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Engaging Faith

Practical Lesson Ideas and Activities for Catholic Educators
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Modern Technology, Social Media, God, and God's Kingdom

Here are some random thoughts connecting modern technology and social media with aspects of our life with God, family, and friends. If these ideas resonate with you certainly you and especially your students can expand on them—perhaps in a short brainstorming session or to create an icebreaker activity of some kind. To get started, have you ever compared: The presence of cameras everywhere to God’s omnipresence? Think of how if a person goes missing, authorities can nearly recreated the person’s steps throughout the day using cameras on streetlights, at banks, attached to gas station awnings and more. Not to mention the many friends who may film a person in regular interactions. What is it like knowing you are being captured on camera? God is everywhere. God sees everything we do. How does God’s omnipresence differ from being photo’d randomly? How is it the same?   Cancelling someone based on old social postings to God’s mercy and forgiveness? We’ve seen this happen, right? Someone digs into a past tweet from five or ten years ago. Something a person (many times an adolescent) said is construed as something racists, homophobic, misogynistic, or something else. And that could be true. Often, however, the person has changed and reformed from previous views but they are nevertheless called out and “cancelled” from their current career or endeavor. God calls us to repent and reform our lives. Jesus came to earth to minister to the sick, not the healthy. What might be a proper response to someone whose past “sins” have been discovered on social media? Would digging into someone’s past ever be warranted?   Making a movie via Vimeo or some other platform with how God will review a life on Judgment Day? It’s fun to put our best foot forward in creating a short video on our phones using our past photos and videos. When we do this, the video forms a snapshot of our lives. It’s pretty typical for a person to only highlight the good memories and happy events in order to make a good, happy, and enjoyable video. God will review or individual lives at our judgment, the times we did good and the times we did bad without repenting. He will separate the good and evil doers to his right and left. If you were making an accurate video of your life to show at Judgment Day, what would be on it?   Connecting with people worldwide on social media with the universal nature of the Church? Staying in touch with old friends, making new ones, and communicating with people from all over the world is generally a positive aspect of social media. That’s why they call it social media, right? While there are many negatives to burying oneself into a screen and to trying to get to know someone without meeting face-to –face, social media platforms offer a chance to know a diverse and large swath of the population worldwide. The Catholic Church is a universal church. In God’s eternal kingdom, we will know people from all areas of the world and all generations past and present. How can communicating via social media help to further the universal nature of the Church?

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God, Faith, Religion on Social Media

Lead a discussion or assign the following items for your students to work on individually or in small groups on the topic of how social media is used and can be used more effectively to evangelize and inspire others around the Gospel message. Discuss or Write 1. Over the course of a day, about how many Scripture passages are posted on your social media feed? 2. How often do you read the Scripture that is posted? 3. How effective is social media as a forum for evangelization? 4. Copy and paste what you would consider an effective or inspiring social media post on God, faith, or religion? Tell why you find it so. 5. Read and summarize the article “Five Things Fulton Sheen Teaches Us about Social Media.”  (Read about Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen here.) 6. Write a one-paragraph social media post on faith that you believe would be effective or inspiring for your peer group. Also, summarize the post with a 140-character tweet.

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Using Different Colored Highlights to Increase Reading Comprehension

