I thought this Glee parody was great. They nailed the characters.
If you are super into Glee and would like to teach a series on it, CYMT.org is publishing a teaching series on it. You can download the first one, “Not Just a Loser,” HERE.
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Sesame Street G: Glee Parody
Guest Post: Using Multiple Accounts In Gmail
It’s been a month since this feature has gone live, but I am just now getting to reviewing it: GMail’s multi-account login. It is the perfect feature for those that have two or more GMail accounts that they actively use. I have been running three different accounts, personal, business, and 78P’s, and this feature has removed frustration and mistakes when emailing. Here is a quick How-To in setting it up.
- Sign in to one of your Gmail accounts.
- Go to the top right-hand corner of the page where it says the address@clubbeyond.org and click “Account Settings.”
- Look to the right side of the page at the end of the list, where it will say “Multiple sign in – off” and click “Edit.”
- Click the “on” option and click all the boxes, then hit “Save.”
- Go back to the “Mail” tab and go again to the top right-hand corner where it says the address of the account you’re logged in as.
- Click that and select “Switch Accounts” and click “Sign in to another account”. It will tell you that the second account will be enabled for multiple sign-in.
- Whenever you want to switch between the two, click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner again and select “Switch Accounts”, then click the other account you want to switch to.
About Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith is a 26 year old youth worker at the Air Force Academy chapel, working for Club Beyond, and attending Denver Seminary for his Master”s of Counseling in Mental Health. He has been involved in Youth for Christ for eight years and absolutely loves sharing the life of Jesus with teens. You can read more from him at seventy8productions.com.
Youth Ministry Garage Debuts Today
I saw over on Doug Fields’ blog, that his podcast returns today. It’s now called the YouthMinistryGarage and the new site launches at 5:30 PM EST. I’m so excited the crew is back. I got to see a little bit of the first episode and it’s the return of everything I loved from the version we did over at Simply, and I’m so glad that YS is powering the show now to help keep it going.
Here’s a little video tease of the opening:
I can’t wait to watch it again. If you’ve never watched before this is a great time to check it out.
Guest Post: Social Media Can Increase Your Search Engine Optimization
Social media is a wonderful marketing tool, if used correctly, but just using it to link to your website is completely under utilizing the power that social media can provide for you. Social media should not be your only way to get your content to customers, but it can provide wonderful success. Another way to get people to your website is from search engine results which can be improved through SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Until recently, these were two separate marketing streams used to promote your website, but now it is possible for your social media presence to improve your search engine results. Google’s ranking is directly affected by tweeted links and Facebook shares from influential social media people as well as when it comes from multiple sources. That means if Barack Obama who is currently the third most followed person on Twitter retweets your website article on politics or fifty people retweet that same article in a short amount of time, your website will move up on the results pages at Bing and Google.
This does not eliminate good content, being an active social media user, or using SEO tools to improve your website, but it does mean that you will need to do some research on your product or service to produce better results. In future posts we’ll will look at a few ways that we can improve this social media and SEO relationship.
Jeremy Smith is a 26 year old youth worker at the Air Force Academy chapel, working for Club Beyond, and attending Denver Seminary for his Master”s of Counseling in Mental Health. I have been involved in Youth for Christ for eight years and absolutely love sharing the life of Jesus with teens.
I have been married to my wonderful wife, Ashley, for two years and try to be the best husband I can be. I enjoy tennis, web designs, and reading books. A secret introvert, you will find many of my ramblings come from weeks and months of thinking about these topics and how they can help ministry today.
Want to Learn to Code?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to really learn to code. I feel like I know just enough to know about programming that I don’t know what I’m doing. This weekend I stumbled upon Codecademy which is a free site that will teach you some basic coding / programming skills. The lessons start out really easy (can you type your name?), and then get a little more difficult as they teach you some of the fundamentals. You can also code along with your friends, and earn badges for the lessons you finish (Who doesn’t like badges?).
It might be a great thing for students that might be interested in coding but don’t know quite where to start.
Enjoy, who knows, maybe someday you’ll find yourself turning into a CodeMonkey.
Guest Post: Advice for the Web Consultant
As I wrap up my involvement in a project for a local ministry as their free web consultant, I have some tips that I wanted to pass along to those who use web developers or web consultants. This has been a unique experience for me, as a web consultant does not actually get into the designing or programming process, but simply provides what expertise they can to the project as a whole and lets the clients and web developers use that information as they wish. This provides an outside look into a project that people might need a new prospective or fresh eyes on. Unfortunately, sometimes they cannot let go or still continue bad habits, even after being advised not to continue. Here are four tips from a web consultant.
Leave Your Emotions At The Door
In the last three different projects I have worked on, each team had started arguing with each other or the web developer working on the project. They wanted something that was not possible for the cost that they were willing to pay and started to either whine, get angry, or be defiant and stall the project. That does not mean leave your passion at the door. This is your company and you need to do the best for it, but when emotions stall progress, you need to reevaluate your position.
Remember Who Is The Expert
You know your product or service better than anyone else in the room. This is your baby and you know the whole picture for the project. But do not confuse knowing your product with knowing what is best for the website. If a consultant says you will get better results doing something, hear them out. If it is something small like adding tags to blog posts that does not cripple or alter the project, you might want to let that one go. It comes down to picking your battles wisely and holding on to what God has given you loosely.
Keep The Timeline And Budget In Perspective
Almost nothing is impossible to create on the web. Want to have an ecommerce shopping cart? Got it. Want to use a packaged content management system that gives you lots of options, bells, and whistles? Done. Need a to completely rework one of the components of our project for your specific needs? Can do. Want it all at the original cost and due date? NO DEAL! If you want more, you have to be willing to give somewhere.
