Contest #1: Unique Photo of Teachers and/or Students in Action working with software

Parkrose Community Church, Tigard Oregon

Camie Pugsley, Parkrose Community writes...

I am a Sunday School teacher at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. March 9, 2008 marked the "launch" of our Jesus in Space program to run during the Easter season. Here are some pictures from our "launch" day! Along with our great teacher, student interaction in our classroom, we also had some fantastic space themed decorations to go along with our Jesus in Space CD.

The focal point of our room decoration was our very own Spaceship Tarsus (from the CD) seen above. You can also see that we hung stars from the ceiling. Our bulletin board is also all decked out in solar system theme.

In this (next) photo is "Captain Erica Martin" showing off our craft activity for the boys. They each got to create their own rocket ship. Then dangling from the paper clip, we raced them down fishing line strung across the room.

St. James United Church, Toronto Ontario

Karen Forgrave, St. James writes....

We did the story of Elijah, with the ravens brining him food and water to keep him alive. In the art workshop, the students recycled old CDs into raven decorations that were then hung in our computer lab as an ongoing reminder of how God always provides. The effect is quite neat, and students love to point out which of the ravens they created!

Also in the lab, on the walls there are life-size "disciples". This was one of your ideas for a rotation on Jesus calling his disciples. It was GREAT! The students traced each other to cut out the 12 disciples (and some extras to be "us"), and then each week, students used various software to do "research" on the disciples, which they added inside the outlines, as jot-notes. On the last week, the youngest (3-6 year olds) decorated the disciples, adding hair, etc. Some of them are very cute!! My favourite is "Doubting Thomas", because we added big googlie eyes to remind us that he said he wouldn't believe Jesus had returned until he had seen him "with his own eyes"!

First Place Winners: First Plymouth UCC Englewood Colorado,
and
Yorkville Congregational, Yorkville Illinois

First Plymouth Congregational Church (UCC) in Englewood, CO

From Janeen Stubbs, the computer lab teacher at First Plymouth (Submitted by Karen Guy)

Janeen writes: While serving as Children’s Ministries Coordinator at First Plymouth Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, I wore many hats on Sunday mornings ranging from diaper changer to Sunday School teacher. But the most challenging role I played was “Mom as Children’s Ministries Coordinator” to my son Daniel and daughter Allison who were seven and nine years old when I started this job. They’d been very active in children’s programs since they were in preschool --and talk about a tough crowd! If Sunday School was boring, they weren’t hesitant to let me know. Daniel and his buddies were especially good about giving me clues that Sunday School was boring by adding their own creative touches to art projects, adding high levels of danger to games, and making lives miserable for Sunday School teachers. While many wrote this off as typical “boy” stuff, I was beginning to understand that we weren’t really meeting the needs of many of our Sunday School children. And we ran the risk of having them convince their parents not to send them to Sunday School because they didn’t learn anything.

Thank goodness before I started working in Children’s Ministries, First Plymouth had adopted a rotation workshop model for our first through fifth graders. As a volunteer Sunday School teacher for many years, I found our previous curriculum excruciatingly boring! “Light a candle and ask the children to quietly contemplate the meaning of today’s lesson….” RIGHT!!! Had the people who wrote these lesson plans ever spent time with kids?! Workshop Rotation really livened things up by allowing teachers to choose workshops in which they had skills and/or interest. The children often were allowed to choose which workshop to attend. Things were looking up! Our kids were enjoying art, games, cooking, and storytelling. But it seemed like we could do more to really capture the hearts and minds of Daniel and his buddies.

Every time I brought up the idea of starting computer workshops, someone shot it down. “Didn’t work the first time,” said the volunteer Sunday School teacher who had tried for a few weeks to bring in her laptop to teach to ten children at a time. “We tried it a few years ago but our teachers hated it so we quit,” said the woman I sat next to at a Sunday School Educators’ luncheon. Then I discovered sundaysoftware.com, ordered Teaching with Computers in Christian Education, and the ball started rolling. I found an ally in the church’s Director of Business Administration. She let me know that most of the church’s computers were on leases that were soon to expire. We had the option of purchasing them for a very good price and she suggested that our church’s foundation might be interested in funding this project. I filled out the grant application; shamelessly quoting from Teaching with Computers in Christian Education (credit was given!). Within a few weeks I found out that my request was funded in full – plus they’d added an extra $200 for incidental expenses!