In the last iPad tutorial, I explained how teachers and students can use the Study Cards feature of the iBooks app to review glossary terms, main ideas, and Review Questions. A major part of that tutorial focused on effective highlighting with a designated color for Study Cards. One of the important advantages of eBooks for education is that highlights don't have to be final. When you highlight a book with colored ink, the highlight is there forever. It is a static experience. You highlight, then you review. You can't change it. The highlighting experience for eBooks and eTextbooks can be a much more engaging experience. One of our responsibilities as teachers is to use the tools to effectively teach students how to be better independent learners. The highlighting feature, when it allows you to have multiple colors, can be used in exciting new ways. Check your eTextbook reader app to be sure it offers multiple colors for your highlights. The iBooks iPad app, the Direct Digital app, and the GoodReader app (for PDF eTextbooks) all include the ability to highlight in more than one color. Teaching Good Highlighting Skills First, let's focus on the purpose of highlighting. To increase engagement with what students are reading, they need to do something active to help them organize new information into their brains. When reading printed books, this may include highlighting, writing notes in the margins, taking notes on paper, outlining what they read, or creating a mind map. Unfortunately, highlighting becomes an incredibly passive way to read books. We end up highlighting well-written sentences or long paragraphs with important information. What we are left with is a set of interesting sentences and paragraphs. Now that highlights and notes are so easy to see in a book and access outside of the book context, we need to become better highlighters and teachers of highlighting skills. What is the purpose of a highlight? Review. If we never review the highlights we've made, then we've wasted our time. If we do review our highlights, and notice that we've highlighted nearly the entire text, then we are again wasting our time. Instead, try and teach this: Highlight sentences that summarize main ideas of paragraphs and sections. Highlight supporting arguments of main ideas (sometimes numbered lists or bullet points). Highlight words, sentences, or concepts that you don't understand (for now). Highlight words or sentences that your teacher points to. Turn your highlights into outlines, questions, and summary points. Or, consult the highlighting suggestions in the final section of the Study Cards Tutorial, "Using iPad Study Cards to Review Reading." Most kids don't know how to study for tests and quizzes. Studying is a process that begins the first time you read something and ends in thinking creatively about ideas. Highlighting with Multiple Colors: A Pre-Reading Strategy I'm a huge proponent of pre-reading strategies. Most of us, whether we are teachers or students, skip this important step in reading new material. Pre-reading is reading before you read. It requires a quick scan of a section of text looking at the headings, the images, the bold words, and the first and last sentences of paragraphs to get an idea of what a selection of text is about before we even read the details. So how do you use highlighting to do pre-reading? Remember that highlights in an eBook/eTextbook can always be changed. So if you highlight something now, it can be deleted later. If you highlight something in yellow, it can easily be changed to green. Before releasing the students to read, ask them to use the following colors to highlight parts of the text: Green: Words, concepts, and ideas that you already know well. Blue: Words, concepts, and ideas you've heard of or understand a little bit. Red: Words, concepts, and ideas you've never heard of. Give students a little direction by pointing out certain words or concepts you want them to preview and highlight in green, blue, or red. Next, give them five to ten minutes to look up the words or concepts they highlighted in red and blue (kind of know and never heard of). In most eReaders, students can do this directly from the app by clicking on a word or highlighted text and selecting "Search Web" or "Search Wikipedia." Have them write what they've learned in a note connected with the red highlights. As a class discuss some of the concepts they didn't know before reading that they understand now. When they read the text, they can either delete the highlights to their liking or change the colors from blue and red to green. You will need to practice this activity to get students used to this kind of pre-reading and highlighting, but eventually these will become habits. Students will find the things they don't know and utilize the incredible tools at their disposal to quickly increase comprehension. You will find that in the long run they will learn faster by engaging in a text in this way than in just reading and answering the review questions.

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iPad Tutorial: Using Study Cards in Apple iBooks eTextbooks

