Talking Tech @ Redeemer

There are two topics left to be covered for Community 2.0. This Sunday we’ll talk about some online productivity applications (such as Google Docs), and then the Sunday after that we’ll talk about how to bring together all the topics we’ve covered.

A more in-depth post about both of these topics will follow.

This week, we’ll be talking about ways to manage your photos on your hard drive and online. Due to an unusally frenetic week, the in-depth blog post will most likely follow Sunday’s class, but here are a few things to watch in preparation.

First of all, we’ll talk about ways to organize your digital photos on your computer. There are several ways to do this, but we’ll focus on a free program from Google called Picasa. The following video provides an overview of the many features of the program.

Picasa allows you to share photos on the web, but there are several other options for doing this as well. Once again, our friends at Common Craft have produced a short video about what online photo sharing is and why you might want to try it:

During class, we’ll take a look at one online photo sharing site, Flickr. If you’d like to get a head start exploring it, feel free to do so.

Podcasts are audio or video broadcasts (video podcasts are also called “vodcasts”) distributed over the internet. They differ from streaming audio/video sites on the web because the content is delivered via RSS. They differ from television or radio because podcasting is much easier to do. One common misconception is that you need to have an iPod or portable MP3 player to listen to (or watch) podcasts - this is untrue. You can listen on an iPod, but you can also use your regular computer.

To learn a little more about podcasts, let’s once again turn to our friends at Common Craft:

The Common Craft video mentions a type of software known as a podcatcher, but you do not necessarily have to use one in order to subscribe to or listen to a podcast. Since they are delivered via RSS, you can simply subscribe using your RSS reader. If you decide that you really like podcasts or want to use an iPod with them, however, I do recommend using a podcatcher such as iTunes.

A wide variety of people create podcasts, from traditional media outlets to individuals. The content and quality of podcasts can also vary widely.

The way I personally use podcasts is to follow some of my favorite radio shows. For example, I am a big fan of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (the NPR news quiz) but I can’t remember what time it comes on the radio. So I subscribed to its feed through iTunes, and when a new show is released I get the podcast download and listen to it on my computer or iPhone.

Another show I find very interesting is Speaking of Faith, so I subscribe to its podcast. SoF often offers unedited recordings of interviews in addition to the show as it is aired on the radio.

This week, try finding a podcast that interests you. Let me know what you find on your blog? Do you think podcasts will become part of your routine?

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church is underway in Anaheim, CA, and I’ve been really impressed with the church’s use of many of the tools we’ve been exploring during Community 2.0.

Not sure what General Convention is? Check out this introduction by Gregory Staub.

There is a media hub for General Convention. Our diocese has also set up a blog for our deputies to keep us updated on the happenings.

I’m glad we’ve talked about Twitter and online video earlier than I had originally planned, because the media hub page contains both online video (live and on-demand) as well as selected Twitter feeds.

Of course, online discussion of GC is taking place in places outside of the media hub. I’ve been following some of the happenings through Twitter, since I follow several people who are there, and also by using a Twitter search for #ecgc (the hashtag for Episcopal Church General Convention).

Seeing all this new media coverage is really exciting, but it also makes me wonder if less geeky/techie people are being left behind. Those of you who are reading this blog and/or participating in our Community 2.0 program are hopefully learning enough to get your feet wet, but we are a small group. I hope more people become interested in learning about all this “techie stuff” and that more churches recognize the need for something like our Tech Talks or Community 2.0. What do you think?

Finally - if you haven’t been participating in Community 2.0 or attending our Tech Talks, feel free to join in anytime. You’re also welcome to comment on this blog even if you don’t want to (or can’t) participate in the whole program - this whole blog is one big experiment!

First, a bit of administrivia:

• Next Sunday is July 5th. Do you want to have class as usual, or take the holiday weekend off? It does not matter to me either way.
• We have not yet covered Lesson #3 in class, so don’t worry if you are feeling behind.

In my last post, I talked a bit about the way cell phone videos of events in Iran were being shared on the internet. In this post, I’ll talk a bit about one major video sharing site, YouTube, focusing on some of the great material related to the Episcopal Church that can be found there.

