I have written several posts pointing back to an article written by Steve Hargadon entitled “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education.” Steven just recently redid that presentation, recorded it and put it online. It is great and deserves the time to watch if you are interested in using technology in Education. You can watch it below. Click the Play button to hear the audio.

Steve Hargadon wrote about the increasing amount of information that is available on the web, and how that information can really become overwhelming!  He gives some stats:

“There are over 100,000 blogs created daily, and MySpace alone has something over 375,000 new users (content creators) every day. I remember how much work I had to go to in my childhood to just find information. Now, we must figure out what information to give our time and attention to when we are engulfed by it. Web 2.0 is the cause of what can only be called a flood of content”

The amount of information created related to church content is just as staggering and can sometimes be overwhelming!  We have scriptures, general conferences, youth conferences, special firesides, ensign articles, music, topical guides, guide to the scriptures, and much much more… just on the main church website.  That doesn’t even begin to include the amount of content created daily by an increasing army of “mormon bloggers” (like me).  Often times we can’t even get our students to wrap their heads around the scriptures and the words of the modern day prophets… the single most important source for information… let alone all the rest of the stuff out there.  So how can they handle all this information?  Steve gives us an answer…

The solution to content overload is to create more content.

Every one of us has had the opportunity to teach a class or prepare a talk.  We have heard, or even said, that we were grateful for the opportunity to teach because we learned so much while preparing.  That is the key for our students as well.  If students will create content (writing, video, audio… anything), they are better able to engage the massive amounts of content available out there.  They learn where to look for what they need.  And then the most important thing happens… it becomes part of them.  This is why we have had students teaching and talking in the classroom so much.  It is often the act of bearing testimony (in what ever form that might take) that allows them to gain a testimony themselves.

What about you… how do you deal with the massive amounts of content out there now?  I use Google Reader as a beginning place and categorize it all.  This allows a quick view of what’s new out there on the websites that are important to me.

How awesome is this? LDSMediaTalk posted an article today about the a Scripture Sudoku puzzle in the New Era this month… guess what scripture it uses? Moses 1:39… awesome.

Technology makes it easy to generate these for all the scripture mastery verses, and although I don’t play Sudoku, I know it is great fun and many, many people do! It could be a good way for some students to learn the scripture mastery verses better! Nicely done!

Wow! MormonTimes posted an AWESOME adaptation of the Screwtape letters this morning about online posting. This would be a GREAT way to teach students how to engage other’s online. It is not your typical do this and don’t do this, but a creative way for students to discuss what to do.

In the perfect class with wireless they would then have 10 minutes to go online and find several articles to post on… or go home and do that. Great job Deseret News!

Recent years have seen an explosion of church related content, especially on LDS.org.  The amount of information available there is both amazing and overwhelming.  This information is dwarfed by the user generated contented I talked about yesterday.  Steve Hargadon gives us some statistics.  He says:

“There are over 100,000 blogs created daily, and MySpace alone has something over 375,000 new users (content creators) every day. I remember how much work I had to go to in my childhood to just find information. Now, we must figure out what information to give our time and attention to when we are engulfed by it. Web 2.0 is the cause of what can only be called a flood of content.”

The same is absolutely true of church content.  It used to be that we had specific books published to help us write talks… now we google it.  Of those 100,000 blogs created daily, hundreds of them have to do with the church.

An interesting bit of information… Guess what the top key word search that gets people to this site… “lds spiritual thought.”  Although this site has few spiritual thought posts, I have hundreds of people coming here each month to find one.

There are two possible conclusions from this.  One… people are too lazy to come up with their own spiritual thought… or two… the church website is just too overwhelming for people to know where to start with it.  I personally fall in the second cateogry… unless I am working on a blog post… then I have a purpose and I am looking for something specific.  It works great!

Steve goes on to give us an answer with how to deal with all this content…

“I will also say that on a personal level, when people ask me the answer to content overload, I tell them (counter-intuitively) that it is to produce more content. Because it is in the act of our becoming a creator that our relationship with content changes, and we become more engaged and more capable at the same time.”

He is absolutely right… students that create their own content know how to engage with the content and know how to manage it.

Gradually over the past 5 years the web and web published has changed dramatically.  It used to be that you had to be a super techie to publish anything on the web… now a days anyone can publish… anything… anywhere.  With tools like blogs, wiki’s, podcasts, video/photo sharing sites, social networks, and hundreds of software sites, anyone can write on the web now.

I envision a classroom that has many assignments online that leverage the power of the internet and the tools mentioned above.  Compared to a traditional classroom with several papers and students passively listening to a teacher talk, I have created a list of four benefits to publishing content online.  I will incorporate some of the paradigms from Steve Hargadon’s “Web 2.0 is the future of Education” into my list.

