Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Well, this is a bummer. The Ning Terms of Service agreement explicitly prohibits anyone from creating any Ning social networking sites “targeted at children under the age of 13.” I was aware of COPPA and knew I’d have to get parent permission for students to participate in an online community I was creating for a class I’m teaching this fall, but didn’t realize I was legally prohibited from creating a Ning site for 10-11 year olds I’ll be teaching this year. Here’s the background on how I learned about this. If you’re an elementary or middle school educator in the United States using or contemplating the use of a Ning website for students under age 13, this is important information to know and share.

I am co-teaching 5th grade Sunday school this year at our church again, and for the second year we are using Group Publishing’s Grapple curriculum for preteens. Last year was the first year for Grapple, and overall our experiences with Grapple were very positive. I loved the fact that all the lesson plans and materials were available electronically in PDF and image formats from the Grapple website, and the idea of involving students in a moderated learning community was good. I did not like many of the limitations of the online learning community provided by Group, however. The website did not permit “online social networking” in the way I expected: It had text-based discussion forums that looked like something that was cutting edge in 1994, and did not permit users to have “profile pages” of any kind with comment walls, custom icons, etc. Halfway through the year Group added a feature where teachers could manage individual logins for students, rather than having everyone use different userids but the same password, and that was a step forward. I recognize that Group was just getting started with digital curriculum like this, but I wasn’t pleased with the limited functionality of the accompanying online learning community.

We are using Grapple curriculum again, but I had hoped to create a private Ning social network for students, parents, teachers and church youth leaders to use this year. A Ning would give us a LOT more flexibility and permit our kids to actually practice social networking in a safe and moderated environment. With a private, customized learning community we could share lesson plans, have discussion forums, and engage in more extensive and “real” social networking than we could with the provided MyGrapple website.

This afternoon I’ve been working on getting things organized for our teaching team as well as parents, and continued working on a Ning social network for our class. Bear in mind that as 5th graders, students in our class are 10-11 year olds. When I asked my son (who is in the class this year) to sign up, he was not able to because he was “not eligible.” Oops! What could this mean? My first thought was COPPA, and I was right. According to the Ning Terms of Service agreement applicable to ALL Ning sites, users:

…agree not to knowingly collect any information from, or develop any Networks that are targeted at, children under the age of 13.

Well, it’s a good thing I haven’t devoted TOO many hours so far to creating a private Ning site for our class…..

I see two different options at this point. The first and easiest option would be to simply ditch the idea of creating and maintaining a customized learning community for our class and just go with what has been provided by Group Publishing with Grapple. I really don’t want to do that, but because of time factors that option looks somewhat appealing.

My second option would be to register an add-on domain for one of the websites I already have with Siteground for $40 (for the entire year) and create a custom learning community for our class using Drupal. While Ning IS very easy to setup and use, I was going to end up paying $20 per month throughout the year to remove advertisements from the site. So, from a cost standpoint, creating a new website with a custom domain as a Siteground add-on would be a cheaper option. It wouldn’t be as easy as Ning, but because of the StoryChasers project I’m already getting a little familiar with Drupal and managing a learning community with it.

I’m not sure what I am going to do. What I’m sure I will NOT do is create a Ning website targeted at 10-11 year olds.
Another related point of worthwhile learning from my work this afternoon on this curriculum involves free, moderated email accounts for students. If we were going to use Ning (which now we are NOT) students would have had to sign up with their own email account. My top two recommendations for parents were going to be either:

• Using a free, no-setup-required Gmail alias as an email account as described by Sue Waters in this post for EduBlogs
• Setup and use a free, moderated email account with ePals

I have had an ePals account for years but had never setup a monitored/moderated email account for a student before. Today I did for our three kids, although I’m sure it will be awhile before our almost five year old wants to use hers. (She’s writing sentences now, so it might not be long!) To create one or more moderated email accounts, simply click CREATE MONITORED ACCOUNTS in your ePals mail window:

By default, created accounts have “level 1″ monitoring:

According to the ePals website, “profanity filters” have four different levels:

Profanity Filters

Profanity filters are organized from Level 1 to Level 4, with Level 1 providing the most stringent filtering. In all cases, you can choose whether or not to preview messages containing attachments.

Level 1 All messages must be approved by the monitor, whether they contain profanity or not.
Level 2 Messages containing profanity must be approved by the monitor, but unflagged messages will reach their recipients automatically. The monitor will also receive a copy of every unflagged message.
Level 3 Messages containing profanity must be approved by the monitor, but unflagged messages will reach their recipients automatically. The monitor will not see unflagged messages.
Level 4 All profanity filters are off.

I set the monitoring levels for my 8 and 10 year old kids to level 3, but kept the “attachment” setting still set to “preview.” ePals email looks like a GREAT option for them to use for personal email. At one time ePals did not permit parents to register for student email accounts, and charged fees for their SchoolMail service. Now (as it has been for some time) ePals SchoolMail is 100% free and available for anyone worldwide to use. Parent permission is required of course, under COPPA for U.S. students to use ePals email. ePals is providing an extremely valuable and important service to teachers and parents alike by providing this FREE monitored email service. I look forward to learning more about ePals SchoolMail in the weeks ahead as my own kids use it.

Sadly, my oldest won’t be using his in conjunction with a Ning social network for Sunday school.

Technorati Tags:
ning, socialnetworking, coppa, legal, law, christian, sundayschool, church, learningcommunity, networking, social, drupal, education

I had a chance today to help build a Habitat for Humanity house in my city, Edmond, Oklahoma, for one of the families in our community. With temperatures in the afternoon reaching over 100 degrees, this was certainly an appreciation moment for my “normal” work routine in an air conditioned building!

