove 3:2 pulldown. There are five different ways the frames can be split up depending on your edits so it takes some trial and error. For example, the frames can be ordered (1,2,3,4,5) (2,3,4,5,1) (3,4,5,1,2) (4,5,1,2,3) or (5,1,2,3,4). After testing each out, it is very easy to see which cleans up the shot. Posted with this blog is a LINK to my Viddler account with a video showing both shots. The first without the 3:2 pulldown and the second with the 3:2 pulldown. Due to Viddlers compression for uploading, the example is most visible in full screen.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

BP8 OMM Wikispaces

My rappin' review of Wikispaces. While you can watch it here, it will look better (and bigger) on Viddler. Please click this LINK to go directly to the video on Viddler and watch it there in all it's suburbia glory. SERIOUSLY, don't watch it in the blogger.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

W2 Reading


Rethinking Cyberreligion?

Teens, Religion and the Internet in Sweden

By: Mia Lovheim

The author, Mia Lovheim, discusses the significance of Internet in religion. Sweden has seen a decrease in church attendance and increase in online accessibility. As a result, Lovheim has decided to study the impact that broadband internet accessibility for over 90% of youth has on their religious beliefs, values, and desire to be religious. The study showed that most individuals did not use the internet for religious purposes, but those that did used search sites to find the information they were looking for rather than specific religious sites. It also showed that individuals who were not already plugged into a religious group outside of the Internet were very unlikely to view religious sites. The study concluded that the Internet was more likely to be another resource for those already involved in religious activities rather than another avenue for non-religious individuals to find a religious group to belong to.

What Difference Does Youth Group Make? A Longitudinal Analysis of Religious Youth Group Participation Outcomes

By: Patricia Snell

Patricia Snell examines data taken from two different phone surveys of youth to determine the effect of youth group participation on moral obligations. She stated that most youth organizations have similar mission statements that include improved moral decision making and relationships with God after leaving the youth group. Upon examining the longitudinal data, Snell determined that many of the positive factors such as morality, desire to continue attending church, and interest in church services, increased upon attending youth group. Her data analysis included consideration of demographics, denomination, culture, race, and economic status. Two negative factors seemed to increase upon attending youth group: lying to parents and keeping secrets from parents.

TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTION AND LEARNING IN ON-LINE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. PART I: CONCEPTS AND CONCERNS

By: MARK H. HEINEMANN

Heinemann looks into the student-teacher relationship and how it is affected by online education. In his research he discovered that many online students are adults that are already self-directed learners. As a result, the comparison between online learning and face-to-face learning is somewhat compromised. He noted that one of the greatest reasons individuals choose online learning is for convenience and that asynchronous learning tends to allow for greater higher order thinking due to the ability to self-control and self-pace one’s own learning. With regards to social interactions, Heinemann noted that interpersonal issues were more common due to lack of social cues but that some interpersonal relationships could be strengthened via online interactions more so than face-to-face interactions. Heinemann’s research concluded that the one thing that seemed to enhance learning and communication the most in online classes was instructor participation and feedback.

A Question of Capacity: Can Adolescents Practice Discernment?

By: Sharon G. Ketcham

Sharon Ketham presented a very deep and rather complex argument on the ability of youth to be able to gain actual understanding of theological ideas. She utilized resources from author David White and Robert Kegan’s theory of development. In her analysis of the aforementioned experts, she determined that adolescents are often being asked to use higher order thinking skills they have not yet acquired. Youth programs are being developed with the goal of transformation in mind yet they are not adequately allowing students to be one with God where they currently are. The result of this is the placement of youth in the Christian adulthood waiting room. Youth programs work to help these youth transform into adult Christians but do not use questioning and transformative experiences that are appropriate for adolescent capacity. She concluded that youth ministers needed to be trained to better understand where youth discernment levels are so they can better work with young adults in Christian ministry.


picture by: David Paul Ohmer, "San Francisco's Washington Square - St. Peter and Paul Cross", June 28, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution

BP5 Facebook Groups


Facebook Groups:

While it may seem odd that I’m choosing to write about Facebook for my second Web 2.0 tool, I need to explain that before this class I had no experience with it at all. Last week when researching some Web 2.0 tools, I thought about researching how well Facebook would work for my action research project. I delved into my recently revived Facebook page and learned the steps to create a group. At this point, I decided it was something I would put off writing about because I had no members and nothing to post. On a whim, I still created the group entitled Healy Youth Group (which was the name of the old youth group I ran in Alaska that we left this summer when we moved to Colorado). Within hours, I had three people already request to join. It was then that I decided Facebook was absolutely the way for me to go with my action research project. I was amazed at the immediate response that I got with Facebook and realized that I needed to post some content. This was when I started researching what adding a group can do.

