There’s tons of items online and even here at Cory Center about working with and teaching digital natives. The children in our classrooms don’t know what it is like not to be bombarded with information, images, and messages. They interact differently with technology than their teachers.

Rather than fight to get them to be more like you – which will never happen – be creative, see how you can leverage the world that they live in to help pass along the message you have.
One idea, inspired by the RSA Illustrate people is to augment your talk with drawings…here’s a sample that I’ve used:

The week I used this, the student’s were captured. I had their full attention for the length of the video and several moments after – not a peep. I used the moments after to clarify the message and drive home a few points….

And believe it or not, this video only took about 2 hours to create. I’m sure that my next one will go from brain to screen much quicker since there will be less of a learning curve on my end.

Here’s what I used:

1. Story – we’re using Tru, but any story will do
2. iMovie – Windows movie maker may work as well
3. Garage Band – any way to record your voice so that you can import it into your movie software
4. ScreenChomp app on my iPad – I’m seeking another app, but this one will serve me for now. It’s possible to do the entire talk on ScreenChomp, but their server seems to have issues with large videos.

Here’s the process:

1. Record the story. (This is where I used Garage Band)
2. Using screen chomp, illustrate a point. It’s helpful if the illustration is longer than what you are saying.
   * With screen chomp, you have to save the movie to their server, then download the mp4…another app may save the file locally.
3. Import into iMovie.
4. Using the clip adjustment, adjust the speed of the clip to fit the portion of your talk.
5. Repeat 2-4 until you’ve illustrated everything
6. Show the movie

As you can see, with the right tools, this is a simple process that enables you to make a quick video to get a point across or to illustrate an entire talk. Just don’t over use it, the natives will get restless.

What are you doing to facilitate native learning in your classroom?

Understanding digital learners is the most critical knowledge gap in children’s and family ministry today.

Wow. I think I just summed up what I have sensed for the past 10 years in ministry.  That phrase captures the reason why I started blogging four years ago, the purpose of my ongoing research, and the explanation behind my heart beating so quickly when I get up in front of a group of Sunday school teachers and volunteers to talk about today’s kids.

Understanding digital learners is the most critical knowledge gap in children’s and family ministry today. 

If you are involved in any type of children’s ministry (VBS, Sunday school, Awana, club programs, Sunday morning services), you are in the thick of reaching digital learners.  Discovering their characteristics, tendencies, habits and traits (especially as it relates to media) can bolster your efforts.  In most cases, it will send those efforts into a new orbit.

A great place to start is by reading and reviewing the 2010 seminal report from the Kaiser Family Foundation entitled “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds.”

The report highlights the following:

• Young people spend 7:38 each day consuming media
• Due to using multiple devices at once and the explosion of mobile tools, total media consumption averages 10 hours and 45 minutes daily
• Two-thirds of young people own their own cell phone, 76% of young people own a portable music device

Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is a must read for any children’s ministry leader.  Download it, review it, and share your notes with parents and volunteers.

What stands out to you as an action step after reading this research on kids and media?

I’m going to jump on Matt’s bandwagon for a moment and share a tool with you that I have been trying to put to better use.

Many of the parents at my church use Facebook – and, regardless of my personal preference, it’s good to have a presence there as well. But, I don’t have the inclination to spend much time on Facebook and I often forget how useful it can be.

That’s where Hootsuite can help. Hootsuite has several levels of support and function, but the base level is free. The free version can support up to 5 “streams” and if you need more you can move into the free version. If you tweet, your twitter account (no matter how many lists) all count as a single stream. Facebook accounts and Facebook pages/groups are another stream each.

Having one place to go that has everything saves time, makes things searchable…and best of all (for me), I don’t have to try to figure out the whole timeline thing.

But here’s the best part – and why you need this: With Hootsuite, you can schedule messages to your social network. So, on Friday’s when I am polishing the lessons for Sunday and thinking about the coming week, I can schedule messages for my facebook and twitter account and other messages for our children’s ministry facebook page. I use these scheduled messages to give a daily reminder about what we’re doing the coming weekend and how parents can begin the lessons at home. If I need to edit a scheduled message, that’s no problem either.