I posted about sixty photos I snapped with my iPhone of our work progress today to Flickr, and also took some time this evening to write a short script for a digital story about this experience. I then recorded that script as comments to ten images in a new VoiceThread digital story:

I continue to be interested in web-based video editing options which may not provide the interactive voice commenting functionality of VoiceThread, but can permit a continuous video of images and audio to be created similar to the type of videos programs like PhotoStory3, Windows MovieMaker and iMovie permit people to make. A few weeks ago I had my first experience creating a video with JumpCut. Alan Levine recommended that I also try JayCut, so this evening I slightly modified the script I used for the VoiceThread digital story and created my first video with Jaycut on this same topic:

One of the things I really like about published JayCut videos is the option users are provided to download a WMV version:

This is great, since for our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices project we want people to upload their video content onto our server, rather than just embed their videos from other sites. If participants create videos with JayCut, they could download their video as a single WMV file and then upload that file to our media server. This would not only help us archive and curate these videos, but also help address content filtering issues for schools which block JayCut.

JayCut took awhile longer for me to figure out compared to JumpCut, but I liked the interface (once I got used to it) and the resulting video format seems good too. (This was definitely a case of “navigational” instead of “procedural” learning. I didn’t read any instructions to create this video!) Unlike JumpCut you can’t add Ken Burns effects with JayCut, and the JayCut Flash interface for adding photos and audio tracks took some getting used to. My audio clip for this project was 3 minutes long, but initially it just imported in a 30 second clip– I had to drag the end of it out to play fully. (JumpCut seems oriented towards people using short audio clips rather than longer ones, but longer ones still CAN be used.)

I used Audacity to record my audio file and export it as a MP3, and then imported both my photos (which I had to upload to the site) and my mp3 narration into my JayCut movie. JumpCut is integrated with Flickr while JayCut is not, but this wasn’t a huge problem. I organized all my uploaded photos, my audio narration mp3 file, and my final produced video in an “album” on my JayCut account. I kept looking for an “edit” menu to change my JayCut movie and finally figured out the website’s button for “edit” is labled “remix.”

All in all, I’m very impressed with both JayCut and JumpCut. Since they are web-based video editing environments, it would be VERY important in our COV workshops to have adequate bandwidth for all participants to simultaneously be using the site. It would be nice, however, to have all participants using the same platform and not different ones, as we do now with PhotoStory3 and iMovie. Audacity is the same on all platforms (Windows, Macintosh and Linux) so a website for putting together finished digital stories might be great for our COV project as well as StoryChasers.

Technorati Tags:
video, jaycut, voicethread, jumpcut, web, edit, digitalstorytelling, digital, story, habitat, humanity, house, build, construction

In response to Kent Chesnut’s request for more information about how I’m integrating technology in lessons with our 5th grade Sunday School students at church this year, I recorded an hour-long podcast in the car and posted it to Eyes Right this evening.

A month ago I wrote about Alana Warfel and her Christian rock band “Hollow” in the blog post “Surprise, your preschool teacher is a rock star!” In that post I mentioned her band was looking forward to the GMA Music in the Rockies conference both for the learning experiences it would offer them as a musical band and the opportunity it could afford to “be noticed” (remembering we live in an emerging “attention economy”) and possibly get picked up by a publishing company / record label.

Well, according to Alana, the conference was GREAT! Her band, Hollow, won in the category “Artist Band 2007 Grand Prize Winner” and she personally won runner-up recognition in the category “Pop-Rock/Alternative Song” for “Remedy!” They won some recording time as a result of the conference, and are now working with a publisher to market them to several record labels formally. How cool is that?

I spoke to Alana about doing an audio interview for a podcast with her and other members of the band in upcoming weeks to discuss what they’ve learned in this process of trying to “break in” to the music industry. I think their story would be of interest to many who find music to not only be enjoyable to consume, but also to CREATE and share with others on a global scale.

Alana reports that her band’s MySpace site was very important in contributing to their success at the GMA conference. One of their judges had previously heard some of their music and contacted the band through their MySpace page. They are now looking into options for also creating a website under their own domain name.

Social networking continues to empower creative artists wanting to share their voices and ideas with a global audience, and Alana’s band provides proof of this right here in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Technorati Tags:
hollow, myspace, music, bands, gma, gospelmusic

I had some very interesting conversations with folks on the SuperShuttle ride from the airport to the hotel this afternoon/evening in Anaheim. The gentleman sitting next to me was a pastor from Louisiana, originally from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. When I asked him where in Vietnam he was from, he actually identified his city as Saigon, I guess figuring I’d have more familiarity with its pre-1975 name. He was in Anaheim for several days for a ministry conference.

Besides the pastor and his wife, everyone else in our shuttle van was going to InfoComm or EduComm. One gentleman who answered a lot of questions works for EventHD magazine. “Event videography” covers a broad range of live event videography, including weddings, church services, conference presentations, and other things. The EventHD magazine guy described the demographic as “videographers who can’t say ‘cut’ when they are shooting.” I thought that was rather clever.

We discussed HD video and HD video formats, and I learned that the Blu-ray HD standard is currently winning over HD DVD in large part because it has more studio support. There are many more movies available in Blu-ray format at present. BlockBuster video’s announcement today that it will be favoring Blu-ray over HD DVD in most stores is a continuation of this winning trend for Blu-ray. Apparently some manufacturers, like Sony, are on the verge of releasing home Blu-ray HD DVD players in the $400 price range. I’m sure there will be lots of vendors at InfoComm willing to speak to this entire issue of HD video and HD formats. Like the DVD format, until a critical mass of consumers started owning players and using the format, prices of blank media disks remained high. I was AMAZED to learn (maybe I had heard this before, but if so I forgot) that a Blu-ray DVD disk can hold 50 gigabytes of data. Oh my goodness… that is just amazing. With high definition video, you need the space. The EventHD magazine guy said that current high-end HD video cameras shoot an image that has 4000 by 4000 pixels of resolution PER FRAME. That’s right, PER FRAME. Standard video is just under 30 frames per second (29.97 fps I think.) HD video resolution is just amazing.

He also said that the current 50 GB Blu-ray data disks will likely be the largest data disks we’ll ever see, because next-gen storage devices are going all solid-state. That means flash memory based. Someone else in our van said they read about a compact flash card that had been demoed holding over 160 GB of data. This sure makes me wish the iPhone had a memory card slot! (As far as I know, it doesn’t in this first iteration.)

