Category: Technology

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How YouTube Can Increase Students’ Awareness of God

YouTube LogoA while back I wrote a post about using YouTube videos in the Catholic classroom. Here’s one of my favorite YouTube videos to use at the beginning of the school year to help students be more aware of God’s presence. It can also be used in faculty meetings to help remind teachers to look for the ways God works in their school day. If you teach in a Jesuit school, it might be a good video to use when teaching the examen.

I’ve written a few points for discussion but watch the video closely yourself first to avoid spoilers.

For Meditation/Discussion:

  • God is always present in our lives, but we often fail to see him. We get caught up in the details, the busyness, the distractions of our day-to-day lives–in other words, we get so busy counting the passes that we miss the moonwalking bear. God is the moonwalking bear, and when we notice him, we can’t help but break into a smile.
  • When was the last time you noticed a “moonwalking bear” in your own life? What was it?
  • What are you so focused on that you miss the moonwalking bear?
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First Thoughts on the iPad 2 for Teachers

Conference CenterAfter eight months of using the iPad, I had the chance yesterday to learn about and use the iPad 2. The local school district sponsored a workshop called iPad for Educators: Batteries Included, and a new iPad was included in the cost of the class. The title of the workshop was slightly misleading, however. I was expecting to be shown how the iPad could be used as a teaching tool, but a better title would have been iPad for Beginners, since the majority of the time was spent on giving us a basic introduction to the device and its built-in apps. Towards the end of the class, though, I did learn about some apps I hadn’t seen or tried before. The school district plans on a follow-up course in August that will be more focused on using the iPad in the classroom.

Here are a few of my takeaways from the workshop:

  • I like the fact that the iPad’s mute button can be programmed to lock the orientation of the device.
  • The new iPad can be connected to a projector and everything you see on the iPad can be shown on a screen. With the first iPad, only certain apps could be projected.
  • There are two great free books in the iBooks store for new owners of the iPad: iPad User Guide for iOS 4.3 by Apple, and iPad 2 Starter Guide by Macworld Editors.
  • TapQuiz Maps World Edition is a must-have app for social studies teachers.
  • Scan is a basic app for reading QR codes. QR codes are interesting, but I don’t see them being used in elementary schools until cell phones are allowed in class–which won’t happen anytime soon.
  • I don’t know why I never tried Dragon Dictation before, but what a great app. Speak an email or a Twitter or Facebook update, dictate notes to yourself and copy and paste the text anywhere you want.
  • With Air Sketch Free you can turn your iPad into a wireless whiteboard by projecting live sketches to a local computer over WiFi.
  • iTunes U has really grown in content since the last time I visited it. The Khan Academy is a featured institution now, and there is a growing collection of free open textbooks. I downloaded one called English Grammar in Context that is really quite good.

As I continue to use the device I’ll post more about how I think it could be used specifically in Catholic classrooms.

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2 Beautiful iPad Apps for Catholic Educators [and Free Wallpaper]

iCatholic Magazine
iCatholic Magazine

On the same day CNS reported Pope Benedict’s announcement of a 2012 synod on the theme of “new evangelization,” my wife surprised me with an iPad for my birthday. In keeping with the spirit of the Holy Father’s announcement, I’d like to share a few iPad apps that might interest Catholic educators. The following apps are designed to be used with the iPad, taking advantage of its large screen and WiFi connectivity.

iCatholic [Free] – CatholicTV is on the forefront of new evangelization, and their iPad app is just another example of the kind of high quality work the Archdiocese of Boston is producing. The iCatholic app allows the user to read CatholicTV’s monthly magazine. You can download the entire magazine, or read it as it streams into the app page by page. Either way, you’re in for a visual treat as the full color photos and artwork brilliantly illustrate the content. More than just a monthly preview of upcoming programming, iCatholic delves into relevant topics of interest to today’s Catholic.

As I perused the November 2010 issue, I especially appreciated the article on how those with Celiac Disease deal with their allergy to the communion host. My sister has been diagnosed with Celiac Disease for over 30 years, and I was captivated by the stories of other Catholics who have learned to adjust to life without gluten. The November issue also covered baby boomers, the liturgical year, and cyber security.