Earlier this year we released two of our textbooks into the Apple iBookstore: Jesus Christ: God's Revelation to the World and Jesus Christ: Source of Our Salvation. These eTextbooks are specifically designed for the iPad using the incredible tools offered by the iBooks iPad App. One of the most exciting features about this app is the Study Cards. We've all used or asked students to use note cards and flash cards to study for tests or review material. Well, Study Cards in iBooks elevates that learning tactic to a whole new level.   We hope this brief tutorial on using Study Cards in iBooks Textbooks for the iPad will make an impact on the way you and your students use the iPad in class this year. Download a free sample copy of one of our books to your iPad to test out these features: Jesus Christ: God's Revelation to the World Jesus Christ: Source of Our Salvation How Study Cards are Created Here are the default settings for iBooks Study Cards: Glossary Terms (vocabulary terms) and definitions All highlights (displayed on one side) All notes and highlights (highlights on one side, notes on the other) These settings can be adjusted. You can remove Glossary Terms or specify only certain colors of highlights to be Study Cards. We'll come back to this feature later. At the top of each card you will see the Section title and page number. For example, here is a highlight of the vocabulary term "religion" as it appears in the running text of Jesus Christ: God's Revelation to the World: How iBooks Study Cards Work To open the Study Cards, you need to open the My Notes section of your book. To do this click on the Notes icon in the top ribbon of the app. Once you are there, you can click on the "Study Cards" button from the My Notes page. The Study Cards are organized by chapter or you can view all of them at once by selecting "All Chapters." Each Study Card resembles a 3x5 note card. On one side is a Glossary Term or highlighted text. On the other side is the definition of the Glossary Term or the note that was attached to the highlighted text. Tap the card to flip it or tap on the circular arrows in the bottom right corner of each card. To see the next card, you can swipe up, down, left, right, or diagonally to advance to the next card. To go back to the previous card, click on the card that appears to be in the back of the stack. Using iPad Study Cards to Complete Review Questions One of the most practical uses of Study Cards is to create answers to the Review Questions. Here is how to do this: 1) First, designate a certain highlight color for all section review questions. 2) We've chosen purple as the color for review questions. So, I'll highlight the question in purple and then answer it in a note. Here is how it will look: 3) Open the Study Cards feature. Click on the gear icon in the upper left corner to open "Study Options." Uncheck Glossary Terms and click on the blue arrow to expand the Highlights and Notes options. Check only the purple color. 4) Since we're only highlighting review questions in purple, Study Cards will only display these questions and answers. Here is how our answers to Chapter 1 Section 1 of Jesus Christ: God's Revelation to the World will look in Study Cards: Side One: Side Two: Using iPad Study Cards to Review Reading While students are reading, have them highlight parts of the text that are important or need to be remembered. Designate a highlight color for general highlighting and note-taking (the default is yellow). Model the kind of highlights that students should make before they do the reading on their own. You don't want them to just highlight everything they read and as teachers we can't expect our students to automatically know the most effective way to highlight and take notes while they read. Here are a few suggestions for highlighting while reading: Highlight the main idea of each section. Highlight important quotes. Highlight sentences where vocabulary words appear. Highlight sentences with bold words. Highlight the first sentence of a numbered or bulleted list. Highlight italicized sentences that were meant to stand out. Once the students have read a section and made the highlights, encourage them to get in the habit of reviewing these highlights using the Study Cards immediately after reading, a few hours later, the next day, and then a week later. Reviewing the highlights will be the most effective thing they do to remember what they read and learned. This makes Study Cards an excellent tool for reading comprehension. There are so many more ways you can teach with the iBooks Textbook Study Cards on the iPad. This tutorial is really just scratching the surface. Do some experimenting with your students and see what works best. Ave Maria Press has eTextbooks available in the Apple iBookstore, as a PDF Site License, and through Direct Digital.

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4 Places to Find the Best Catholic Apps for Your Classroom

With so many schools switching to a 1:1 iPad program in the next couple of years, I am starting to get some common questions. As you might imagine the most common question I get from teachers who have been given new iPads is, "Do you have any suggestions for apps I should download?" Or, "What are the best Catholic iPad apps to use with students?" Rather than pretend to think I could possibly keep track of all of the amazing Catholic apps and prayer apps that are being released for the iPad and the iPhone, I'll defer to the experts. Check out this list of websites to get some ideas for new Catholic apps and prayer apps to use in your classroom. 1. CatholicApps.com The name and the URL says it all! Tom Lelyo, the main author and founder of CatholicApps.com, provides excellent reviews of the latest iPad and iPhone apps as well as the apps in the Android marketplace. Each app gets a rating based on price, performance, usability, design, and catholicity. The authors also share the pro's, con's, and overall impression of the apps. 2. CatholicMom.com Our friend and author, Lisa Hendey, hosts a number of different authors who contribute to the Catholic Tech Talk feature on CatholicMom.com. Writers like Sarah Reinhard and Dorian Speed share their expertise and experience using technology often sharing the newest and best apps for Catholics, particularly those who focus on catechesis and parenting. 3. CatholicTechTalk.com A rising star in the Catholic tech world has been the website CatholicTechTalk.com. Not long ago they began a great resource for reviews and information about Catholic apps. This website has a great group of writers and offers engaging conversation about the Church and technology today. 4. CatholicApps (Wordpress Blog) The Wordpress blog, catholicapps.wordpress.com, has a treasure chest of information about Catholic apps for prayer, politics, saints, confession, and more. Although not as well known as the websites above, there is some extensive information about many different Catholic apps as well as a list of videos to check out about the apps. Classroom Assignment Idea: What are the best Catholic apps? As teachers, we all know our students are much more tech-savvy than we will ever be. Why not take advantage of this? Why not save yourself the time and let them do the searching?! Give the students an assignment to find and review Catholic apps and prayer apps on their iPads. Collect the reviews as a written assignment or have them create a video review using their iPads and post it to a public place like YouTube or your LMS. You could even have them present the apps in class. Or if they are reviewing prayer apps, have them sign up to lead class prayer using the app. Question: What Catholic apps have you found to be useful in the classroom?