I asked what some of the most technology-intensive churches are doing currently with video and the web, and the EventHD guy told me about Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, led by Pastor Joel Olsteen. I am familiar with Mosaic Church here in the LA area, and regularly listen to their podcast sermons. I heard their pastor, Erwin McManus, speak at a Promisekeepers conference several years ago. It is amazing to see how digital storytelling, technology convergence, and the desire to communicate important messages are having transformational effects on multiple contexts in our society.

Since I’m often thinking about school change and how digital technologies should fit into our schools in the 21st century, I couldn’t resist asking the EventHD guy in our shuttle van what he thought schools and teachers should be doing to help prepare students for the future. He said “every high school should be teaching videography to students.” He related that satellite radio services are not far off from delivering satellite TELEVISION services. He said the future world (which we are very close to) will be 10,000+ channels of video, with every other high school kid running his/her own television channel out of their basement. He said what kids will watch in the future are these television channels created by their peers. YouTube is just a glimpse of what is coming. Kids need to be prepared to have the skills they’ll need to thrive in this 10,000+ channel future. He also pointed out kids will not just be watching these TV shows in their home living rooms, they’ll be watching them on their portable screens wherever they are: in the car, on their cell phone, wherever.

Wow. That’s a lot to think about. And those were just the conversations in the shuttle ride to the hotel. I think EduComm and InfoComm is going to be quite an experience!

Technorati Tags: educomm, educomm07, infocomm, infocomm07

I’ve posted a new podcast for “Digital Dialog” that I created this past week with my wife, Shelly. Our conversation focuses on chapter 1 of the 2007 book “Children’s Ministry in the 21st Century” by Craig Jutila, Jim Wideman, and Pat Verbal. Link to our “Digital Dialog” Ning social network on digitaldialog.ning.com.

I had previously read about the need and importance of “social inoculation” in the book “Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World: Seven Building Blocks for Developing Capable Young People” by H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen. In this chapter, however, contributing author Rick Chromey discusses the importance of helping young people not only develop skills that allow them to be innoculated against “cultural pollutants” and “cultural sewage” which unfortunately remain part of our cultural landscape, but go further via incarnational living within culture.

Technorati Tags: childrensministry, christianity, ministry

We had the third session of a new parenting class my wife and I are teaching on Wednesday nights today, and things went really well. I just posted the recorded session as a podcast (it’s an hour long) and updated the wiki links for the resources we discussed.

I listened to Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes and Alice Barr’s great Seedlings podcast from Feb 24th today as I drove down to southern Oklahoma, and was enthused to hear them focusing on a similar project in Maine to get parents more engaged and educated about the digital activities of their kids. Just like Shelly and I, they are not only wanting to get real with parents when it comes to the dangers of being online and the need for Internet safety education, but also focus on the OPPORTUNITIES available for powerful and constructive collaboration and learning. I REALLY enjoyed listening to their podcast today, and highly commend it to you. Bit by Bit / Seedlings is one of my favorite podcasts that I regularly listen to and learn from. Their parent education Internet safety / “get connected” wiki site is http://wocsdinternetsafety4parents.wikispaces.com Our wiki site for “Digital Dialog” is http://digitaldialog.wikispaces.com. If you’re wondering, the answer is YES: I did get email permission from the great folks at Club Penguin to use their parent/child penguin logo for this educational project!
The core themes of “Digital Dialog” are providing:

…parents, educators, and other care-givers with resources, ideas and links related to encouraging regular communication between younger and older learners about safe, appropriate, and fun uses of digital technologies.

I want to invite Bob, Cheryl, Alice and anyone else interested in these themes to join a new “Ning” digital social network I created this past week for “Digital Dialog,” located at http://digitaldialog.ning.com. If you’re not familiar with Ning, it’s a very robust and flexible (yet simple) environment to create and share ideas and resources. The first Ning I joined was the Library 2.0 Ning created by Bill Drew. The potential of social networking sites like these to grow by leaps and bounds, empowering idea sharing and collaboration is just amazing.

Please join our conversations!

I happen to live in Oklahoma, and you probably live somewhere else, but those accidents of geography don’t have to stand in the way of our collaboration and learning together. No one has all the answers when it comes to Internet safety or the appropriate uses of the Internet at both home and school, but I know many people have great ideas. This project and this social networking site is all about sharing ideas. I think the best thing we can do with parents as well as teachers when it comes to learning is helping plug them in to online social communities where they can learn from and even teach others.

If you know of other similar projects around the U.S. or in other parts of the world, please let me know by commenting here. We need to promote more CONVERSATIONS with parents about the Internet, and as I think Cheryl said in the Feb 24th Seedlings podcast, parents have to be armed with more knowledge than just the idea that kids have to stay away from predators online. Certainly that is a critical need, but the conversation must be broadened to include SO MUCH MORE. I’m not going to go off on a political tangent here, but this reminds me of another podcast I listened to today from Tony Campolo (recorded in September 2006 from a British radio show) in which he discussed the problems with the U.S. Republican party’s fixation on two primary issues: abortion and homosexuality.

In the context of Internet use and youth, I think people in some cases are similarly fixating ONLY on the issue of Internet safety to the detriment of many other issues that need to be discussed. We need to talk about great sources of digital curriculum for teachers, parents and kids, and great starting points for Internet research like Yahoo for Kids and Nettrekker. We need to talk about the excitement and fun of Club Penguin and other gaming/social networking sites like Second Life, as well as the potential of safe blogging/DSN sites like Imbee, Think.com and YackPack to be used to foster student literacy development. At the same time, we need to recognize the need for BALANCE and LIMITS on different parts of our lives, including the time we spend online. (This goes for adults as well as youth, and I feel a bit indicted writing this as I am at 11:45 pm.)