The app takes full advantage of the iPad’s connectivity. Articles are enhanced with web links and videos that can be opened with a simple double tap. Neither the videos nor the links take you out of the application. Instead, they open in a convenient pop-up tab that can be expanded to the full screen.

All in all, every Catholic educator with an iPad should read iCatholic. But if you don’t have an iPad, don’t worry. The same content can be viewed online at CatholicTV’s website.

iBreviary Pro [Free] – The Liturgy of the Hours is one of the most beautiful but complex prayers available to Catholics. The Divine Office brings out the sacredness in each moment of the day and unites us in prayer with the whole Church. In order to pray it fully, a person usually needs a thick prayer book called a breviary, along with a fairly sophisticated understanding of the liturgical year. Someday we may have an adult Catholic population that is knowledgeable enough to maneuver the ribbons and rubrics of the Divine Office, but until then, the iBreviary app is a godsend.

iBreviary makes each day’s prayers available against a beautiful parchment background with no need to move ribbons or flip back and forth between sections. Available in English, Italian, Spanish, French and Latin, the free app uses official texts and also provides the daily Mass readings, not to mention an impressive collection of prayers and blessings.

While nothing can replace the feel of an elegantly bound prayer book, the visual appeal of iBreviary enhances the reader’s experience of using the iPad to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. It’s unbelievable that an app this beautiful, useful and comprehensive should be free. There is no reason for any Catholic iPad owner to avoid downloading iBreviary.

Free Wallpaper – One of the first things I did after charging up my new iPad was change the main screen wallpaper. One of my favorite images is Sassoferrato’s Mary, and it makes a beautiful background for the app icons. The following picture links to the 1024×1024 image (799kb) that I use for my iPad. If you like it, feel free to download it. The best way to say thanks is by subscribing to Catholic School Chronicle, either by RSS or by email. I’d also appreciate it if you could tell all the Catholic educators you know about the Chronicle.

Sassoferrato Mary for iPad
Sassoferrato Mary for iPad
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Blogs by Catholic Teachers, Principals and Catechists

Students blogging

Blogging TeacherThe good news is that there are Catholic teachers, administrators and catechists who are willing to share their wisdom, knowledge and experience with anyone willing to follow their blogs. The bad news is that there are so few of these bloggers out there. Currently, there are over 7,000 elementary and secondary Catholic schools in the U.S, staffed by over 154,000 teachers and principals, but I could find less than forty blogs by Catholic educators. Even BarbinNebraska’s Twitter list of Catholic educators, arguably the biggest list of Catholic teachers using social media, only has forty-four teachers as of this writing.

To be sure, Catholic teachers are overburdened and rightly need to make teaching their number one priority; but it’s a shame that more don’t take the time to share their ideas and resources with the rest of the world. Blogging can take as much or as little time as you want, and can be as professional or informal as your personality and goals dictate. If you teach in Catholic schools, please consider starting a blog of your own.

Here’s the list of all the blogs by Catholic educators that I’ve been able to find. I’d love to be able to add to this list, so please let me know of any blogging teachers, administrators and catechists that I may have missed.

Teachers:

Principals/Administrators:

Catechists:

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Advice for Catholic School Web Site Design

Web IconAbout fourteen years ago, my eighth grade class and I created the first Catholic school website in our diocese. It was 1996, and I paid $50 for a web page editor and spent hours trying to make menu frames work while my students wrote content. We were very proud of that site, and of the fact that we were the first school with a web page. Never mind that it was hosted for free on a domain that had nothing to do with our school’s name, or that we didn’t know the first thing about web design; like so many other Catholic school endeavors, we worked with our limited resources to create the best product we could. That particular web site lasted for several years, until our development director took the burden of maintaining the site off of my shoulders.

Today, web sites are too important to schools to be designed by a geeky teacher and his students. Catholic schools hire professional web designers or rely on parent volunteers with web design experience. Enter Lance Johnson and Adam Fairholm, the creative minds behind Catholic School Web Design, a web site dedicated to bringing useful web design information to Catholic schools. Though it’s only been around for three months, CSWD has already produced over a dozen helpful articles for Catholic school webmasters, including the following:

If you’re a Catholic school administrator, development director or web designer, pay CSWD a visit and subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also follow them on Twitter, too.