I loved this video. Great way to image the birth of Jesus in our digital age.
All posts written by Chris
Spin That Wheel — Youth Group Game
I love the tech that comes out of the student and college/young adult ministries at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY. These guys have brought us some great blogs like steveostudios.tv fun and solid content in their podcast churchtechtalk, usable free resources at stufficanuse.com, now a few cool products at digitalstache.
Their latest resource for ministry, Spin That Wheel, is not free but is worth it weight in SPAM (SPAM is considered gourmet food in Hawaii). We saw this game for the first time at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference last February (register for this years conference before they sell out again).
Here is a brief description from their product website… “Spin That Wheel is a rockin large group interactive game. As a stand alone application, the software allows you to add up to 15 custom prizes to the wheel, then spin it to see what you get! (Wow, I just won a bag of Pork Rinds*) It has a random winner every time. Find yourself a great host, a really bad outfit, and you are in for a great night.”
*Prizes not included.
The students in our ministry love this game and I want to share a copy with one of you for your ministry. To get a chance at snagging a FREE copy, you must take the following TWO actions:
1. Leave a comment below. Tell us how you are PLAYING GAMES using TECHNOLOGY. (ie. Spin That Wheel, PowerPoint Games, Race This, etc…share your best idea with us). Leave your twitter name in the comment.
2. Follow youthministrygeek on twitter. We will send you a direct message if you are the winner.
On Friday December 17 we will pick the post with the best “tech game” idea and send a copy of Spin That Wheel for FREE! If you don’t will you can always pick up your own copy at digitalstache.com. Soon you’ll be able to pick it up at Simply Youth Ministry also.
MyFav.es Creates a Custom Homepage
I’m not sure how I missed this one, but my buddy Dave Harris showed me MyFav.es today. It allows you to create a custom homepage for your browser with just the links you want. Think your google homepage, but pretty. They have a ton of sites to choose from or you can create your own links.
Here’s what mine looks like:
Best of all it’s free. I love it. Give it a try.
Top 3 News Apps on iPad
I find myself reading a lot on the iPad. It’s become my morning paper. It took me awhile to find apps that made it an enjoyable experience. Here’s the 3 that I like best.
1. Flipboard-
I love the look and feel of Flipboard. It’s one of the nicest UI out there for the iPad. The one thing that gives it the number 1 spot is the fact it will pull in my facebook and twitter feeds and turn them into a magazine like experience. It’s the most enjoyable way I’ve found to keep up with all the info that flows through there everyday. They also have a great curated group of feeds you can add, so you can keep up on other news topics also. It’s also FREE, which is always a good thing.
The early Edition is at it’s heart a RSS feed reader, but it does it in a way that makes it look like a newspaper. It also comes with a nice set of suggested feeds for you, but you can also add any RSS feed you like and divide them up like sections of a newspaper. I’ve been using it more and more. It might not be free like Flipboard, but a few bucks isn’t bad to get all my reading in once place.
This one is more like honorable mention, but I thought I would add it in here. It’s also got a real pretty look, but I don’t find it quite as nice as Flipboard. It also allows you to add in any feed like Early Edition, but it’s much more linear in its presentation of the feeds. The nice thing about Pulse is that it recently went free, and they also have an iPhone version also.
What’s your favorite?
Double Reward Points at SYM
We have something fun going on at Simply this week. Get double rewards points on all purchases. (only till Friday Nov 19).
Double Rewards at SimplyYouthMinistry!
If you don’t know where to start, check the new gifts sections and pick nice out for your Students, Volunteers or Parents. It’s never too late to start your Christmas shopping.
21 Reasons Your Church or Ministry Needs a Mobile App
At SYM we are in the midst of app development, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Why are there so many apps out there? Do we really need another one? The answer to these questions for me is: 1) Apps make people’s life easy, that’s why there are so many, and 2) Yes, see answer 1.
There’s a great post over at YouthMinistry.com from Matt McKee about mobile apps and why your church or ministry may need one. The article points out that these mobile devices are not just for the geek anymore, but they are part of everyone’s life from age 2 to 90.
Here’s his list of why you may need one:
- It gives you another access point that your local community can access.
- It allows you to be location sensitive. You can send messages to a certain zip code if you want.
- It can integrate social media so that people can help spread your message across the Internet.
- It helps you get past a Sunday or Wednesday only mentality, and let’s people interact with content on a daily basis.
- It makes your message 1 or 2 clicks away.
- It makes your content more convenient, and the more convenient the more it is used.
