Creative Bible Study is a useful website for you to know about. They have children’s lessons, pre-k lessons, object lessons, and many other Bible study/teaching tools.
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Archive for October, 2009
Let me place a disclaimer on this post. I try to personally use everything that I post about, however, I came across this site and have to admit that I have not downloaded the software. I only know what the Kidzui site tells me. Nonetheless, this looks like a great tool for us to offer our parents. Just be sure to try it yourself before you offer it to them!
**Kind of cool that Todd McKeever at Take 2.0 blogged about this on the same day! We didn’t coordinate, I promise!
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Earlier in the year, I posted about Jot Form, a free “What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) online survey generator. Another tool you may want to check out is Zoho Creator. Zoho is another WYSIWYG form/database creator, but I think that it has a little bit better interface for when you look at submitted data and the free version also includes a file uploader, which is a little easier to manage than Jotform.
You may use these for program evaluations, parent feedback, as volunteer recruitment tools, or to register participants in your ministries. They are both very good form generators. I actually prefer Jotform, I think it is easier to use overall, but wanted to make sure you knew about this one as well in case you liked the interface better.
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How many of you evaluate your volunteers? If you do, great! If not, I’ve got a little tool you can use…as always…free of charge!
This coming Sunday, my Sunday School Coordinator (Amy you are the best!) and I are going to start doing 2 minute walk throughs in each classroom. The object is for us to pop into the room, get an idea of what is going on in the 4 areas of: Teacher, Kids, Content, and Environment, and provide a bit of feedback for the teachers.
At first, I thought evaluating teachers was going to be more difficult than wiping cheese doodle dust off of my 3 year old’s face, but I had a stunning idea. At a meeting to kick off the new school year, I decided to present the 4 key areas of evaluation and the 2 minute walk through concept to the teachers. They liked it, so I asked them to identify the individual points in each area they would like us to evaluate them on. 10 minutes later and I had a “teacher generated” evaluation tool! The burden was not on me, it was now on them because they came up with it!
The plan is to pop into each room about 6-7 times per year. I’ve told them to also use the form (which will be hanging on a clipboard by their lightswitch) as a self evaluation form or to have a friend come in, observe, and complete the evaluation for them. This is just a new and small step in generating greater excellence and accountability in the efforts of my volunteers.
You can download the document here on the Volunteer Training page. It’s a Word document that you can feel free to adjust. No copyrights on this one!
What about you? What do you do to evaluate your volunteers?
Muddy River Media is a nice little site for countdowns, looping effects, a few videos, and some sermon theme packages. It’s definitely not a gold mine, but the work they have done is quality and it is a well designed site. I hope that others will catch onto what they are doing and support Mark Fogarty’s work. Something like this has great potential in the market of highly priced media material.
Eyejot is super cool. You log into their site, record a video from a webcamera, and email it out. I have used it for some personal messages, but I had some ideas about how to use it in ministry:
- Send an Eyejot to every parent in your ministry on Thursday, helping them to connect with their child about the material you will be teaching on Sunday.
- Have groups of children Eyejot messages to missionaries your ministry or church has adopted.
- Send Eyejots to kids (via parent email most likely) when you know they are sick or have been out for a while.
- Eyejot your volunteers with critical news or announcements. This way they see your expressions and emotions and don’t misinterpret email communication.
- Send Eyejot updates to parents when taking kids to camp over the summer.
- Use Eyejot to remind volunteers or parents of upcoming meetings.
- Send an Eyejot to a volunteer, kid, or parent just to let them know you were thinking about them or praying for them.
What about you? Have you used this tool for ministry? What creative ways can you think of to use Eyejot?
This one is for the techie’s out there. Go to 5am Productions if you would like to get a few quality loops for worship or countdown backgrounds. When you download the zipped file, you get about 100 .jpg images. You’ll need to import those images into a program like Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premier, Cyberlink Power Director, or iMovie, set the .jpg images to go for a duration of about 1/30th of a second (30 frames per second), and then publish it as a .wmv, .mov, or .mpg file. Not too complicated, huh???
I’m starting a new monthly series called the “Leadership Nugget.” The purpose of this is to offer my readers an article or thought provoking “nugget” that they can place on walls in their ministry area, in newsletters, as encouragements to volunteers, or as recruiting material. I hope these tools will help your church better understand the priority of children’s ministry!
This month, I’m offering a resource I wrote called “No Other Ministry.” I hope you could post it on a wall outside your office or include it in a newsletter. If you do copy it in a publication, please be sure to credit my name and web address. Thanks and please pray for me. On Thursday and Friday I will embark on a journey of doctoral exams lasting a total of 8 hours. Yes, I have to write for 8 hours (at least I get two days to do it!). Should God grace me with a passing grade, I will be a doctoral candidate and will finish up the rest of my dissertation so that I may graduate (for the last time ever!) in May! You can read more about the Doctor of Education program I am in here.
Download .png file here.
