As some of you may know by now, I am trying to blog about my experiences as a Tech Guy for our youth group, but also about learning Website development as well. All I can say sometimes is, “What did I get myself into?”
Okay, seriously, there is just so much to learn and do with web development that an entire year could be spent just learning the ins and outs of one particular program. My choice so far has been Joomla for the website stuff and WordPress for the blogs. This past week for Powerhouse I added in a whole new WordPress site and set up most of it for “Podcasting” in the future. For now though I am using it to stream or offer downloads of the sermons and special events of our youth pastor.
My first experience of using WordPress was great, but finding a plug-in that works well was the challenge. So I decided to go with the one made especially for sermons. Sermon Browser has been excellent right from the start for this new adventure. I had very little problems getting it up and running the way I wanted to. I was able to use my ftp file transfer program to transfer the sermon files onto my server using the recommend links. I even went so far as to make sure some of my files were “tagged” properly using the information I had available. WOW, it was really easy and everyone of the sermon .mp3 files I added worked without any problems. (I did have to add an audio player recommended by Sermon Browser.)
The podcast program I helped set up with our church’s website was not as easy and it is still having problems. Which is probably something we are going to have to change in the future. But as with all things, this is a learning experience and the more of it you do, the better and quicker you become at it.
So now that I have that process going, the next big thing coming up for me is the website developement of our School Website. I will let you know once that has been posted and it goes live. If you want to see the demo version, you may check it out at http://acslions.ashlandgbc.org This is just a play area for now until I can go live with the entire site. Hopefully that will be happening in the next 3 weeks. So keep your eyes posted and thanks for checking this site out.
By the way, I may not post very often, but I will keep posting some of my experiences and thoughts about Chruch Tech Media. I do have a few sites that I highly recommend. Check out the links on the side for some of them!
I have looked and thought about blogging for a long time now. I just realized that I haven’t blogged since before the school year started. Well, hopefully that will be changing now. I have been immeresed in so many ways with school and all things tech related to teaching computers, Latin, and coordinating events for Powerhouse. So let me catch up for the past several months.
The school year started off with a really big bang. I hit an all-time high of 70+ students taking Latin courses from Sevenstaracademy.org This is my “stay-at-home” job that can really keep me pretty busy at times. Plus I start my 2nd year at Ashland Christian School teaching Computers. As some of you may know, I made a committment to work on the Schools Website this year, much like I did the Powerhouse Website. So in thinking about what I wanted to do with it, I heard about putting in for a grant through a local foundation.
So I dreamed big for the grant and did some research. I wanted some graphic design software and tools that would make my job easier in the long run for the school. So I applied for a grant to cover the cost of Adobe’s CS4 Production Suite. A month later, I recieved notification that I was awarded the large part of the funding for the grant. Now several months later, here I sit completely amazed at the power and creativity that God has unleashed in my life. Needless to say, this is one of the hardest programs for me to get my thoughts around. Photoshop and AfterEffects are amazing programs. It is going to allow me to do exactly what I was hoping it would, but the learning curve requires a lot of time. So needless to say, I have been a student, a teacher, a tech-coordinator, a father, husband, and everything else in-between, all while trying to keep my walk with God alive and fresh.
So for the past several months, I have been finding so many tutorials and websites that teach some pretty cool things. One of my favorite websites has to be Brad Zimmerman’s Church Media Design TV. Brad does a weekly video pod-cast showing some of the “tips, tricks and tools for you, the media designer”.
Another website that has been a great resource for me in learning all of the in’s and out’s of these great programs has been Lynda.com. I got a free month of training as part of the Adobe Suite’s bonuses for registering my product. So I gave it a try and have falling in love with the “One-on-One” training videos that they offer. Sure it may cost $25.00 a month for the basic subscription, but it is so worth every bit of it. I have learned a ton of stuff already and will continue to do more with it.
So, that brings me up to current life experiences. The past several weeks have been spent getting ready for Snow Retreat 2010 with our Youth Group. This year we are inviting two FCA groups from some local schools and another church. Trinity Baptist Church will be joining us this year as well. Already it is shaping up to be a great weekend with Ward 9 coming once again and Jon Summers will be leading the sessions. So more about that hopefully this week.
Hello everyone! As part of some of the newest changes going on in Powerhouse, we are starting to work on a few blogs and other cool things. Since I am undertaking the Technical aspects of Powerhouse and will be doing some rather interesting things here and there, I thought I would start by creating my own Tech Blog for our Youth group.
My name is John Ross and I am both a computer teacher, an online teacher of Latin, and a few other things including a father and a husband. But for the purposes of this blog, I am going to take on the new role of a volunteer tech coordinator for the Ashland Grace Brethren Church’s Youth Group, POWERHOUSE.
Today Cara and I signed up for a special deal to transplant all three of our main websites here at Ashland GBC into one server and combine our web building skills to create and modify our existing services. I am hoping that this will make our lives a little easier in the long run as we try to streamline our entire process here.
In the process of becoming a tech geek, I have been challenged by the growing trend of some really neat tools on the web, including videos, online social networking groups and blogs, including following some really cool blogs using a Google Reader. I will include more about that later. But for now, I wanted to include the following video that I came across today from one of those blogs I have been following. It really impressed me today and I hope it will you as well.
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