YouTube, which was purchased by Google in 2006, is a video-sharing site that allows people to upload user-created content so people can view it online. YouTube has a feature that lets you embed videos on outside websites. This is how I’ve put the Common Craft videos on this blog, for example. To put a video in your blog, just copy the embed code that appears at the end of the video and paste it into your blog.

There are many types of videos on YouTube, from funny animal videos to videoblogs to music videos. I’d like to highlight just a few YouTube videos related to the Episcopal Church, as well as some other online video sources being used by the church.

Father Matthew Moretz is an Episcopal priest in Rye, NY, and the creator of Father Matthew Presents. His short videos cover various aspects of the church, including the sacraments. His most recent video, shown below, is about lectio divina, or divine reading:

Another YouTube channel I’ve recently discovered is that of EthanJ. I believe he is a seminarian in Chicago. I find his videos very insightful. He also has a video about lectio divina, which comes at it from a different angle from Father Matthew:

This video shows an example of ministry in action - the Food Pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco:

And for a little humor, check out the BCP Boys with “Straight out of Compline”:

If your tastes don’t run to rap, perhaps you would prefer “The Prayer Book is a Girl’s Best Friend”?

The Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast also has a YouTube channel, where you can check out the Good Shepherd Steppers:

The I am Episcopalian site collects online videos of people explaining why they have chosen the Episcopal Church. You can also add your voice by uploading your own video.

The Presiding Bishop also uses online videos on her website to communicate.

I encourage you to play around with YouTube to see what is available. You may be surprised at what you find!

During Sunday’s class, instead of discussing social bookmarking and tagging, we ended up discussing social media and the election in Iran. Much of the information about the situation in Iran is reaching us via Twitter “tweets,” Facebook postings, and YouTube videos, due to the Iranian government’s crackdown on traditional forms of media.

So what is Twitter? We’ll turn once again to Common Craft to explain:

Another feature of Twitter is the ability to search for particular topics:

As I write this, Iran and #IranElection are trending topics on Twitter, and have been for several days.

Twitter is not the only Web 2.0 service being used to disseminate information about these events. Another major outlet is the video-sharing site, YouTube. Many Iranians have been recording cell phone videos of protests and posting them to the internet. One site following these videos is CitizenTube.

Many of the videos from Iran are graphic and disturbing. The death of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was captured on two different cell phone videos. You can read about the events in this story from the New York Times.

Later on in Community 2.0 we will discuss these technologies further, but I wanted to post these resources now because of their timeliness.

In Lesson #1 we learned about blogs. Hopefully, all of you were successful at setting up a blog, making a test post and comment, and finding a few new blogs to read. But isn’t it a pain to have to keep checking those blogs to see if there have been updates? In this lesson, we’ll learn about RSS and how it can make keeping up with blogs (and other things) much easier.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This video from Common Craft explains what RSS is and why it’s useful:

To use RSS, you will need an RSS reader. There are many options for this, but personally I like using a web-based reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines. If you already set up your Blogger account, you have a Google account and can use that for Google Reader.

This video from Google Reader explains how to get started with Google Reader, and how to subscribe to blogs and other RSS feeds:

Google provides several other help videos as well.

Discovery Exercises

#1 Set up your RSS reader using Google Reader, Bloglines, or any other reader you may be familiar with.

#2 Try to subscribe to some feeds. Hint: Subscribing to this blog will let you see whenever something new is posted for Community 2.0.

#3 Post a reflection on your blog about your experience with RSS. How did setting up your reader go? Were you able to subscribe to feeds? Did you discover anything new and exciting, or was it frustrating?

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment here or drop me an email. We will also be discussing this lesson on Sunday, June 14th, at 9:15 am during the weekly Tech Talk.

Note: I decided to start with one lesson per week for the first few weeks of the course, since blogs and RSS are major components of this project. I will shift to posting two lessons per week in upcoming weeks.