To summarize, what I’m trying to express is that we’ve barely begun to have the conversations we need to have with all the parents and other caregivers in our communities about the dangers as well as the opportunities which the Internet affords. We shouldn’t be naive, however, and CONTENT FILTERING is really needed at home as it is at school. I wrote a new article this week for “Digital Dialog” which I titled, “Content filtering for home, school and church.” This is available as both a downloadable PDF file (3 pages) and a blog post on the Digital Dialog Ning network on which you can comment.

I’m quite enthused about the possibilities these tools provide us as concerned parents and educators. Our conversations are only beginning!

Technorati Tags: bullying, internetsafety, parenting, clubpenguin, relationships, security, web2.0, youtube

I’ve created two new wiki resources for conference presentations and workshops I’ll be teaching in the weeks ahead. These are just draft versions, so if you have any links or related resources to suggest I’d love to hear about them! Please leave them as comments here.

The first is a presentation I’ll share at the MACE conference in my hometown: Manhattan, Kansas, on March 1-2, 2007. The session is “Using Google Tools for Educational Research and Collaboration.” My session description is:

Google for Educators (http://www.google.com/educators) and Google Labs (http://labs.google.com) include a wealth of powerful, free tools for learners. These permit streamlined Internet research, connecting ideas, hyperlinks and data with geographic places on earth, collaboratively authoring documents with options to share the results with others, creating web pages with a web browser, and more. In this session we’ll explore Google Notebook, Google Reader, Google Earth, Google News Alerts, Google SMS, and more!

The second is a 3 part evening workshop I am going to teach collaboratively with my wife at our church on Wednesday evenings (starting Feb 28th) titled “Digital Dialog.” I created a wiki site (http://digitaldialog.wikispaces.com) for the class, as well as an Imbee group (which still needs Imbee admin approval before it is public.) On the wiki site we posted the following purpose:

The goal of this website is to provide parents and other care-givers with resources, ideas and links related to encouraging regular communication between younger and older learners about safe, appropriate, and fun uses of digital technologies! This website has started as a result of a 3-part class for parents offered on Wednesday nights in Spring 2007 at First Presbyterian Church, Edmond, Oklahoma.

I’m looking forward to further developing resources for both these sites. If the “Digital Dialog” site is of interest and you want to directly contribute resources to the wiki site, feel free to join that site (after joining WikiSpaces if you are not already a member) and I’ll approve you to contribute the next time I return to the site.

Technorati Tags: clubpenguin, imbee

A historic first: My wife Shelly participated in her first-ever podcast this evening, which I have published on Eyes Right as “Podcast05: Reflections on our 40 Day Evening Technology Use Fast and Digital Discipline.”

Technorati Tags: christianity, marriage, fasting, relationships

WARNING: SOME MILD PLOT SPOILERS ARE INCLUDED IN THIS POST.

Last night I finished reading “Eldest” by Christopher Paolini, the second book in his “Inheritance” trilogy that follows the book “Eragon “ which was released as a major motion picture last month. These are a few reflections on the book and the book series to date, some of which I consider “gifts” from the author to both me as well as my son.

First of all, I’ll observe that my ability to read two rather lengthy novels in the past two months is a relatively “novel” (pun intended) experience for me enabled by the 40 day evening technology use fast I participated in last November and December with my wife. (I’m hoping to do a joint podcast interview with her later today about the experience.) There is so much digital information now accessible via the Internet that I think a person (like myself) can quite easily spend almost every waking free moment consuming as well as producing digital content. While this can be engaging and often a worthwhile way to spend free time, it also can be overwhelming and “consuming” to a negative degree. So, it has been wonderful to have an external reason / push to turn off my technology in the evenings after the kids are in bed and do non-digital things: like visit with my wife and read novels!

The best thing about the Inheritance book series has to do with my 9 year old son and the “home run book” which the novel Eragon has become for him. (I wrote about this a bit on Christmas Eve.) Dr. Stephen Krashen of USC spoke at the Oklahoma state librarian’s conference (Encylomedia) this past fall. Among the outstanding nuggets of research findings and recommendations for educators he shared was the concept of “the home run book.” Home run books vary by person, because people’s interests and abilities when it comes to reading also vary greatly. A “home run book” is one which gets a person (usually a young person but not always) to read with intrinsic motivation for extended periods of time. It is the book which in many cases, makes a love for reading manifest itself in someone’s life for the first time.

The book Eragon has been the home run book for Alexander. It is so wonderful to catch him reading early in the mornings, with his light on in his room over his bed. He is currently on page 539 of 754, and has frequently mentioned to his mother and I over the past few weeks how many pages he’d read that day. He hasn’t been able to believe it himself! Sometimes I think parents give too much attention to school-related things that do not matter much in the long run. Sometimes an extreme focus on these things can even have negative effects. Grades may be an example. Certainly we want all our children to work hard and do their best in school and other endeavors, but I don’t want to focus so much attention and place so much emphasis on formal school grades that they grow to believe their value as people is derived from these types of external evaluations. Finding and loving your first “home run book” really is a BIG DEAL. Far more important than any spelling test, end of unit exam or yes– even the end of year PASS exams given to Oklahoma K-12 students– the experience of finding and reading a home run book is something I think my son is likely to remember his entire life. So, I say a big THANK YOU to Chirstopher Paolini for writing Eragon and giving this literary gift to my son. It’s a gift I can’t put a price on.

In my pre-Christmas post about the book Eragon I reflected a bit about the differences I saw between the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman, and Christopher Paolini. Shortly after posting those thoughts, Tom Hoffman correctly observed that the distance between the metaphysical and spiritual viewpoints of Pullman and other authors like Tolkien and Lewis is actually enormous. (I really understated this in my Dec 24th post.) The link he provided (which I don’t have now and can’t access) included quotations from Pullman revealing the distain with which he regarded both Tolkien and Lewis’ worldviews and fantasy worlds. I have enjoyed reading all of these books, but I stick by my earlier observations (here, here, and elsewhere) that the Christian theology of both Tolkien and Lewis really makes a difference in providing a metaphysical backdrop for their stories with which I relate and resonate.