If you’re looking for a way to be present on facebook or twitter every day and not have to actually be there everyday, take a look at hootsuite.

I ran across this article this week on sounds that our kids have never heard.  Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of a couple of them – well one of them anyway. My how times are a’changing.  But this isn’t a blog about strolling down memory lane – it’s about things are don’t “fit” in our culture anymore.

What are some things in your ministry to kids or youth that you are using that don’t fit anymore?   I know of hundreds of churches (and I’m sure you do, too?) that are still using technology and other methods to disciple children that don’t make sense.  Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s bad!  Now, granted, I’m still a parent who doesn’t think my kids need a cell phone until they start driving – and they don’t have an iPod or personal computer – but are there areas in our discipleship of kids where modern inventions can be used?

I’m not just referring to technology, but about our methods as well.  We seem to have stuck our churches into doing things a certain way and to a specific demographic of people.  Are there things that need to change to better impact the future generations?

We meet for services on Sunday mornings, have Wednesday night programs, and various special events throughout the year.  Some churches have responded with adding Saturday night services (and even some Sunday afternoon services), but I’m thinking even more radical than that.

• What about doing away with weekly services and moving to monthly ones?  Then, on the “off” weeks, having families connect to minister to the needs of their community?
• Or how about ONLY meeting once per week for worship and assigning families into gospel community groups for fellowship and being on mission?

If you’re interested in making creative videos for your children’s ministry large group or storytelling environments, you can go the traditional video camera and editing suite route or create animated movies on the web or iPad.  Developing high quality animated videos is possible!  Here are four of my favorite tools to create animation for children’s ministry:

Some tools to making fun vids

Xtranormal

With Xtranormal you can choose character, voice, background, and camera movements for your video, upload the script and Xtranormal will animate the video and speak the script for you.

Digital Films

Using templates and a character creator, you can make an entire video (including opening title sequence and end credits).

Voki

You choose a digital character, provide the audio for the voice, and Voki animates the character’s mouth for you.  Pretty awesome.

Toontastic

Creating cartoons with Toontastic is as easy as putting on a puppet show – simply press the record button and tell your stories through play!

~ Matt Guevara

In years gone by I heard the argument over and over again, “We cannot do video in our ministry context because the cost is too high.  We do not have the equipment or the budget to create videos.”  And 15 years ago, it was prohibitively expensive to create videos for the average ministry.

Now all you need is a mobile phone.  If you have three, you can create the world’s largest stop-animation film, Gulp.  If you have not heard about Gulp or seen the video, be sure to watch it below.  It is an incredible movie.  But the amazing thing to me is that the entire thing was shot using three phones.

If you wanted to know how they did it, see the Making of Gulp below.

~ Matt Guevara

Children seem to have an insatiable appetite for technology.  Playing XBOX or Nintendo Wii, using an iPod touch or iPad to calm Angry Birds, navigating computer games, or watching movies on mobile devices are activities that tend to be relatively individualistic.  Without a doubt, technology can be used to pull families apart.

But with contests like Toontastic’s Travel Tales ‘Tooning Contest, app makers and technology gurus are repurposing the digital to connect families.  This contest is designed for children to create their own cartoons about their families summer travels using Toontastic for the iPad.  This is a fascinating concept – apps for families to retell stories creatively and digitally.  I recommend looking at the Toontastic Parent Guide for more on the topic of intergenerational play.

I’m curious, what role does technology play in your own family?  How do you think new apps could be utilized by families to retell the grand narrative of Scripture?

~ Matt Guevara

There’s a new “Did You Know” video put together by XPLANE | Dachis Group entitled “Iowa, Did You Know?”  The video highlights global statistics about the web, technology, and learning.  While the video was made for Iowa School Administrators, it highlights the struggle to teach digital learners.  Watch it here:

Some fast facts from the video:

• There are 7 billion people living on the planet and 5 billion mobile phones.
• More people have access to a mobile phone on the planet than a clean toilet
• 2 billion people are on the Internet globally
• If Twitter and Facebook were companies, they would rank 3^rd and 6^th in population worldwide
• 25% of all people under 25 get all or most of their TV online
• 92% of American children have an online presence before age 2
• 87% of all teenagers text, sending an average of 3339 texts per month