Remember The Goal Of The Website
Is it really necessary to have an iPhone app for this website? Will enough value be added if you incorporate a Flash intro? We always need to know what the goal of the website is and not deviate from the final mission. Additions for the website might need to take a backseat until version 2.0. For those that are not a typical web designer, they can get lost in the “possibilities” of what could be and need to focus in on why they wanted a website in the first place and stay true to it.
Jeremy Smith is a 26 year old youth worker at the Air Force Academy chapel, working for Club Beyond, and attending Denver Seminary for his Master”s of Counseling in Mental Health. I have been involved in Youth for Christ for eight years and absolutely love sharing the life of Jesus with teens.
I have been married to my wonderful wife, Ashley, for two years and try to be the best husband I can be. I enjoy tennis, web designs, and reading books. A secret introvert, you will find many of my ramblings come from weeks and months of thinking about these topics and how they can help ministry today.
Guest Post: QR Codes
How are you getting information to your students? Years ago you had to stick a piece of paper to a bulletin board and send home a newsletter. Remember having to actually cut clip-art out of a book? That used to be incredibly effective at getting information across to people. Now it’s almost a joke. Students are so wired now, and in some cases so environmentally conscious that to send them a newsletter is slow and a waste of paper.
At my church we have begun using QR codes. You know, those little squarish bar codes that resemble something the UPS man should scan on your box? Basically, a QR Code is a bar code that embeds information such as a web address, and is designed to be “read” by smart phones. Most of our students carry either a smart phone (Android, iPhone, or Blackberry) or an iPod Touch, and they bring them into our worship services. So, instead of forcing students to put their phones away, we ask them to participate in the service with their phones! Each week in the center of the tables that our students sit at we have information pieces about upcoming events with QR Codes on them. Students can scan the code which links to a web address with further information about the event, class, or resource. Sometimes the code takes them to a page with a funny YouTube video, other times it takes them to a page to register for Camp. The great thing about the QR Code is that once a student has scanned it, they can then revisit the information on their mobile device. It’s like a newsletter that follows them around everywhere!
So how do you get a QR Code and then use it? Well, my favorite QR Code generator can be found at QR Stuff. Once you follow the link all you have to do is select the options you want, enter your info, and the website automatically create the code for you. Simply download the code to your computer and attach it to anything you want! There are so many possibilities for using these little guys, and students love them!
Jon Homesley
Jon grew up around Charlotte, NC. He graduated from The College at Southeastern in 2010 with a BA doubling majoring in The History of Ideas and Biblical Studies. In 2008 he married his wife Chelsea. They currently live just north of Charlotte where Jon serves as the College Pastor, and Youth Ministry Geek (not his real title) at Christ Community Church. He prefers Windows 7 to OSX, Android to iOS, and Walkmans to iPods.
Jon’s church- www.ccchuntersville.com
Jon’s personal site- www.jonhomesley.com
Free Fonts to Kick Off the Fall
With back to school in full swing or coming very soon, you may be working on flyers or calendars for your fall season. I saw these two collections of free fonts come across my twitter feed this week, and thought i would pass them along. Enjoy!
Fresh Collection Of High Quality Free Fonts for Professional Designs
Read more: www.smashingapps.com
50 Fresh and Beautiful Fonts From 2011
Read more: www.1stwebdesigner.com
A New Adventure…Again
I started a new adventure this week. After 4 great years at Simply Youth Ministry, I’ve returned to Youth Specialties. I’m super excited about the opportunity. When I was serving in a church as a paid youth worker, I used their resources all the time and recieved encouragement and training from their events, and in 1998 I had the opportunity to join the YS team running the store at events and the IT guy for the office. Now I return as the Director of Digital Marketing which means I’ll be planning and building websites, plus dreaming up new ways we can serve youth workers online.
What does this mean for the blog? Not much, we’ll still be bringing you the same geeky thoughts, ideas and resources to help you in your ministry.
If you are coming to the National Youth Workers Convention this fall in San Diego or Atlanta please track me down and say “Hi”, I’ll also be leading a few technology seminars. I’d love to grab a coffee and talk about geeky stuff.
Also, if you’d like to know what crazy projects I’m working on, follow me on my new YS twitter account YSChrisDavis.
Clips For iPhone — Movie Clip Teaching Ideas
Have you ever hunted for just the perfect movie clip to use as an illustration for your teaching? There’s brand new iPhone app to help with that: Clips ~ Teach the Bible; Use scenes from movies. I love that it’s made by a Youth Pastor that’s also a developer, RJ Grunewald.
Description from iTunes:
Have you ever noticed that a scene from a popular movie can often teach better than any great lesson from a pastor or small group leader? Clips is all about helping people engage with the Bible by using scenes from great films. Pastors, small group leaders, and youth ministers can all benefit with the tools provided. Clips tells you exactly what scenes to use, what topics to teach, the verses you could use, and even some possible discussion questions. It gives you everything you need to easily find the scene you are teaching from, even linking to it in iTunes.
Open the app and you are free to browse the movie library, look up topics you’d like to teach, or even search for a scene based on a particular verse. Once you’ve found the movie you want to use, Clips makes it easy for you to have exactly what you need to lead a discussion on that scene.
Features:
- Library of 50 movies (and growing…)
- Over 80 topics
- Search by title, topic, or verse
- Share scene details via email
- Save your favorite clips and add used clips to history
- Easily find movies in iTunes through download links
Looks like a great youth ministry resource, go grab it on the app store now!