- It makes your message more broad-reaching than just your local community.
- It can help drive people to your church building for special events or weekend services.
- It can make special announcements such as community wide prayer requests.
- It can stream your message in audio or video format.
- It makes reaching a new demographic even easier.
- It will differentiate your vision and values from others.
- It will create different engagement than your Web site.
- It drives loyalty.
- It puts your branding in front of potential guests before they walk in the door.
- It provides a new way to collect feedback.
- It can be a new place for people to contribute to your church or ministry.
- It encourages people to share your message with the people around them.
- It can reduce the cost of mailings and the frequency of mailings.
- It can highlight new books or resources that go along with current teaching series.
- It creates a buzz that you message is relevant in today’s culture.
Read the entire post here: 21 Reasons Your Church or Ministry Needs a Mobile App | YouthMinistry.com.
Do you think your ministry needs an app?
Geek Is… [VIDEO]
I loved watching this video. It brought back a lot of great childhood memories. I guess I’m really a geek.
Blizzard’s senior vice president of creative development, Chris Metzen, delivers a rousing dissertation to a packed audience at BlizzCon about what it means to be a geek. Beta is the new alpha.
Save 20% at SimplyYouthMinistry.com
Over at SimplyYouthMinistry.com you can save 20% off your order for the next 2 days by using the promo code: SCAREANDY. What better way to celebrate Halloween. Also there are a bunch of books on sale, and you can double up with the 20% off and really save some coin. Jump over to the sale category to have a look at those.
Yogile – Easy photo sharing!
I saw this site on a TWIT podcast a few weeks ago. It’s a great way to share pictures. For each album that you make you also get an email address that people can send in their own pictures to. This could be a great way to collect photos from an event or a trip. You could just give everyone the email address to send in their own pictures so you could use them. And the best part, it’s free. Definitely worth checking out.
Apple’s Back to the Mac Event: A YouthWorkers Take
Apple held an event today called “Back to the Mac”, I think they wanted to remind us they still make computers too. There are 100 sites of blogs talking about what they announced, so I’ll leave that to those that were actually there. But I thought I’d give you my take on the 3 big announcements they made.
1. iLife 2011 -
iPhoto: They enhanced the full screen view, which looks like it will be nicer to work in. They also added new templates for slide shows and books. These should be a welcome edition because I’m sure you’ve used the existing ones hundreds of times for those quick slide shows to show at the end of an event or in a service to show what the youth group is up to. The news ones look really nice, I’m excited to get to play with them in real life.
iMovie: One of the big improvements in iMovie is in the audio editing. This has been my biggest complaint and frustration since Apple moved away from the timeline approach to editing. This updated version allows for easier editing and volume control. (I can’t wait). They also added a new feature to make movie trailers. They looked really fun. I could totally see it as a fun way to make promo videos. I bet there are going to be a lot of movie trailer winter camp promo videos this year.
Garage Band: They made some improvements here with beat matching and some of the training, but since I’m not a musician it’s hard for me to give much commentary, but the demo looked good.
2. OS 10.8 Lion -
A couple big stories here. While nothing that’s going to change the way you do ministry, there are a few things that may help you save some time as you work. Too bad we have to wait till next summer to get our hands on it.
Mission Control, Launch Pad, Full Screen Apps: The story for me here was that is continuing to improve the way to switch windows, launch programs, and keep track of all the things we have open on our computers. I appreciate anything that can help streamline and organize my computer.
App Store: Apple hopes to do for apps on the Mac what the app store did for the iphone and ipad. I know some are concerned this will create a closed environment like on the iPhone, but I don’t think that apple will close out none app store apps, I think they are just trying to simplify it for a majority of it’s users. Hopefully it will make it a lot easier to find apps without searching all over the internet. Also I wonder if this will drive prices down just like in the mobile app store? It will be interesting to see.
FaceTime: This one you don’t really have to wait for. The beta is available HERE. It is what is sounds like. Video FaceTime calling to other computer or phones. I wonder if they’ll make a windows version someday. This will be a great way to call all those students with iPhones now won’t it.
3. MacBook Air
They’ve updated the Macbook Air line. They updated the existing 13.3 in model, plus added an 11.6. The best thing in my book is they have high resolution screens. I’ve also wanted a small computer with a super high res screen. The new Macbook Air is the closest thing yet. However I’m not sure they will fit in to many church budgets. They start at $999, but after looking at the configurations, it seems like a realistic price is $1400 for a machine that I’d be happy with.