In the case of Christopher Paolini, I do acknowledge that his books are remarkable works of complexity, imagination and fun given his relatively young age compared to these other authors. I hadn’t sensed any sort of religious or metaphysical underpinning to his novels and fantasy world at all until I read the chapter “Visions Far and Near” in Eldest, which starts on page 538 of the hardcover edition. In that chapter, Eragon and his elven mentor Oromis have a conversation which I speculate may reveal Paolini’s own views of religion and metaphysics. It certainly seems to unmask the underlying spiritual reality of Paolini’s Alagaesia. The summary view is this: All religions and faiths are fictions and false beliefs. Objective science, which only regards that as real which can be directly experienced and replicated, reveals truth. There is no authority outside of objective science. In response to Eragon’s question and assertion about the existence of God (a “prime mover”) Oromis responds on page 542:

I would not necessarily agree with you. But be as that may, I cannot prove that gods to not exist. Nor can I prove that the world and everything in it was not created by an entity or entities in the distant past. But I can tell you that in the millennia we elves have studied nature, we have never witnessed an instance where the rules that govern the world have been broken. That is, we have never seen a miracle. Many events have defied our ability to explain, but we are convinced that we failed because we are still woefully ignorant about the universe and not because a deity altered the workings of nature.

Eragon responds by contending that “a god wouldn’t have to alter nature to accomplish his will… He could do it within the system that already exists… He could use magic to affect events.” Oromis responds with a statement that effectively means: Because evil exists in the world, a benevolent Creator cannot:

Very true. But ask yourself this, Eragon: If gods exist, have they been good custodians of Alagaesia? Death, sickness, poverty, tyranny, and countless other miseries stalk the land. If this is the handiwork of divine beings, then they are to be rebelled against and overthrown, not given obeisance, obedience, and reverence.

This view actually seems much closer to that of Phillip Pullman in “His Dark Materials Trilogy,” where the main character (Lyra Belacqua) eventually leads a rebellion against the oppressive “church” and religious culture of the novels’ world.

Paolini’s metaphysical backdrop for Inheritance does NOT have the confrontational and angry tone of Pullman, but is also decidedly not Christian or even theistic, as the fantasy worlds of Tolkien and Lewis certainly were/are. I won’t reflect longer on these ideas of spiritual and metaphysical assumptions, but I did find these differences interesting and worth reflecting on as I read “Eldest.”

The last comment I have regarding “Eldest” involves an interesting scene that takes place in the chapter “Witch’s Brew,” which begins on page 612. The leader of the Varden, Nasuada (a very strong female character and leader, btw, which is missing from the works of Tolkien and Lewis) has decided to let the Urgals fight with them against the army of Galbatorix. Using magical abilities he learned from Oromis (a mentor with many parallels to Yoda from Star Wars) Eragon is able to enter the “consciousness” of the Urgal leader and discovers that he is not the pure monster he has grown up to believe. As a race, the Urgals have fought for their survival but have also been used and manipulated by other races. Eragon essentially has a transcendental moment similar to Huck Finn, when he was rafting down the river with the slave Jim.

This is a major point of character development both for Huck and for Eragon, because they are able to reject the racist views they previously had accepted as articles of faith and regard others (humans in the case of Jim, organisms or beings in the case of the Urgal leader Garzhvog) as entities worthy of respect and equal treatment, contrary to the prevailing views of their respective cultures.

I found Eldest to be an engaging and fun read, perhaps not at the same level of complexity and metaphysical development as the works of Tolkien, Lewis or Pullman, but none-the-less worthwhile and worthy of sharing! In addition to reading the books, check out the continually evolving WikiPedia entries for the characters and places in these novels. In writing this post, I noticed there was not a Wikipedia entry for Garzhvog, so I created one.

Have you made a contribution to the WikiPedia yet? If not, why not? Learn how to do it yourself, and then teach your students to edit pages. Who would have imagined a day when anyone can make contributions to the largest encyclopedia in the world at any time, using any Internet-connected computer?! This opportunity to collaboratively author the WikiPedia together not only provides a great opportunity to cultivate traditional as well as digital literacies, but also provides a good channel for the diverse PASSIONS of learners.

Technorati Tags: books, eldest, eragon, paolini

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read Eragon or seen the movie, beware that in this blog post I’m including details that reveal plot elements of both.

It’s almost Christmas, but I’ve already received what may be the most precious gift I’ll receive from any of my family members this year. This morning when I woke up, my 9 year old was reading the book Eragon voluntarily and was into Chapter 4. He picked it up and started reading it a few days ago. Boy does that ever warm a father’s heart!

Last month before seeing the movie “Happy Feet” at the theater (which was largely a disappointment) I saw a trailer for the movie Eragon. As a huge fan of both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the storyline of Eragon sounded intriguing. I really enjoy movies that are based on books much more when I have read the books in advance (J.K. Rowling’s work is another example of this)– so I naturally decided to read the book Eragon before its theatrical release on December 15th. My 40 day evening technology fast (which incidentally draws to a close today) definitely facilitated my ability to read the book over a 2 - 3 week period of time.

Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon, evidently started writing the book when he was just 15 years old and published it at age 19. Given his young age, the complexity and vocabulary of Eragon and the world of Alagaesia is really remarkable.

I recently found this podcast channel from Random House that includes interviews on different topics with fantasy writers including Christopher Paolini as well as Phillip Pullman and Tamora Pierce. Several years ago, at the recommendation of one of my sixth grade students at the time, I read all of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I have not heard of or read any books by Tamora Pierce to date. It is very interesting to hear each of these authors reflect on their own strategies for writing and imagining characters, their interactions, and the imaginary worlds which they inhabit.

I certainly did enjoy reading Eragon as well as seeing the movie. I’m about a fifth of the way through the second book, “Eldest,” and have been regularly quizzed by my son about what has happened so far in the book. I shared a plot summary of Eragon with him before we saw the movie together last weekend, and all our talks about the movie and its characters have fueled his current interest in the book.