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Classrooms Ascending to the Cloud: Cloud Computing in Schools

Everybody's heading to the cloud these days. No, I'm not talking about the Ascension. I'm talking about the new home for most of your school files: the cloud. For teachers, especially those moving to a 1:1 laptop/tablet school environment, this is huge. The cloud will allow us to send and receive files easier, provide immediate feedback on projects, and work on various devices from various places. We won't have to worry about running back into school on the weekends because our work will be in the cloud. What Is the Cloud? Wikipedia defines cloud computing as "the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients." In other words, your files no longer need to live on your computer. You can access them on your desktop computer at home, your laptop at school, your iPad in the living room, or your iPhone while at the store. In fact, your computer doesn't even have to live on your computer. With new products like the Google Chromebook, your computer exists on another server, not on the actual device you hold in your hands. Our ubiquitous access to the Internet makes all this possible. How Can I Use the Cloud in the Classroom? As more and more students create presentations, videos, audio files, and other large files, it becomes increasingly difficult to send and receive via email. Cloud computing services (listed below) allow teachers to share folders with students so they can drop their projects into the folders for review. Teachers can then easily open the files and send back comments and feedback via the cloud for the students to collect. Also, we get many questions about how our PDF Site License eTextbook program (view webinar) works. Schools have used some form of cloud storage to distribute the PDF files to their students. Each school has their own preferences, but many of the options below have been used efficiently without the danger of the files being shared illegally. Where Can I Get Cloud Storage? There are a number of services that provide free and paid cloud storage services. Here are the most popular ones among schools. Dropbox Probably the most popular cloud storage service is Dropbox. They have seen incredible growth in the last year and their ease of use is hard to beat. Free Storage: 2GB (plus bonus storage for referrals)Paid Storage: $100/year for 50GB; $200/year for 100GBAccess: iPhone, iPad, PC, MAC, Linux, Android, Web Skydrive I've heard a few teachers share on Twitter and Google+ that students prefer SkyDrive as their favorite cloud storage platform. Though it lacks the integration on mobile devices that most business professionals enjoy, students seem to like it anyway. Free Storage: 7GBPaid Storage: $50/year for 100GB; $0.50/GBAccess: Windows, Mac, Web Google Drive The newest addition to the cloud storage services is Google Drive, which effectively eliminates Google Docs as a separate product. It is new, but powerful. With so many schools utilizing Google Docs already, Google Drive will become a natural fit in many places. The best part about Google Drive is that it maintains the collaborative editing features of Google Docs with the added ability to store any kind of file and easily access them via your desktop via a synching folder. Free Storage: 5GBPaid Storage: $30/year for 25GB; $60/year for 100GBAccess: Windows, Mac, web iCloud Apple made some changes recently to their cloud services combining them into one iCloud program, which works in the iOS 5 and X on the iPhone and iPad. There is also integration through iTunes on PCs and Macs. Currently the ability to share folders and edit collaboratively is not available. Free Storage: 5GBPaid Storage: 20GB for $40 and 50GB for $100Access: iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mac Amazon Cloud Drive Believe it or not, Amazon has a large business of providing digital storage to businesses. They also want a piece of the cloud computing game. For now it is mostly for purchasing MP3s, but don't rule them out for a future flip into general cloud storage. Free storage: 5 GBPaid Storage: $1/GB per year over 5GBAccess: Amazon MP3 Uploader/Downloader for music; Cloud play for Android What's your favorite cloud computing service? What are your students' favorite?

