Youth Ministry Geek » Free

Free Digital Film School

Chris — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:17:22 +0000

Have you ever wanted to learn more about movie making even if it’s just to make your Youth Group videos better? I just saw this class over on iTunes U that might help. It’s an 18 part class to help jump start your digital movie making. It covers both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker, so no matter what platform you use, you should be covered. It doesn’t appear to be the complete class but a crash course to get you started.

The iTunes description:

Have you ever wanted to pick up a video camera and make a short video or film, but felt intimidated by your lack of knowledge? The explosion of film-making for websites and mobiles gives people and organisations the opportunity to tell their stories and show what they have to offer, at low cost. This collection of exciting videos features the Open University’s experienced team of filmmakers, who will show you some of the craft secrets that underpin good filmmaking, and how professionals stay up to date. You will learn the basics of editing, how to conduct an interview, the role of the producer and other crew members and how to archive your finished project. This material forms par

Best part is, like all iTunes U courses, it’s free. It may be a great way to introduce some students to film making so they can help you out by making some awesome youth group videos for you.

Chick here to check out the course.

Want to Learn to Code?

Chris — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:50:17 +0000

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.

Free Fonts to Kick Off the Fall

Chris — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 04:00:16 +0000

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

Great (short!) Youth Ministry Training Podcast

Jeremy — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:15:27 +0000

I’ve been involved in a project to provide free Youth Ministry resources online at umyouthpastor.com for a while now. We thought about doing a training podcast for a while, but wanted to make sure that we were adding something worthwhile rather than just creating more work for ourselves. After consuming a lot of podcasts, I realized that what I wanted was a periodic training/idea podcast that was short and to the point. That is where the idea for 10-minute Training (itunes link) began.

Each episode is an interview with a talented youth minister about a specific topic covering everything from having hard conversations to indoor game idea roundups. Every episode then concludes with a resource recommendation from the guest. All in about 10 minutes.

I love and listen to tons of long-format podcasts like the SYM podcast (iTunes link), but know very few people who are both entertaining enough to listen to for that long and experienced/talented enough to have that much quality content (Doug and the gang are some of the few in youth ministry). The point of the podcast is to get you some usable information or idea as quickly as possible, or as the tagline suggests… we get to the point so you get the training. Check it out by going to the website or subscribing via iTunes.

180 Free Fonts Great for Ministry

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:30:38 +0000

I was working on a project recently and decided I really needed to find some new fonts for it. I came across a few collections that I thought would be fun to share:

1. 40 Free Comic and Cartoon Fonts: These have youth ministry written all over them. Lots of fun ones to play with.

One of my favorites:

2. 40 Free Hand Drawn Fonts: I’m a big fan of the hand drawn look. I’ve seen some of these before, but there were some great new ones also.

I love this look:

3. 100 Abstract and Grunge Fonts: I really like a lot of these, very current and a lot of fun for ministry.

Check these out:

Maybe these will be just what you need for your next project. Enjoy!

Free Resources from Simply Youth Ministry

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:21:12 +0000

Thought I’d pass this along for anyone needing some resources, a great chance to get some Free stuff, but only till Oct 20, 2009.

LINK: SimplyYouthMinistry.com

Amazing, Free Resources: Open by Lifechurch.tv

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:41:02 +0000

I am constantly amazed at the tools that lifechurch.tv produces. This morning I found out about what is quite possibly the most useful of them all: Open. What is it? It’s thousands of top-quality resources for churches available for free download. It’s not just youth resources! Everyone can find something from adults to children and youth to pet ministry (I may have gone a little overboard on the pet ministry).

To begin, you simply sign up for an account and voila, the world of Open resources is at your fingertips. Browse through the files to find videos of messages, background loops, small group curriculum, skits and video illustrations.

Don’t have a great worship band? No problem, you can download worship sets to project on a screen with a band, lyrics, the whole deal. There’s even forms and training. Like I said, it’s awesome! The only problem I could find with the well-designed site is that some of the video files require you to burn them on a dvd to play them which for a novice (especially one using a pc) could get a little hairy.

That being said, it’s all there, and it’s all free. Next time you need help on a message or small group your first stop simply has to be Open.

Free Summer Apple Camp

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:30:16 +0000

Do you have young kids in your ministry or at home that are into video, photos or putting presentations? Apple offers free day camps for kids 8 – 12 to teach them the basics. Here’s how they describe them:

This summer, your kid could make a movie, create a photo slideshow, write and record a song, put on a show for everyone, and have a blast doing it all. At Apple Camp, kids learn how to do cool stuff on a Mac and discover their hidden talents along the way. Apple Camp occurs at every Apple Retail Store, and each free workshop lasts three hours. Sign up your kid today and get ready for an adventure.

All the camps are at their retails stores, and sure they are probably workshop / product promotion, but your kids could still learn some cool skills and it may encourage a budding artist. It could be a great way to start training some jr higher’s to lead your media ministry. My daughter is excited to take the photo class.

Check them out at the Apple’s Camp Website.

Stop Camp Kissing

Create Your Own Youtube

admin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:13:44 +0000

I have recently stumbled upon a service called Fliggo. It is focused on creating websites to share your videos. It can create a site that is more as gallery, or one more like a Vlog where each video has comments or as a video sharing community similar to YouTube where users can upload their own videos.

One of their best features is the ability to enter a YouTube video address instead of uploading videos from your computer. It doesn’t merely embed the videos in your site; rather, it rips the video from YouTube, saves it on their server and inserts it into your site. This is great because it removes the linked videos YouTube placed on the end of your video over which you have no control.

The service is free with a paid pro version in their ner future that adds custom domain support and some other options, but all the imporant features are available on the free version.

How do I download video from YouTube?

Make Your Handwriting a Font

Chris — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 04:03:51 +0000

Are you always on the look out for new fonts? Have you always wanted a font that looked just like your handwriting? I must admit that I have. I’ve seen services in the past that will make them for you, but they’ve always been a little more than I wanted to spend. Sure it’d be fun, but I didn’t need to spent $5 on it.

Well I just stumbled upon YourFonts.com, and they will generate a font of your handwriting for you to download. The best part is it’s free, they don’t even ask for an email address.

Here’s how it works:

Download their template pdf.
Fill it in with your writing
Scan it and upload it on their site.
Wait a few minutes and they generate the font and give you a download link.
Install and use.

Here’s a sample of the one I created:

Looks just as sloppy as my real handwriting. If you’ve always wanted that personal, handwritten touch, but were too lazy to actually write this is just what you need.

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