Tech Geek

Did you know that September is National Preparedness Month? Me neither. But I got a Cause Announcement on Facebook from Lutheran Disaster Response telling me that it was and reminding me that winter is coming.

LDR is one of the many ministries that I'm proud to be a part of as a member of an ELCA congregation.

Here's what they had to say:

September is National Preparedness Month, and over the last few weeks, we have been encouraging folks to get prepared following three simple steps – 1) Be Informed, 2) Make a Plan, and 3) Get a Kit. If you haven’t already done so, get started today by visiting www.ldr.org/ready.

Now that you have taken the steps to becoming better prepared, we want to hear from you. What was it like to put together your disaster plan and make your disaster kit? Why do you think it’s important to be prepared? Have you been through a disaster and known the value of disaster preparedness? Or have you volunteered in a disaster area and had a taste of what disaster-affected people have been through?

Submit your READY story, in print or video, by e-mailing us at LutheranDisasterResponse@elca.org. Be sure to tell us your name, your congregation, and your hometown, and we will share the best READY stories with others to encourage them to get prepared today.

Together, let’s become the ReadyChurch!

Lutheran Disaster Response
Bringing Help and Hope...

Where's the technology angle? Well, they're using a website to distribute the information, I received the message on Facebook, and they're requesting video responses that, due to modern technology, many of us can provide. Even the new Fifth Generation iPod nano shoots video!

I'll close this post with an unrelated question. What are you doing at your church to be prepared, not for natural disaster, but for H1N1/09 (Swine) Flu? I've learned of two of my kids having it in the last week. The ELCA website has a post entitled Pandemic Flu: Faithful preparation for pandemic that may be helpful as well.

Be prepared and stay healthy!

This past week I stumbled across a new-to-me, and relatively new overall, website named elca.feautor.org. It is a free, multi-lingual, open space to share resources. Over the years I have been part of a couple of conversations about creating such a space, but have never had the time to bring such a resource sharing space to fruition. So I was quite excited to see that one now exists!

Here is some information straight from the site:

Welcome to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America shared resources group at Feautor.org. Resources on this site have been created by individuals and congregations for your use. Most resources are available in a word processor file that can be edited, and as an Adobe Acrobat file that is ideal for printing. Freely sharing locally produced materials is practicing a 'Stewardship of Ideas.' Use these ideas, modify them for your purposes as allowed, share them with others, and in turn share some of your best ideas by uploading them here. Thanks for browsing and contributing.

While you are in the ELCA portion of Feautor, click the little people icon to the left to see more information about this group, tips for using the site, and instructions on how to contribute resources you have created. View a short video clip on how to contribute a resource: www.feautor.org/id/12155442903 Here's one with general tips on using this site: www.feautor.org/id/12180509478

There are currently over 900 contributions in the ELCA section of this site. This could be a great resource for those who write their own curriculum and wish to share it and those who need a push in their own planning. I know that we, as a church, have lots of great programming ideas and there are many ways where others can help fill in our own growth areas. Thanks to the resource center directors who are members of the Association of Lutheran Resource Centers who serve as caretakers for the venture. Learn more about them at: http://elca.feautor.org/en/aboutus/index

Another high quality and free resource I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you of is the weekly Faith Lens Bible Study posted by the ELCA at http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/ . These weekly Bible studies engage youth and young adults in connecting world events with the Bible, faith, and everyday life. Many of the authors are folks that are also active in the ELCA Youth Ministry Network. I have struggled a bit to get the new blog-based version to print and I miss the old PDF versions that used to be available. I wonder if there's any chance those will come back.

Within the current format, I have had the best results by highlighting the entire text of the week's Bible study and then selecting Print Selection. In Firefox, I highlight the text, select File-->Print, and then click the Selection radio button.

If this sounds like something you'd use, take the Dropbox tour at: https://www.getdropbox.com/tour and check out how it might work for you. If you like Dropbox, join via this link and we'll both get some extra free space in our accounts.

Welcome back to the fall. I hope you're more prepared for it than I am. This summer, with the Gathering, servant trip, and all the family visits, was exhausting! To kick off the resumption of weekly Tech Geek columns, I'm going to go back to the browser series that  started last April and finish up with the other browser I use on a regular basis. I actually found myself using all four browsers (Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, MozillaFirefox , and Google Chrome) at the same time while serving on the Communications Technology Team at the Gathering this summer. We were managing the digital signs outside the convention center rooms and the software was so challenging to use that it was easiest to access from different browsers than keep reloading pages!

Google Chrome is a relatively new entry into the browser marketplace, released just over a year ago. According to Google, "Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier." Google Chrome uses a very simple screen layout with very few choices. Instead of having an address bar and a search bar like most browsers, there is only one text bar at the top of the screen. If you type a web address into it, you go to that address. If you type anything else, you are taken to a Google search page for what you typed.

Google Chrome does not require that you set a home page, or pages, as you do in most browsers. It will let you do that, but if you don't, it will create a page for you that shows screen captures of your most visited sites as well as your most recently closed tabs. I find it to be a quick way to do the things I do most often without having to keep bookmarks updated. There is room for 8 screens in the beta version I'm currently using.

The first thing I noticed about Chrome was that it was fast! It downloads quickly and starts in much less time than any of the other browsers I use. I find myself using Chrome when I just want to open a browser and check something quickly before closing it again. Google Chrome also runs each tab in a separate process. What that means in English is that if you visit a web page that crashes your browser, it will only crash one tab, not all the tabs that you have open. This also helps intensive web pages, like Google Docs, keep from bogging down the rest of the system.

In July, Google announced the Google Chrome OS. This will be an operating system designed for net-books and other lightweight computing devices. It will adhere to the same principles of speed, security, and simplicity that drive Google Chrome development.

Why don't I make Google Chrome my default browser? While it's evolving and getting better, it's not perfect. My biggest gripe is that it doesn't support very many extensions. I regularly run about a dozen extensions inFirefox and I don't like living without those on a regular basis. But if you don't use extensions like I do, and you're tired of the slow and bloated feel of some browsers, give Google Chrome a try and you may very well find yourself a new web browser!

Just before Google released Chrome, they published this comic book showing why the world needs another browser. http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

God's blessings on your ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network Tech Geek

Does anyone have a program they love for tracking contact information for the youth in your church? I'm curious as to what people are using these days or if you just keep it in your iPhone!