Children’s Ministry and Culture

K! has an excellent article by Rex Miller, the author of the Millennium Matrix, entitled “What would Luther Do?”(March/April 200
Miller writes:

“The basic educational model (secular or religious) including the classroom arrangement, subject classifications, and teacher/student relationship has not significantly changed since the 15th Century. The locus is learning subject content with some memorization, and some form of testing to see if anything stuck. Churches have also learned that if they want to keep the kids attention that htey have to play games, hand out rewards like candy or tokens to redeem, sing some energetic songs, and perform “edutainment.”

“Think about that scenario for a moment. Compare it to how children relate to and experience their current world. Their online world is far more sophisticated and interactive…

“Our kids’ world functions in a multi-disciplinary, highly customized, real time, interconnected, convergent, on-demand, interactive, “ain’t nothing the way you think it is”, hands-on, multi-sensory laboratory of the mind. Learning has moved from static content to highly contextual real world applications.”

Miller also writes, “We’re still using old mindsets even though some are trying to use new tools.”

I’m prepping for my talks at Willowcreek in April and I did some research on the falling prices of video editing software. I’m convinced that the falling price of non-linear video editing software has absolutely changed the game of how we teach. From my notes:

a.      In 1990, the first affordable video editing software/hardware solution, the Video Toaster, was offered for the Commodore Amiga 2000 for the shockingly low price of $1499. (In the  eighties only  studios  like  Lucas-film had this  stuff!

b. Today a consumer version of Adobe Premiere Elements sells for $79, Avid’s Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 sells for $99

c.      Microsoft offers a simplified version of Movie Maker for free on certain versions of Windows.

 The affordable video editing software has led to the proliferation of high quality curriculums that center around DVD pieces. A few months ago I wrote a piece of Children’s Ministry magazine about the dangers of the DVD pieces crowding out the relational strength of our ministry. But on the flip side, we had the opportunity to become more visual in our presentations, faster-paced, and edgy. That’s a good thing.

Borrowing a line from the book Principles of Interactive Excellence we should evaluate this next-gen curriculum not on it’s production value, but by its ability to spark conversation.

go to www.reciva.com to find any radio station with a live stream anywhere in the world…LIVE! Right now I’m listening to Motzart (it’s Baroque Weekend) WETA 90.9 in Washington DC (while in my home office!) and since I loaded it in my desktop I-Tunes I can flip between KQED in the Bay Area anytime. I sometimes do this on the weekend when I miss one nationally transmitted show (Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me… or Prairie Home Companion) just move to another time zone and voila…it’s LIVE!!! Totally Cool!

Here’s an interesting column on msnbc.com that muses whether or not dad’s playing video games with their children is worthwhile or not. The article suggests that it creates healthy time for conversation and even teachable moments. Of course, boundaries– such as how much time to invest are necessary.

This Gen-X dad will be taping the article to the refrigerator for my wife to see.

We’ve posted studies on each side of the debate as to whether media violence has a negative effect on a child’s behavior. Here’s a new study from the University of Michigan that reviews fifty years of research on the topic. The researchers have come to the conclusion that only smoking presents a greater risk to children.

Some stats:

 ”Huesmann said children spend an average of three hours watching television each day and more than 60 percent of TV programs contain some violence, including 40 percent showing extreme violence.

“Children are also spending an increasingly large amount of time playing video games, most of which contain violence. Video game units are now present in 83 percent of homes with children,” he added.”

Now certainly, the cause of societal violence can’t be reduced to a single factor. It would have been interesting to track factors such as divorce rates and economic health over the same fifty years. There’s this little thing we refer to as “sin nature.” Even with those cautions, we have to ask ourselves what the “hidden curriculum” of a each individual video game, movie, or TV show. What is communicated about problem solving, negotitation, or the santity of life?

There is a fascinating 2700 word essay in today’s Wall Street Journal about the demise of the highly touted $100 laptop. Mr. Negroponte’s idea was simple enough, and he felt he had to technology to do it. But the competition had other thoughts! For children’s ministers what is interesting is the fact that countries wanted training included with their laptops! Mr. Negroponte hadn’t thought of that! Read the whole story here (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586754115002717.html?mod=home_we_banner_left)

“I’m not good at selling laptops,” Mr. Negroponte has told colleagues. “I’m good at selling ideas.”

“From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million” laptops made by competitors “in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success,” he said in a recent interview. “My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It’s in the education business.”

Dana Gioia, Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts spoke this past summer on reading well and I posted on it here.  I noticed at the time an offhand remark he made about how online reading is not really reading and I didn’t comment on it though at the time I thought, “that’s odd, isn’t reading ANYTHING better than reading only a book?” But I let it go since the topic was about reading well and so his LACK of emphasis was nothing other than editorial prioritizing. 

I was wrong! 

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts has released a major study warning the nation on the decline of reading (executive summary here) titled “To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence.” It is basically a study of data from 20 other studies which basically summarize that:

 ·                      “There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans.”

·                      “As Americans, especially younger Americans, read less, they read less well.”

·                      “Worse reading skills are found among prisoners than in the general population.”

·                      “The shameful fact that nearly one-third of American teenagers drop out of school is deeply connected to declining literacy and reading comprehension.”

·                      “Strictly understood, the data in this report do not necessarily show cause and effect. The statistics merely indicate correlations.”

·                      “Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.” (all from p. 3 & 4 of the Executive Summary) 

This last quotation is really an unfortunate inference from the data! Why can’t it substitute? This is wrong on its face since a majority of kids I know read a great deal, though they do not “sit around a fire with the Victorian father reading a book” to quote a fantastic observation by Professor Rosemarie Park, a literacy expert at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. 

From Park’s perspective, “the new information and communication technologies — blogs, word processors, Web pages, search engines, CD-ROM, e-mail, text-messaging, listservs, interactive gaming, virtual worlds and avatars — all contribute to more active, exciting and engaged learning. “I see every day, when I’m teaching my students, how much better job I can do now with all of these modalities available to me,” she said.

“I can show them things I could never show them before. I can give them access to readings from all over the globe. I can get them into databases. I can take them on [virtual] field trips. All of those things make life incredibly richer.”

What do you think? 

This from today’s Wall Street Journal, 11-16-2007

Kids learn best by doing hands-on and practical discovery learning.

It’s become almost axiomatic that if you want to interest kids in science, their first exposures should be heavy on fun.

Or phun, as a door sign for a “Phun Physics” seminar trumpeted Tuesday at the third annual Science and Nature Conference.

More than 400 area third- through eighth-graders converged upon the St. Peter Community Center and Bethany Lutheran Church across the street to receive primers on the vagaries of, for example, wildlife population dynamics.

Read more about it here (http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_297002141.html?keyword=topstory). Group Publishing is using science experiements to teach biblical truth in their 2008 VBS Power Lab (www.groupvbs.com).

You’ve got to visit www.wired.com/wiredlivinghome to see the latest in automation, gadgets, gear and appliances that make for a modern “green” home!