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Introduction to Using Tumblr in the Classroom

I know what you are thinking: "Tumblr?! We're just figuring out Facebook for the classroom and now we have to figure out another social network? No way!" I know, I know...it is a lot to ask. It is so tough to stay on top of the ever changing and new technologies. But the fact is as more and more adults get on Facebook, less and less teenagers will spend their time on there. Facebook becomes less cool with every mom posting her latest Farmville update. So many teens have headed over to other social networks and blogging platforms like Tumblr. In fact, I was shocked by these numbers from a recent Nielsen report. Based on the amount of time people spend on each social network or blogging platform, Tumblr ranks #3: The Growth of Tumblr: Teens and Tumblr How does Tumblr stack up against the other social media sites for younger ages? The percentage may seem small compared to the other groups, but when you consider 2-17 actually only includes around 13-17 year olds or a span of five years, the percentage is striking. Teens love Tumblr because of the amount of customization they can create. Their Facebook profiles look like everyone else's profile, but their Tumblr pages uniquely suit them. Consider what venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, said (source Socialistic.com): “My daughter came home from college on Thursday night and showed me all of her friend’s Tumblrs. All the cool kids have them at her school now. Had nothing to do with me. I can assure you of that. They use Facebook as a utility. They check Facebook when they wake up and check it before they go to bed. But their profile on Facebook looks just like everyone’s profile. A Tumblr is self expression.” Using Tumblr in the Classroom I am pretty active on social media sites. I love Twitter (@jareddees) and I'm now all about Google+ (+Jared Dees), but I haven't quite figured out Tumblr. I joined the service about a year ago and didn't touch it until preparing for this article. I did some experimentation and research to offer some tips below for using the service for educational purposes. You can see what I have posted recently on my Tumblog: jareddees.tumblr.com. Consider incorporating Tumblr into the classroom in the following ways: Questions and Answers In Tumblr, you can ask a question that anyone can answer. Students can go on and answer your questions to give you a quick idea of how well they learned material or to assess prior knowledge. Reblogging One of the most unique features of Tumbrl is reblogging. Reblogging is a simple way to share great ideas from other people's Tumblr blogs. If you like the content and want to reshare it, just click the reblog button. Using Tags Like Twitter, Google+, and blogs you can add tags to your posts. Create a unique tag (#mrdoeassignment1) and have students post information related to that topic or question. Gather and discuss the various links, quotes, videos, etc. in class and discuss the most meaningful and helpful information. Share Music Students can share music about a certain topic. Have them search for or upload songs related to a topic you are discussing. Other students in the class can experience and comment on the music themselves. You can also have them upload Christian music for meditation or praise and worship during class. Create a Class Blog Although I haven't done this yet, you can create a group blog using Tumblr. Mashable gives a good tutorial on this. I can see multiple classes or sections of a course you teach sharing content between one another. You could turn this into a fun group project as well. Getting Started with Tumblr It is easy and free to sign-up, but it takes a little while to "get it." Get to know the tools by: Sign up Go to your Dashboard. Click "Explore Tumblr" Click on the Education tag and scroll through and start following and reblogging people's content. Click on a tag like #edtech or #teachers to see what people are sharing. Or go for a religious theme like #Catholic. At the very least you are bound to find some new kinds of content and teaching advice from the educational community on Tumblr. Warning: Like any social network, sexual content can be an issue. There are unfortunate posts with inappropriate images on Tumblr that can be found while exploring the various Tumblogs.

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More Thoughts on Bringing Facebook into the Classroom

Do you allow the use of Facebook as part of your classroom experience or not? Some states, such as Missouri, have actually created state-wide regulations to Facebook interactions between students and teachers. Individual schools often create their own guidelines about using the social networking site. In a recent article author Tina Barseghian, discusses the benefits of having class Facebook pages in “50 Reasons to Invite Facebook Into Your Classroom.” By having their own classroom Facebook pages, teachers possess additional opportunities to encourage student learning. Here are some advantages: Students like Facebook and many check it several times a day, so they are more apt to see a reminder from a teacher or become involved in a discussion. Facebook is free in contrast to the social network sites that schools must pay for. Teachers can easily share calendar and events. Facebook can be an easy way for students who miss class to catch up. Parents can follow what is going on in the classroom by looking at the class Facebook page. Students and Parents can also find pertinent information such as permission slips electronically that may have been lost in a locker in their paper form. Students can use the polling feature to poll their friends as part of research. A teacher who requires responses from all students will hear from shy students or those who prefer not to share in class; the rest of the students will benefit as well. Teachers can invite experts to participate in a Facebook conversation much more easily than inviting them to the classroom. Protecting student privacy is an important concern but finding creative ways to do so can yield some excellent teaching opportunities via Facebook. And don't forget, even the Pope is on Facebook. Written by Christine Schmertz Navarro

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