Showing posts with label skype. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skype. Show all posts

Why Children's Ministries Must Adapt in the Social Media Age

7:57 AM  Dale Hudson  

Engaging in social media is no longer an option for children's ministries.  It is a necessity.

Social media is all about connecting with families and volunteers.

Here are just a few of the ways you can use social media to connect with the people in your ministry.

Parent Facebook page
Volunteer Facebook page
Text messages to parents
Text messages to volunteers
Email blasts
YouTube training videos for volunteers
Twitter account
Ministry blog

Most families and volunteers are already there and if you're not, they're waiting for you.  It's how they want to communicate with you.  Bring your ministry into the social age.  Don't get left behind.
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Take Your Children's Ministry to the Next Level - Live Online Training Now Available

6:10 AM  Dale Hudson  

  • Are you ready to take your Children's Ministry to the next level?
  • Are you looking for high-impact training for your staff or volunteer team?
  • Traveling expenses and registration costs keeping you and your team from attending conferences?
  • Your solution:  Bring LIVE online training to your team with Dale Hudson.   Dale is a leading voice in children's ministry and brings over 24 years of experience.  You can read more about his ministry at this link.  He speaks in person at conferences across the United States and internationally.  And now he's making this training available to you online.
    •  Training Session lasts for 1 hour and consists of...
      • 40 minutes of live teaching with Dale
      • 20 minutes of Q & A with Dale
      • Customized topic of your choice. (you know what your ministry and team needs most)
      • PDF handout of teaching outline sent to you before the training.
      • Corresponding PowerPoint presentation sent to you before the training.
      • Follow-up phone call and customized next steps for you and your team.
    • Cost is only $99.00 per church or ministry.  There is no limit to how many people you can involve.
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20 Things You Need to Know About Today's Kids

5:34 AM  Dale Hudson  

  1. They share information.  They are growing up with the electronic cut and paste and forward.
  2. They are multi-ethnic.  By 2050, there will not be a majority ethnic group in the United States.
  3. GM means food that is Genetically Modified.
  4.  “Dude” has never had a negative tone.
  5. Having a chat seldom involves talking.
  6. Gaga has never been baby talk.
  7. Their rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Twitter accounts than with getting a driver’s license and car.
  8. A tablet is not something you take in the morning.
  9. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid.
  10. With GPS, they don't needed directions to get someplace, just an address.
  11. Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated.
  12. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii.
  13. They have always been able to plug into USB ports.
  14. They absorb teaching methods that involve small-group collaborative learning rather than a passive listen-and-take-notes lecture.
  15. On average, at age 4, they will ask about 437 questions a day.
  16. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
  17. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
  18. They've always had hundreds of cable channels to choose from.
  19. Video games have always had ratings.
  20. History has always had it's own channel.
Your turn.  What are some other interesting things about today's kids?  Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.
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20 Must-Have iPad Apps for Your Ministry

8:00 AM  Dale Hudson  

If you use an iPad for your ministry work, here's 20 apps recommended by Time Tech that can be very beneficial. Most of these are free. Links to the apps are included.

Calculator for Ipad Free
Because math is hard and the iPad doesn’t include a built-in calculator, there’s Calculator for iPad Free. Like its name suggests, the app is free and includes both a standard and a scientific calculator; a $2 upgrade gives you several color schemes to choose from.
If you find yourself in a pinch needing to work with Microsoft Office files, the free CloudOn app might be just what you’re looking for. You’ll have access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, along with the ability to open documents straight from popular online file-storage services.
Access important files anywhere with this cloud-storage service. Save a file to the Dropbox folder on your computer and it’ll be available from the Dropbox iPad app. Automatically save photos and videos from your iPad to your Dropbox account to access them from other devices as well.

TED
Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.

Evernote
Sometimes you find yourself collecting so much digital stuff that you need a place to keep it all. For that, there’s Evernote. This free app lets you store your notes, ideas, to-do lists and much more — all synchronized for access from other devices as well.
Khan Academy allows you to learn almost anything for free with a library of over 3,500 educational videos.

Flipboard
Flipboard bills itself as “your personal magazine.” Browse handpicked articles on various topics and pipe in updates from your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr accounts for a one-stop shop that caters to your interests.
Of all the things to shrink down so it fits inside an iPad, a world-class education might top the list. Apple’s iTunes U app features over half a million lectures, videos and books from some of the top learning institutions around the globe — all for free.

There are several worthwhile e-book reading apps to choose from, but Amazon’s Kindle platform gets the nod thanks to its availability on just about every other device on the market. If it’s connected, you can probably use it to read a Kindle book.
Murphy’s law: You’ll forget something important on your computer and won’t realize it until it’s almost too late. The free LogMeIn app lets you connect to your home computer (make sure to leave it turned on) and control it remotely as though you were sitting in front of it.

Paper is a free iPad app with a simple interface that lets you write, sketch and paint in virtual notebooks. It may not seem like rocket science, but realistically replicating the feel of various writing and art utensils on a tablet screen is a complicated feat that Paper pulls off with style.

For a free image editor, this app from Aviary features a wealth of features. Aside from being able to crop and rotate your photos, there’s red-eye reduction, blemish removal, teeth whitening and more. You can add doodles, text and stickers to liven up your images as well.

Pinnacle Studio
Believe it or not, editing videos on an iPad isn’t quite as cumbersome as you might think. Case in point: the $13 Pinnacle Studio app, which sports an easy-to-use interface and powerful editing features. After your masterpiece is complete, use the built-in uploader to share it with others.
It took Pinterest, the Web’s most popular pin board, until last August to roll out an iPad app. Better late than never, as the free app makes for a great couch companion. Pass the time browsing your friends’ pins, or pin things from around the Web that you’d like to revisit later.

Pocket lets you grab various bits from around the Web — articles, videos, images and more — and save them for later perusal. The free app takes text articles and takes out all the ads, buttons and other digital items to present a clean, easy-on-the-eyes reading experience.
The iPad’s built-in FaceTime feature makes it a snap to video-chat with other Apple owners, but — surprise! — not everyone owns Apple products. Skype makes video chatting a bit more universal, with apps for just about every platform and tons of active users.

For $10 a month, Spotify acts like a giant music store where you can listen to as much music as you want. You can create playlists of your favorite tunes and download songs for offline playback. There’s also a streaming radio option, which is free for U.S. users.

Titan Downloader
The free Titan Downloader app features a built-in Web browser that lets you save video files you find on various sites for playback at a later time. You can queue up multiple videos to play one after another and set a pass-code lock to prevent others from accessing your collection.

Think of the free TuneIn app as being able to turn your iPad into a radio capable of pulling in just about any station from just about anywhere in the world. The service boasts 70,000 live radio-station feeds and 2 million podcasts to choose from.
Previewing e-mailed PDF files is built in to the iPad’s Mail app, but Adobe’s free Reader app includes advanced functions such as annotations, text search, highlighting, online synchronization and the ability to fill out form fields. If you work with PDF files a lot, this one’s a must.

What other apps do you recommend?  Share with us in the comment section below.
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