“Today’s pupils are accustomed to…”
In my basement where my computer is set up home office, I have a shelf filled with a number of older catechetical texts. Some of these were given to me by friends and family; some were rescued from the dustbin at work. All were published before the Second Vatican Council, and despite their age, there is still wisdom to be found in them. A few weeks ago I was flipping through the Confraternity Teacher’s Guide: A Textbook for the Training of Teachers in CCD Schools of Religion (written by the Very Rev. Joseph B. Collins, SS, in 1960) and came across this quote in a section on...
Read MoreThe Grumpy Old Catechist on E-Books
For all my love of technology, I’m still a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to e-books. I’m simply not convinced that the convenience of being able to carry around a library in your backpack offsets what I see as some very real and core problems with the technology. As I’ve refined my thoughts on the subject I continue to have two problems with e-books: one philosophical, one technological. My philosophical problem stems from the fact that, as highly editable constructs, e-books enable the kind of post-publication tinkering that now plagues movie-making. Imagine if J.R.R....
Read MoreThings Heard and Done at #CNMC11
This past Saturday I attended the Catholic New Media Conference in Kansas City. I had a great time meeting some fellow Catholic new media enthusiasts, including lots of people I follow on Twitter and Google+. These were some of the highlights: I started the day with an unexpected Holy Hour, thanks to the fact that I wrote down the wrong start time for Mass. (Doh!) “What counts isn’t the numbers, but the presence of the Holy Spirit.” – St. Anne Flanagan, FSP “ We need to do a better job of recruiting talent and leaders for Catholic New Media.” –...
Read MoreMan and Machine
While it may seem that in the industrial process it is the machine that “works” and man merely supervises it, making it function and keeping it going in various ways, it is also true that for this very reason industrial development provides grounds for reproposing in new ways the question of human work. Both the original industrialization that gave rise to what is called the worker question and the subsequent industrial and post-industrial changes show in an eloquent manner that, even in the age of ever more mechanized “work”, the proper subject of work continues to...
Read MoreWhat Web Browsers Can Teach Us About Methodology in Ministry
Permit me a little rant for a moment: A friend mentioned on Google+ yesterday that he is not allowed to install Chrome on his office computer. I’m sure his IT department has perfectly legitimate reasons. Heck, as someone who’s done a little IT work I understand the value of standardization across a company’s platforms: it makes maintenance and troubleshooting much easier if you don’t have to manage multiple programs, and locking down computers helps keep more… adventurous employees from accidentally installing malicious software. (For the record, I’m one...
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