The first topic for Community 2.0 is blogs. Recently, you have probably heard Father Ray talk about the blogs we have added to Redeemer’s homepage. You may have heard we plan to expand our use of blogs, and that soon various committees, groups, and ministries may also have blogs. But you may be wondering, “What’s a blog and why would I want one?” This lesson will attempt to answer those questions.

For a great overview of what a blog is, watch this short video produced by Common Craft:

Chances are, you have already encountered blogs. Many news sites have incorporated blogs into their websites. The new web page for the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast also uses blogs. And, of course, you are reading this blog.

For this course, we’ll be using our blogs to keep track of our progress as we explore and learn about Web 2.0. I’ll be posting on this blog, but I hope you will also create your own blogs, post, and comment on the blogs of others in this course.

Discovery Exercises:

#1: Set up your own blog.

I recommend you use Blogger, a popular free blog hosting service, if you are not already familiar with another blogging service (such as Wordpress). Blogger is owned by Google, and we will be using other Google services later in the course.

Blogger has a tour that will guide you through the process of setting up your account.

Please note - if you don’t want to use your real name on your blog, a pen name is fine. You can also make your blog viewable only to people you invite to read it, or even keep it private. The choice is yours. You can always delete your blog later.

#2: Write a test post or two on your blog.

#3: Leave a comment on this post with the address of your blog, if you would like to share that with me and others participating in Community 2.0

Bonus Activities:

Try finding some blogs to read. Good places to search for blogs are Technorati and Google Blog Search.

Some faith-related blogs that I like to read are:

• Ray+’s blog
• The Daily Episcopalian
• The Speaking of Faith Blog - companion to the public radio show

Try customizing your blog’s layout and theme. Hint: use the Layout tab on Blogger.

Questions? Comments? Let me know. You can comment here, or email me directly at  ekwilson at gmail.com.

Happy exploring!

Welcome to the official kickoff of the Community 2.0 learning experience. I covered a few questions about the progam in the last blog post, but I will give you some more information in this introduction.

About the Course

The plan for this course is to deliver new lessons twice a week, via this blog. To participate in the course, follow along with the discovery exercises. The idea is that we will learn Web 2.0 tools by using Web 2.0 tools, and begin a discussion of how we can use these tools to expand our community and ministries at Redeemer (or wherever you may be). You may participate in this course entirely online, but if you prefer to supplement your instruction in person at Redeemer, the topics of the Tech Talks held between the Sunday services will parallel the online lessons. (If you are not able to attend the Tech Talks but would like to discuss the course face-to-face, please let me know and if possible we will find an alternate time to meet.)

Although the lessons will be presented twice a week, you may follow along at your own pace. I do ask that everyone please complete the first two lessons (on blogs and RSS) because those technologies will recur in later lessons. How much of each discovery exercise you do is entirely up to you, and if you feel more comfortable following along anonymously or using a synonym that is certainly fine. This course will not be graded! Questions are welcome - whether you are a complete newbie or you try to keep up on trends, I hope you will participate. Please respect the questions of all participants, and offer your own expertise and experiences as we move along.

Since this is a church-sponsored course, I will attempt to present each week an example of how church communities and the Episcopal Church are using the various technologies. However, I encourage you to explore the use of these technologies for your own interests as well. Chances are, whatever you’re into, there are other people on the internet who are also into it.

A note about this blog: comments are moderated, so when you submit a comment there will be a delay before it appears publicly. You do need to enter your email address to leave a comment, but it will not appear on the page - only I will see that. If you enter a web address, that will appear publicly. (To leave a comment, click on the link at the bottom of the post. It may say No Comments - that just means no one has yet commented.)

About Your Guide

My name is Ellen Wilson and I am a member of the vestry at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. I am also an instruction and technology librarian at the University of South Alabama. I have been fascinated with computers and technology since I was a child. I created my first website in 1994 and have continued to experiment with many developments since, for both personal and professional use.

I hope that by facilitating the course, I can help you explore and become comfortable with aspects of the web and technology that you have not previously encounterd. You may decide that you still don’t like blogs, RSS, Facebook, or Twitter, and that’s fine. You may find that you like one technology but not another, or you may become a techie like Father Ray. The journey is yours and I hope it will be enjoyable.