1. Motivation - When students publish on the web they are publishing to a global audience.  Typically they will spend more time pondering and thinking about what they are going to say.  The work they do then becomes part of them.  They go from passive learning to passionate learning.  They have to think deeply about what they believe and that brings the gospel deeper into their hearts.

2. Potential Projects - When technology and the web come into view the potential for projects becomes much larger.  Students are not limited to a paper, but can interpret the assigment in what ever medium best suits them.  That may be writing (my best medium), or it may be music, video, some sort of social experiment, or something totally different.  It opens the doors of creativity and also allows students to express themselves how they best learn.

3. Feedback and Participation - Traditional writing only has one, or at most a few people that will read the work, so the feedback is limited to that small circle.  In most cases those people also think and act like those writing so their feedback will not vary.  With a global audience the feedback is much more diverse.  Students will also have the opportunity to defend their work.  The work they do not only is a presentation, but it become participative as they continue to talk about it, and defend it in some cases.

4. Engagement - Most of all projects that use the technology that students are familiar with engages them.  They don’t check out, or turn their minds off when they come to class… they are excited and will often spend hours and hours outside of school working ont these projects because they are what is exciting to them.  The more time they spend working on these projects and thinking about them, again… the deeper it get’s into their souls and helps them determine who they are and what they believe!

Over the past year I have seen several good examples of teachers who are already giving their students assignments like this.  In 2002, Seth Adam Smith created a YouTube video about the prophet Joseph Smith for a Church History Project at the BYU Summer Navoo Program.  Since then he has made over 90 other video’s and continues today.  Here is one of his more recent one’s.

Another video I found that I really like is this “BackPack and Brick’s” video about repentance. I honestly don’t know the background to this one, but I have emailed the user to find out. I suspect it was an assigment… if not, it would have been a great one.

I also came across this funny video that was the winner of an Institute Academy Awards activity that was certainly thought up by the digital natives that are so comfortable and excited by this type of technology.

Although these examples only have to do with video, students can also blog, compose, write software, or a myriad of other things that they know about, but I’m not familiar with. They are, after all, the experts in this field. Let them do their work and see what they can come up with!

A conversation has been going on for a while about the difference between the way people learn today and how they have learned in the past.  Althought I don’t necessarily believe that all of the conversation has relevance when thinking about religous education, parts of it certainly do.  Shortly said, the students today are different because they grew up with this technology.

They are “digital natives” as opposed to “digital immigrants” because they have had it their whole life.  They speak web and web technologies fluently.  This familiarity allows them to use it for learning in ways we immigrants don’t necessarily find easy.  One example would be their interaction with the scriptures.  They can read scriptures online just as easy, if not easier than in scripture form.  They also use cell phones, SMS, iPods, blogs, wiki’s, and other tools without reservation.

There was a video created about a year ago that I really liked that addressed some of these differences.  It is about 7 minutes long, but worth it.

This video talks about why students are so comfortable with it, but it brings up a bigger point… ENGAGEMENT. Because they grow up with this technology and use it so much in their lives, they are not engaged in the classroom when we make them turn it off. Instead of “checking out” when they come to class, we can use this technology to engage them.

I really like the example of text message assignment. Imagine a similar assignment in a seminary classroom. I can see a good one about missionary work. “You have two minutes to share the gospel with a friend (right now!). It can be an invitation… an answer to a question… anything.” The students are smart enough to know how to use the the technology. They it is not just talking about the gospel, it is experiencing it!

This will become more and more of a theme as I work through these posts. Technology enables students to experience the gospel. It allows them to not just “play seminary and get the grade” but sink it deep into their hearts where it will become part of them on an individual basis!

What are your thoughts? There are obviously parts of this that don’t apply to the spiritual classroom… or are there?

This is the first in a series of posts about using web technologies to augment spiritual education. In this post I would like to being laying out the framework for why technology is so important in the church and how the Lord has been using it to further his work on the earth.

I believe, like Elder Ballard,¹ that God inspires man to invent tools that bring his work forward here on the earth. The Internet is one of the most powerful modern tools out there. I am excited about all that is going on with the web and believe it will continue to have a large impact on the world. More important than that though, I believe web technologies like all other media, are going to have a huge impact on people that will last through the eternities.

The Internet already effects every part of the mission of the church. For years the church has used computers to trance your ancestry. And now, with the rollout of the new family search site, families will be able to collaborate and work efficiently on family history like they never have before! In addition to this there are dozens of other services available on the web to help connect families with their ancestors.

