174 – Revisiting WhatAboutJesus.com

This week on the WELSTech Podcast we return to our book discussion and take a closer look at techie outreach resources.

The discussion:

Communication for School Leaders – Listen as Martin and Sallie discuss Chapter 7 of Leading 21st Century Schools which covers tech-based ideas for school leaders to engage parents, alumni, school boards and other “stakeholders” in education initiatives.

Ministry resources:

(13:51) WhatAboutJesus.com – Access and share outreach oriented resources covering questions about Jesus and God, life concerns, introduction to worship, worship helps and much more.

• Visit the Ministry Resources page for a compilation of items shared throughout WELSTech history.

News in tech:

(19:08) iPad2 announcement – Recently Joshua Johnson from Nebraska Evangelical Lutheran High School posted a question on the WELSTech Facebook page looking for 1 to 1 computing recommendations.  If you are considering iPads for 1 to 1 computing in your school, check out these resources:

• A Visit to GFW High School  (One-to-One iPad Initiative)
• iPad2 in Education discussion
• I Education App Review
• Digital Storytelling with iPad

Picks of the week:

• (24:35) Guides for Interactive Whiteboards from The Whiteboard Blog
• Monoprice.com

Of interest:

(28:23) FinalWeb Training in New Ulm, MN and Milwaukee, WI

• FinalWeb for Teachers in New Ulm on June 27 and Milwaukee on August 1 – bit.ly/fw4teachers
• FinalWeb for Dummies in New Ulm June 28-30 and Milwaukee August 2-4 – bit.ly/fw4dummies

Community feedback:

• (31:14) We received lots of Facebook feedback from last week’s podcast:
  • Adam Vallesky from Christ in Juneau, AK is encouraging members to check in when they are at church using Facebook’s location based app
  • The WELSTech Wiki list of schools on Facebook grew to include Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School and Nebraska Evangelical Lutheran High School which boasts 480 + followers
  • Martin blogged about Facebook for churches
  • Gail Potratz from Emanuel in New London, WI asked about posting on Facebook as the page administrator
  • Brian Pruess from Beautiful Savior in Hillsboro, OR asked about a mobile version of WELS.net
• Sallie and Martin shared links via the WELSTech Diigo Group
  • Small Tech Firms Tap Into Churches from The Wall Street Journal
  • Best Five PDF Tools from Lifehacker
• Pastor Phil Arnold from St. Matthews in Stoddard, WI shared a link to Mellel, a word processor for Mac which handles Greek and Hebrew text seamlessly.
• David Schumann from Peace in Janesville, WI shares online worship video resources from another congregation, Good Shepherd in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, with his congregation because they don’t produce their own.  Find a list of all streamed worship services and online sermon video archives on the WELSTech Wiki.
• Via twitter we heard from …
  • Josh (mlcjohnson16) who shared a link to the new WordPress web site for Bethel in York, NE using a theme from graphpaperpress.com
  • Gail Potratz sharing her love for Camtasia Studio video creation software.  Check out Sallie’s recent blog post on video creation tools.

Coming up on WELSTech:

(46:03) Episode 175 – The Microsoft Office tool set is the discussion topic of the day, and Staff Minister Dan Schoeffel shares his tech favorites. (Release date – 03/16/11)

The featured artist:

(47:20) We close the podcast with the music of Corban Creek  – Psalm 13 from their CD titled ”Could It Be Me”

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