Several days ago, my son really surprised me by embarking on his own WikiPedia research effort (all initiated by himself without any prodding) on the topic of Eragon. (WikiPedia is one of the authorized websites he can access from his computer login, which is configured using Mac OS X’s parental controls.) He found the main WikiPedia article for Eragon, and from there learned much more about Galbatorix, his dragon, Saphira, the other dragons and dragon eggs which remain in Alagaesia, and more.

My mother saw the Eragon film last weekend also, and commented on the many similarities between the plot of Star Wars and Eragon. My son’s research last week turned up another remarkable similarity between the two stories that I didn’t previously know or guess: Morzan (the last of the foresworn and the right hand man to Galbatorix, similar to Darth Vader) is likely the father of both Murtagh and Eragon. Their ancestry was hidden to protect them and others for various reasons, apparently, similar to the way Leia and Luke’s existence was hidden from Anakin (Darth Vader) in Star Wars.

It really is fun to enjoy a new fantasy trilogy together with members of my family– At Christmas time I still miss the opportunity to see a new episode of Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings,” which is without a doubt my favorite (and my wife’s favorite) movie trilogy as well as fantasy book series of all time. It’s fun to read and watch books and movies like this over the holidays together.

The main thing I miss, however, from the Eragon series is the same thing I miss in all of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series books and movies, and missed in Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The missing element is a backdrop of Christian theology. That backdrop is most overt in “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis, but equally strong (though not as explicit, for Tolkien did not set out to write a direct allegory as Lewis did) in “The Lord of the Rings.” Pullman does certainly have a metaphysical universe and theology which underpins his books, but it is quite strange and dualistic at best. (By dualistic, in this context I mean that good and evil are viewed as equally powerful, similar to yin and yang.) In Eragon, I don’t have a sense at all of any transcendent theology. I don’t really sense one in Rowling’s books either. This doesn’t make the reading a disappointment or not worthwhile, but the Christian theological backdrop of Lewis and Tolkien’s writings is certainly something that helped make their books top favorites when I was growing up and now as an adult/parent.

I look forward with eager expectation to the release of the theatrical version of Lewis’ “Prince Caspian” and also to (hopefully) a Peter Jackson rendition of Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” Of course, I’m also looking forward this summer to the release of the fifth movie in the Harry Potter series!

As my son read through WikiPedia entries about Eragon, the movie and the book series this past week, I reflected on how remarkable it is to live in the 21st century. I don’t think either my son or I fully appreciate the amazing access we have to ideas and to collaborative opportunities. When we were reading one of the Eragon-related WikiPedia articles, I noticed the word “yellow” was mispelled in the first paragraph of Saphira’s page. You’ll see that entry on the history listing of Saphira page, under December 21st. Since then about five more edits have been made to the page. I know correcting a spelling error is a minor edit, but it is REMARKABLE we have this potential to collaboratively author WikiPedia content together! By the time the book “Eldest” is made into a movie, I’m sure all the Eragon-series WikiPedia articles are going to be much more developed and robust!

These are exciting developments from a literacy perspective, as well as fun things to watch and be involved in. I don’t think C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien would have ever imagined we’d have an informational environment in the world like the one we have today. What a great opportunity to learn, share, read and grow!

Technorati Tags: collaboration, education, eragon, paolini, wikipedia

I listened to the podcast “The Mighty and the Almighty” by Madeleine Albright today in the car, and I found her reflections and responses to questions from the audience insightful and thought provoking. Her view that the decision for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq was a decision of choice rather than necessity struck a chord with me. I was particularly interested to hear her discuss Rwanda and the mistake which the Clinton administration made at that time, to not attempt to do more to stop genocide– and the common ground she sees between US political parties on the issue of genocide now in Darfur and elsewhere. I agree with her view that the US response to 9-11 to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan was warranted, but not the subsequent attack on Iraq which was not linked to Al-Queda or the 9-11 attacks.

This podcast was published on the channel “World Beyond the Headlines” maintained by the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. Secretary Albright was interviewed by Susan Thistlethwaite, President of the Chicago Theological Seminary. Many of the issues she addressed related to religion, faith, the role of faith in policymaking, the ongoing US war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other topics. This was a long presentation (an hour and seventeen minutes, including the Q&A) but well worth a listen.

The part that interested me the most related to President Bush’s public statements that “God is on our side” in the war in Iraq. I was reminded of another podcast I heard this summer on the “Talking History” podcast channel about President Abraham Lincoln, and his thoughts about God during the US Civil War. I agree with Secretary Albright that as a nation, we should be more concerned with being on God’s side than assuring ourselves that He is on ours. The podcast I listened to was titled, “The Best of Talking History: Program #5: Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural.” I agree with Secretary Albright that the United States is an exceptional nation, but also that the Iraq war, the incidents at Abu Ghraib, and the ongoing situation at Guantanamo Bay have done significant damage to the moral authority of the United States throughout the world.

I love my country, I support our soldiers, but I regret many of the decisions of our Commander in Chief. It was good to hear the perspectives of Secretary Albright on these and many other issues of vital importance, especially since she has so much experience and insight into these complex topics. What a tremendous role model Secretary Albright is for the young women of our nation, as well as the young men! I do not think the foreign policy record of the Clinton administration was spotless either, and I was not a big fan of President Clinton when he was in office, but I do agree that government officials should admit wrongdoing when it has taken place. To date I don’t think US officials have done that adequately in the case of Abu Ghraib, and certainly not in the ongoing situations at Guantanamo and in Iraq.

Lastly, I agree with Secretary Albright that US government leaders should NOT announce that our nation is at war with Islam. This is a mistake. We are at war against terrorists, but not all Muslims are terrorists. To equate the war on terror with a war on Islam– to give the perception that the United States government is fighting a holy war in the Middle East, is to go down the wrong path which I do not support. I don’t think the crusades during the Middle Ages were defensible under any theory of just war, and I don’t think a 21st century crusade against Muslims is either.