Around this time I decided that I was ready to relinquish my staff position and move into a volunteer role. But I was determined to have our computer lab up and running as my final hurrah. We were given a classroom dedicated just to our “Bible Bytes Computer Lab”. I was blessed to have other staff members who believed in this project enough to spend their valuable time getting it set up. Our custodian put a fresh coat of paint on the walls and rustled up all the furniture we needed from odds and ends around the church. Our Director of Business Administration set up six computers and assured that all were working. I did the decorating on a shoestring budget. I choose several workshop rotation units based on their computer workshop potentials with an eye toward fun, educational, and easy to teach software to assure that teachers, parents, our CE Ministry, and especially our kids realized the benefits of computer learning in Sunday School. All that was left was to find great teachers. Not an easy task! Was I ever blessed when into our church community welcomed a Christian Education intern with a computer background who was willing to teach and mentor future teachers in our Bible Bytes lab.

It has been four months since the grand opening of the Bible Byes Computer Lab (SEE PICTURE AT RIGHT) and over three months since I left my staff position at First Plymouth and became a volunteer. Our computer workshops have become the first through fifth grade children’s favorite rotation. I’ve noticed that kids who refuse to attend Middle School Sunday School have started sneaking into the computer lab. There is even a rumor that one of our senior citizens groups has requested use of the lab during the week! But I’ll consider Bible Bytes are real success if Daniel and his buddies stay engaged and active in Sunday School…..

Pictured Right: the "Grand Opening" of Pilgrim's Computer Lab with Janeen and the kids

Daniel’s Perspective (the teacher's son)

When my mom was running Sunday school, it was usually boring for me and my friends. Sometimes we liked the games we played but usually we wanted to be doing something else like playing video games. No offense to my mom but the people who wrote the lessons made them dull.

But when we got the computer lab, it all changed. I’ve always liked computers, so Sunday school was more fun. Even though we don’t run around and get crazy in the computer lab, I still like it! My favorite game so far is Galilee Flyer. I’m surprised that I knew many of the Bible verses in this game and I’m learning new ones. I hope that I can use the computer lab next year when I start Middle School Sunday School. Thanks, Mom!

From Yorkville Congregational, Yorkville Illinois

Submitted by Ruth Morello

Our startup story actually began about 2 years ago. One of our church members working at the local community college arranged for a donation of used computers to our Sunday School. (But) our director of Christian Education at the time was very busy transitioning the Sunday school program from a standard program to the rotational model, so the computers were stored in our church attic until this last fall.

Realizing that implementing technology into our rotation program was vital to building and enhancing this model, the new director of Christian Education decided that it was now time to get this computer lab up and running. So at the end of this past summer, we painted the lab, set up tables and moved the computers out of the attic and into the new lab. The church office helped find a talented young man to install the necessary hardware to transform the dream of having a computer lab into a reality. The running of wires, networking the computers, exploring how the Internet could be used and installation of software has made the official opening unavailable until November.

This Sunday the high school discussion group was able to go into the lab for the first time. They viewed a video clip from God Tube, returning to their classroom to discuss what they had viewed. Their teacher has been excited to take her class into the lab ever since she has found out that it was being worked on. The Internet was one of the final phases to be completed and we had Internet conduct forms that needed to be completed and signed before the students could have access to the Internet in the lab.

We are finding the youth of all ages are excited to use the computers. This excitement is carrying over to the other rotation workshops as well. We are sincerely appreciative of the software that Sunday Software has developed and made available for use in a church setting. We are also finding our youth attendance to be increasing and our youth population to be growing. One of our church youth has “adopted” the lab (PICTURED AT RIGHT). He is a computer and technology guru and has loaded software, helped with troubleshooting and forwarded quite a list of favored software he would like to see added to our software library.

Of course, developing our computer lab will take time. Our primary goal is to be certain the lab will be useful to all age groups in the church, from preschool level through our high school level. We are anticipating using our computers with our confirmation classes and maybe even adult Bible study classes.