As we look to preaching the Gospel, we need look no further than this month’s Ensign and numerous talks given by the Brethren as of late. Here is a great YouTube clip from Elder Ballard from last year encouraging us as members of the church to join the internet conversation.

There are also dozens of other ways technology is helping missionaries do their work better. I would love to write another series of articles just like this one focused on missionary work.

When it comes to perfecting the saints, there is even more than any other area. As you look at the way the church website has grown, and the ever increasing availability of the words of our leaders across the earth, and often in their own language, it is staggering. And then the tools that people are building to manage our lives and help us keep the things that are most important as a priority are amazing as well. The Perfect the Saints category of this webpage has dozens of examples of services (free in most cases).

The Church Educational System is no less progressive. They have been relentless in moving technology forward on their website. There is a plethura of information for teachers and administrators across the world. In the following essays I would like to explore how the web, and
applications that already exist can be integrated into these religious
classroom, both in institutes and seminaries across to world to
increase the effectivness bringing the gospel into the hearts of those that hear the gospel.

1. “The Lord, over the centuries, has had a hand in inspiring people to invent tools that facilitate the spreading of the gospel. The Church has adopted and embraced those tools, including print, broadcast media, and the Internet.” [↩]

After much pondering and prayer, I have decided that I would like to start working for the church in some sort of technology capacity.  I feel that the Lord has blessed me lots of idea’s and a passion for technology.  With that in mind, I am going to write a series of posts about using web technologies to augment spiritual education in CES (since that is where I hope to get a job).

At first, I started writing a long academic type essay… but then I thought to myself… this is so 1990’s… :).  Why not write it here on MormonTechie.com and harness the power of the internet by hyperlinking things I am writing about, posting pictures and video’s, encouraging comments from all those that read this, and generally using the tools I am writing about.  As we all know… our combined efforts can sometimes be so much more powerful than my thoughts alone.

With that in mind, I hope that my musings and pondering will paint a portrait of the potential of web technology to augment the amazing spiritual education that is going on right now in the church.   I am writing it mostly with CES in mind, but I hope teachers everywhere will gain some insight into tools that exist, tools that God has inspired men to create, that will help us get the Gospel into our own hearts, and the hearts of those we teach.

Part I: Why Technology is Important in Religious Education

• Mission of the Church and Technology
• Current Teaching Emphasis for CES

Part II: Web 2.0 and Spiritual Education (These posts will be based off of Steve Hargadon’s “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education,” but modified for Spiritual Education)

• Digital Learner’s Today
• Publishing Revolution (From Passive to Passionate Learning)( From Presentation to Participation)(From Publication to Conversation)
• Tidal Wave of Information (From Learning about to Learning to Be)
• Everything is Participative
• The Power of Collaboration
• Social Web

Part III: Tools – The applications that have the potential to change Education!

• Video
• Music
• Writing
• Communication
• Social
• Distance Ed
• Mobile – Learning Everywhere

So that is it my very ROUGH draft… :)  What do you think?  What have I missed?

I have created a page on my site (linked at the top of each page) with a brief introduction and will hyperlink the articles there as I write them.   Wish me luck!  Oh, and if you know anyone over in CES, I would love for you to put in a good word for me!

So I have long been in search of a program to mark up the web. I love to read online and have even gone as far as creating my own copy of the scriptures in a wiki form, but it never seems to get it all there for me. Well, Diigo get’s pretty close for me, and it has nice social features as well…

Scripture Study

Diigo allows has four basic functions that I think are useful in scripture study.

• Bookmarking
• Highlighting
• Commenting
• Tagging (for organizing your bookmarks and comments)

Social Features

Diigo also allows you to make your highlights/comments public. If you do, then anyone that goes to this page with the Diigo Toolbar installed will see your annotations and be able to comment on them.

In addition to this, you can also create public and private groups where you can collaborate on resources. This could be fun for a family to collaborate on a talk someone is preparing, or a class to work on a lesson. Because it is different some students (think seminary/institute) will be more apt to play with it. You could do a class project annotating resources from the church’s amazing resources! Here is a clip from this month’s First Presidency Message from President Monson:

In addition to this there is a nice dashboard that allows you to see new annotations in a group.

LDS Groups

I was suprised this morning when I couldn’t find any LDS groups to join… so I created one: LDS Study and Resources Group. Upon further analysis… it appears the search engine is broken. I still can’t find my group in search, or any other LDS groups… hmmm… Any other Diigo users out there? Come and join… perhaps we could make a LDS Tech group for technologies that we are working on. Good for commenting online with stuff… What do you think?

I am just touching on some of the functionality of Diigo… there is a lot of extra tools and widget’s. Good Web 2.0 technology! What other uses can you forsee?