President Bush sent the right message on Tuesday before the U.N. General Assembly. He said:

My country desires peace. Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror. We respect Islam.

The original podcast I listened to and is linked above was from May 2006. Interestingly, the same article which quoted President Bush also quoted Secretary Albright:

While praising Bush’s freedom refrain, Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under President Clinton, said in an interview that the U.S.-led war in Iraq, not democratic reform, has destabilized the Middle East.

Albright said the Bush administration has not carried out its democratic initiative with uniformity. It denounces autocratic nations that are unfriendly toward the United States, then casts a blind eye to autocratic nations that are allies, she said. She mentioned Kazakhstan, whose leader will be honored at the White House Sept. 29, and Egypt.

The article also noted that President Bush’s tone and rhetoric is considerably changed from the past:

In his speech, Bush spoke directly to the people of Iran, not the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who did not attend the address. Bush said America respects Islam, the Iranian nation’s rich history and culture and that he looks to a day when the two peoples “can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace.” That’s very different from 2002 when Bush said Iran was part of an “axis of evil.”

I’m glad to read about this change, and these clarifications that the U.S. is NOT at war against Islam and the Muslim people. Now let’s hope the Bush administration can face up Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and take steps to correct those blights on the US diplomatic and foreign policy record.

SC Eagle (a US soldier stationed in Germany who lived in NYC on 9-11-2001) has posted a home video to his blog of a video he and his wife took looking outside their NYC apartment building that fateful day. Close up footage, with the quiet voices of regular citizens responding to the most horrific terrorist attack in the history of the United States. No music, no fancy effects, just real video footage and real reflections from 9-11.

What a terrible day that was. Let us hope and pray that as a nation we will work toward reconciliation and peace– and not a state of perpetual war, in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. There are some who say we (the United States) are at war with Islam and with Muslims. I hope that is not the case. We need to stand together with people around the world against intolerance and violent terrorism– but we do NOT need to conceive of ourselves and our nation as engaged in a holy war against a religion and the people who practice it.

All Muslims are NOT terrorists and all of them did not support or approve of the 9-11 attacks. We must not stereotype an entire group of people based on the actions, however disastrous and deadly, of a limited few. Yes, the United States IS at war in Iraq, but our nation’s leaders chose to invade and occupy Iraq based on very flimsy evidence that Iraq had ties to the 9-11 attackers and WMD. I stand behind our soldiers and our military– I “support our troops” and their families, but I am convinced that President Bush made the decision to go to war after 9-11 irrespective of the facts that were present, and has doomed our nation and the men and women who serve it in uniform to an extremely protracted and costly conflict that was not justified on a prima facia basis given the facts at the time.

After speaking at length several years ago with US military members activated following 9-11, it become clear to me that an immediate US military build-up in the Gulf area started right away following these attacks. The political declaration of war was just a formality that came later. (Unfortunately, this is not the way the US Constitution mandates that our nation go to war.)

I was scared on 9-11. I was confused and bewildered. We had been attacked, and of course I was angry that someone would do this on US soil. The majority of the attackers on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, from what I understand, and they were primarily upset that the US continued to station troops in Saudi Arabia. One of their objectives was to get US forces out of Saudi. In that goal they succeeded. From what I know, the US military is out of Saudi. Now we are in Iraq, and all signs point to an extremely prolonged stay. There is no such a thing as “a short land war in Asia.” If we are to stay the course in Iraq, as I think we should do now that we have committed so many lives and resources to this cause– it is going to take significant political will as well as money and blood.

I support our nation, I support our troops, but I am angry at our President for misleading our nation in taking us to war in the Middle East. The Iraqi people, and even the Iraqi government, was not responsible for or behind the 9-11 attacks. They were not behind Al-Queda. And all Muslims are not enemies. I read Global Voices fairly often and I have known several Muslims from the Middle East in my short life, and I know all Muslims are not terrorists. I am a Christian, and I am not engaged in a holy war with Islam. Videos like this one of 9-11 ARE emotionally powerful and cause us to remember– but they should also give us pause to THINK and consider what course of action is both prudent and justified given historical facts as well as current commitments.

I do pray for our soldiers serving and fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and for their families left behind here in the United States and in other parts of the globe. I pray for the Iraqi and Afghani people. I pray for the causes of human rights and self-determination in these nations– because these are not just “American ideas.” These are universal ideas, rights and values. Saddam Hussein WAS and IS a bad guy. I’m glad he’s no longer running Iraq. But I don’t think the 9-11 attacks provided just cause for us to invade his country and unseat him from power.

If I had been the US President on 9-11 and afterwards, I am sure I would have also struggled to know how to respond and how to lead. I do not think I would have pursued a course of military action that was not supported by the intelligence and best analysis of our military servicemen and women and other government officials, however. I could probably write more on this subject, but I will stop there. These images and what we know now about 9-11 and the aftermath give much food for thought, and subjects for prayer.

I’m pleased to announce this evening after many weeks (if not months) of thought and planning, I have launched a new team blogging effort I’m quite enthused about.

“Eyes Right: A Team Blog About The Christian Journey of Faith” is now online, and I’ll be posting my thoughts related to Christianity, faith, and religion over on that blog rather than posting them here in their own blog category. I’m not going to move or delete any of my previous posts here, but rather just start blogging from time to time on “Eyes Right” when the topic is appropriate.

The vast majority of blog posts I write have to do with educational technology, literacy, web 2.0, and school reform issues– and I want to stay true to those themes here on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” I am a multi-dimensional person, and I both enjoy and I think need to write about more than just education and technology issues– but I think that can be done more effectively and even more freely in forums which are more specific to the topic and purpose of the writing. I am not doing this in response to specific people who have corresponded with me with this request, but rather because of my own perception that I’ll be freer to write what I want to in a thematically-specific forum focused on Christianity and faith.