On my group’s page, there are six tabs at the top of the page. I plan to use the Wall to share the start of new discussions and have fun conversation with my past youth group members. The Info page contains basic contact information for me and will contain information about my action research project. The Discussions page is where I’ll set up discussions for the kids to discuss and reflect on. The photos page is a place that students can upload photos that either correspond to discussions, photos of us in past youth group participation, or current photos. The page is marked as private so students can feel safe uploading photos knowing that only members will see the photos. The Videos tab will be used for any videos youth or I choose to upload with relevancy to the discussions. I’m not sure if it’s going to be easier to embed the videos directly into the discussion or place them in the Videos tab but I’ll probably use the Videos tab as more of a video archive. I’m not sure how or if I’ll use the Events tab but it could be used to post different youth ministry events and concerts that are happening around the country that kids might be able to go to.

I’m really excited to get my action research project going and already have one student checking the page regularly and carrying out discussions with me. I’m keeping data on everything so far and plan to see how many students request to join without me advertising it at all. Thanks for the opportunity to research these Web 2.0 tools, especially those that are going to be useful for our action research projects. I’m VERY excited about the implications of this in youth ministry and in my teaching career once I get back into the classroom next year!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

BP4 Wikispaces

I chose to review Wikispaces for my Web 2.0 tool. I had never used Wikispaces before but had heard about it through one of the tech people at my last school district. I was intrigued how it could be used in the classroom after watching the Michael Wesch video so I decided to learn Wikispaces and give a video tutorial of how to set one up for a class.

UPDATE: So, now I know what "steam-of-consciousness" is and I believe I displayed it with excellence. I would like to caution you to watch the above video with that in mind and know that when I do my one-minute video it will be much more engaging.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

W1 Reading

The first four articles I chose to read and review were all related to religion:

"The Internet Highway and Religious Communities: Mapping and Contesting Spaces in Religion-Online"

The authors of this article described the effect of the presence of online websites in religion. They studied religion in Singapore specifically because it is identified as a highly religious country. They found that many religious organizations were working to make sure that their websites and online information supported the church directly, but were not separate entities. The article contrasted these as “religion-online” vs. “online-religion” (Cheong, 2009). It was clear that many churches were making an effort to put their church online by explaining their theology, describing their various community outreaches, and incorporating audio and video when applicable. These efforts gave community members the chance to view resources that supported the church while still maintaining the significance of the actual church grounds.

"The Church on Facebook"

The author of this article examines the impact of social media sites on the church. I found this article particularly interesting because it is most closely related to my action research project. Lenora Rand discusses her own experiences with Facebook and prayer. She explains that she has learned more from friends and acquaintances about their struggles and challenges than she feels she ever would have in a person-to-person context because of the time involved in face-to-face conversations. When she learns about people’s daily struggles, she prays for them or offers them kind words, or finds a time to call them and talk. Lenora then asks herself the all-important question “what do we need the ‘real’ church for? (Rand, 2009). She concludes the article by defining the significant worship practices and fellowship that can only occur face-to-face and re-emphasizes the importance for the actual church gathering place.

"Making Space for Religion in Internet Studies"

Heidi Campbell provides in her article a historical analysis of Internet use in religion. She also discusses the purpose of using the Internet for religious reasons and explains it’s ever increasing demand in many religious organizations. In the past, many Internet studies have excluded religion because it was deemed as losing significance in our culture. Resent years have shown just the opposite and prove that religion is indeed important in Internet studies. The author asserts that in order to better understand the relationship between Internet and religion, researchers need to look at all social aspects of the studies.

