Okay, I got an iPad. On day one. It wasn’t my plan… I don’t know what happened. I was going to wait and let other people go first – let other people remind us why we shouldn’t buy “generation 1” of any new product. But then the glowing reviews started to hit… then I found myself in the vicinity of a Best Buy… found myself calling just to see if they had any left (they did)… found myself looking for justification (“I’m going to by one eventually anyway…”).
And then, boom. There I was, walking out of Best Buy with an iPad in my hands. And I really, really like it. My kids and I were all snuggled in bed the night before last, watching “The Muppets Take Manhattan” streamed directly from Netflix to my iPad. Whee! This morning I was thumbing through today’s issue of USA Today on my iPad while eating my cereal. (Honey Nut Cheerios, if you’re interested.) We’ve been taking it out to eat with us, and we’ll all play shuffleboard on the iPad together while we wait for our food to come. Unlike a little iPod Touch or my iPhone, the iPad games just yell out “play together!” It’s family fun. And I think it’s going to catch on.
Why is that relevant to this blog? Well, maybe it isn’t. But technology is always changing, and we need to figure out how to use what’s next to help kids learn about God. So as we adapt What’s in the Bible to be used in Sunday Schools, one of the ideas being kicked around is creating activities to support the teaching that leaders would walk kids through on an iPad. Maybe we’re ahead of the market there, but an iPad is cheaper than a laptop, and much easier to use and more interactive than a tiny little netbook. So we could be on to something here.
By the way, thanks again for all the Big Bang – Genesis 1 comments, and the continued civility of the discourse. I’m not going to jump in to the discussion with more opinions of my own, because fundamentally what I’m trying to do with WITB is teach the essentials of our faith, and recognize when there is an area that is unresolved. Genesis 1 is an unusual genre of Scripture known as “exalted prose” and has been confounding theologians since the time of Augustine. Once the majority of conservative Evangelical scholars come to agreement on how best to interpret this tricky bit, I’ll present their conclusion clearly and with zest! Until then, though, in the words of the leading Intelligent Design proponent Philip Johnson, when there is a controversy, “teach the controversy!” We’ll talk about the major positions and let you decide which you believe is correct. Hope you don’t mind!
On that note… here’s a really nice review of What’s in the Bible we just came across today… (click here to read it).