Thankfully, several other folks have accepted my invitations to also blog on “Eyes Right,” and I think as a resource and forum it will be much richer with a diverse set of voices, rather than just mine. So if you’re interested, check it out and subscribe to the “Eyes Right” feedburner feed. If you’re interested in posting as a contributor, register on the blog and post. Several of us will function as editors to approve posts by contributors who are not already established as authors on “Eyes Right.” The new features of Wordpress 2.0 which permit different roles (subscriber, contributor, author, editor, and administrator) are excellent and well-suited to a team-blogging initiative like this one!

I decided last week that I am going to start a second blog so that I can share my ideas relating to faith, Christianity, and my own journey of spiritual development in a separate place– connected but different than this blog. There are a diverse array of things I want to write and blog about, and I have found that as my blog readership has increased, I have found myself at times unsure if I should be sharing in this space about my Christian faith. I have actually not received any negative feedback (and this is not really an invitation for any) as a result of postings to my “Christian” blog category– but I intuit that it might be best for me to put these ideas in a forum separate and distinct from “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” If I do this (and I shall soon) I expect I’ll feel more free to post ideas like this, and perhaps create a forum with different readership dynamics due to the changed focus.

I plan to continue blogging here, but just not on themes which are exclusively or even predominantly faith and Christian oriented. With that said, I want to reflect on some ideas shared this past Sunday that related to “provoking imagination.” I haven’t setup the new blog yet, so this is my only place to record these ideas– and I want to record and reflect on them while they are still fresh on my mind.

John Gruel is one of the associate pastors at our new church in Edmond, Oklahoma, and John both taught the Sunday school lesson and preached the sermon last weekend. HIs theme was “The History of Church Leadership,” focusing not exclusively on a single denomination but rather tracing the changes in church leadership over the centuries since Jesus’ life and death. John is working on his doctorate and is in his first year of study, and this topic is being addressed in one
of his courses. These are the four major eras of church leadership he shared and we discussed in Sunday School:

1. Leadership in the church was based on a functional notion of gifts and abilities.
2. People themselves reflected action in missional engagement
3. Priests were first called “priests” about the year 200
4. Priests “controlled the saving knowledge of the gospel”
5. This established a primitive hierarchy in the church, later to be strengthened and formalized much more strongly
6. Establishment of the priestly class “removed church leadership from ordinary existence” (There were two groups of people: the priests who had access to and interpreted God’s Word and will for the people, and the rest of the world: Who listened and obeyed– or at least were expected to fulfil these roles.)

1. The power and status of priests were elevated and grew
2. The administrative hierarchy of the church increased
3. Celibacy was established as a further distinction between clergy and the laity
4. The priest provided a “place where” people came to worship: to hear God’s word, confess, have the sacraments administered, etc.
5. There was less sense of God’s people as “a people sent” to do God’s will

1. The role of the clergy shifted to more of a “pedagogue”
2. This was a change in the role of clergy to be more in a teaching mode
3. There was no real “material change” in the church’s understanding of “clergy”
4. Clergy transitioned from “keepers of the sacraments” to “keepers of the Word”
5. Academic requirements expected and required of clergy increased
6. During and after this time, radical reformers (like the Anabaptists and Mennonites) tried to “recover a more apostolic and functional idea” of church leadership

1. The role of the clergy become professionalized
2. This followed trends in the wider culture, especially in law and medicine
3. Education for clergy become more formal and “scientific” (again following broader societal trends)
4. In John Gruel’s view, during this time the idea and concept of the “priesthood of all believers” was further undermined by the requirements and procedures of formal ordination (people were even less likely to see themselves as God’s ordained ministers– as laity, commissioned to go out into the world and do the work of Christ)

Other Trends

1. Clergy as Counselors: from god-centered to human-centered understanding of reality, where primacy is/was placed on meeting human needs
2. Clergy as Managers: geared toward efficiency, operating within an organizational, managerial paradigm. Church leaders seen as purveyors of spiritual goods and services.
3. Clergy as Technicians or Specialists: Part of the broader cultural view (based largely on reason and a scientific mindset) that every problem has a potential technocratic solution. Techniques then, become the answer to fulfill church goals and its overall mission. The role of the pastor becomes more an overseer of specialized ministries. This is what we see in many mainline Protestant churches today.

This was an excellent presentation and a great dialog, and there were many things that John shared I thought were worth writing down and remembering. (I am, in fact, typing from the handwritten notes I took on Sunday.)

John noted that many people consider pastors in the Presbyterian tradition to be “ministers or keepers of the Word and sacrament.” He prefers, and this is in the Book of Order, to refer to pastors as “caretakers and stewards of the mysteries of God.” I like that language also.

John also challenged us to think of the evolving, more appropriate role of the Pastor to be a “poet and a prophet” rather than a “technician or a specialist.” This was my favorite statement from the entire lesson: He said Pastors and other leaders in the church should strive to be “provokers of individual and corporate imaginations.” Implicit in this challenge is the idea that God’s will for our individual and corporate lives is wrapped within the imaginations of His people. Understanding that, the leader in the church should strive to promote dialog and conversations which inspire people to share the calling which God has placed upon their own hearts– to serve in a particular mission field, to respond to a specific need in the congregation or in the community, etc. This style of leadership is not top-down and technocratic: rather it is empowering of grass-roots ideas and visions. It is not leadership by committee, it is more leadership through dialog and cooperative response to the moving of God’s Holy Spirit. I really resonate with these ideas, and think they have broader applicability outside the possibly more narrowly defined sphere of “The Church.”

John challenged us to recognize that in churches today, we have a more abiding need for prayer rather than agendas. We should all seek to understand God’s call in our own lives, and seek to live that out with the body of believers which is our local church.

The last thought he left us with was also thought provoking. John described the 21st century environment in which we live as one of “rapid discontinuous change.” I like that description. We need to not only prepare ourselves and our families to survive and thrive in this environment of rapid discontinuous change– but also strive to help our teachers and our students in our schools do the same thing. The vocabulary we use in secular, public schools is likely to be different– but the human needs to which we should respond and address are the same in this rapidly changing, multi-task favoring, dynamical world of 2006.