"THE SEARCH FOR LASTING FAITH: DEVELOPMENT OF A SCALE TO PREDICT CONTINUED FAITHFULNESS IN CHURCH ATTENDANCE FOLLOWING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION"

Wesley Black identified the problem that young adults are not attending church or practicing the same religious activities upon leaving high school. He recognized that there was not currently a valid and reliable tool to study the reasons youth are falling away from the church so he developed a plan to design a survey for this purpose. In the article, Black documented with great care the processes he used to make sure the survey questions he asked of the youth were both valid and reliable. It is Black’s hope that the survey tool he created can be used in youth ministry while students are still in high school to help identify the factors that contribute to youth falling away from the church. In this way, youth ministry can reform so it helps prepare young adults for continuing their spirituality away from home.


picture by: Ihar, "BBC Cross", July 8, 2005 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

KING of new technology?


I have always thought of myself as good with new technology and found that learning new software has always come easier for me than others for some reason. Until Web 2.0. I now for the first time in my life feel overwhelmed with technology and all the blogs and igoogles and diigos and readers. I'm a super-organized type person and have always liked my content in a box. With Web 2.0, it's no longer in a box. It can jump out of the box if I tell it to. Or someone else can tell it to jump out. I realize that I no longer have as much control over technology as I used to. I also realize I much prefer a boxed content such as the Adobe suite to things more free-form like bloggers (although ironically I'm writing about this ON a blog). But, I guess it's as they say, "Times are a-changing". Not sure who to quote that to but I'm guessing it's from 1850 or so. (There was a lot changing back then, look it up). So with that, I'm back to the seemingly disorganized array of new Web 2.0 tools in an effort to put my anal-retentive organizational tendencies into overdrive to make them behave like I want them to. (And with that, he left the building)

picture by: Dan4th, "ripping hair out", September 28, 2010 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution

BP_Diigo Group


Here is my Diigo group: Brian Thomas Action Research. I've invited many good friends and even friends that are critical. None have had a chance to respond yet but I anticipate they are chomping at the bit to get into such an elite group. I'm a little puzzled at the uses of Diigo currently as it seems like I'm just copying and pasting articles I find from my EBSCOhost folder in the Diigo account. I don't fully understand why my critical friends are going to want to read my research articles but I'm assuming it's because I'm still new to the process of an Action Research project.

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

Here are the screenshots from my iGoogle homepage.

Home Page

FSO Page

AR/CBL Page

ETC Page

Monday, September 27, 2010

BP1_Google Reader




My first REAL blog post. I've never really done the blog thing so this will be interesting. I've also never done the Goggle Reader thing so this whole course is going to be a new adventure for me.
The five RSS feeds that I've chosen to follow seem to be great fits for my action research project.
I chose EDUCATION NEWS because I really like the short education opinion articles that it posts. They are fun reads and can offer quick insightful ideas.

RETHINKING YOUTH MINISTRY is great because it offers simple lesson ideas for youth ministry. I was really involved in youth ministry in our old community in Alaska and I'm excited to build relationships with youth at our new church and start up a small group. The ideas in this blog can be great for mini-lessons.

SIMPLY YOUTH MINISTRY offers some sage advise for youth leaders and gives points to ponder in many of the articles. It also offers some teaching which is a great benefit of this blog.

YOUTH MINISTRY IDEAS provides lessons and games that you can pull right out of the box and make your own depending on the needs and dynamics of your own group and community. It also has a picture or video in almost each post which makes it much more attractive. I can now see the benefit of us doing this as well in our own blogs.

YOUTH MINISTRY RESOURCES is centered around youth leader education. It provides resources to help youth leaders become better teachers by providing tips and suggestions for leading youth groups. I've already found some really great ideas here just by panning through a bunch of the articles.


What happened to this post?



It's a mystery.  Mostly I just don't know how to delete it.

Packers vs. Bears

The Packers play the Bears tonight and I feel that noting this is worthy of the first post ever on my new blog.  Of course, I will be cheering on the Packers.  I do feel bad for the Bears though because I can't imagine anyone will actually be cheering for them.  Including those in the stands.  But never-the-less, I do expect it to be an exciting game to watch.