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The Blogference is happening

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The 2010 Blogference has started. With a big bang. Lot’s of thoughts flowing. What’s a blogference? It’s a conference of great ideas without leaving home. But it’s even better. You get to ask the speakers questions. On day 1 yesterday, 5 articles generated 148 tremendous interactions.

My article goes up tomorrow (Thursday). But before that, there are 5 more great articles today, and the interactions are just starting.

So get on over to the blogference. Read the inside scoop. Click here to go.

What? You’re still here? Why?

What is a Blogference?

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I will be taking part in the 2010 Campus Crusade for Christ Blogference. What is a blogference? It’s a conference without the con. You don’t travel anywhere. You can attend in your pajamas.

The blogference is 13-15 April. The focus is RE-Think. I’ll be writing on the topic Self-Directed Leadership Development. Come on by and comment.

Brian explains more…

You can join the Facebook fan page here. You can follow on Twitter at @cccblogference.

Falling leaves, in the spring

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There are leaves everywhere. It’s spring and the leaves are falling!

We have laurel oaks in our yard. These are similar to the live oaks. They lose their leaves in the spring. It seems that when the sap rises and new leaves are budding, these oaks give up their old leaves.

There is even a period of time where the old leaves co-exist with the new growth. But their time is limited. They are dead and dying. They will drop away.

Interesting.

And very much like the Spirit-filled life. Paul outlines this in Ephesians 4:22-24. We are to put off the old and to put on the new. It doesn’t all happen at one time. For the rest of my life, I will be putting off the old, and putting on the new.

Some stuff is dead, I just don’t realize it yet. Kind of like the oak tree in my front yard.

Academic Labor or Educational Capital

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We presented the mLearning project at a recent meeting of the heads of our schools of leadership around the world. Our development partner in the academic world made a very strong point, in a presentation of his, about the transition from academic labor to educational capital. His point is that under the older academic labor system, the cost of preparing a course was very low, but the cost of training thousands with that course was very high, based on a professor’s salary to teach students 25-50 at a time.

The newer model of educational capital reverses the this. The cost of preparing a course is high, but the cost of using the course to train thousands is very low.

At this conference, Dr. Richard Pratt shared that Third Millennium is finding this to be true. The cost of producing their courses is expensive on a per-minute basis for final course material. That means a 30 minute module will be very expensive to produce, but it is very cheap to distribute on the Internet or even by DVD.

Our mLearning Project in East Africa is a pilot project to address several questions. One major question is how good is good enough for a distance learning course? The goal is transforming lives, not only transferring knowledge or producing quality courseware.

We will be creating educational capital with a desire to transform lives at the lowest cost possible so that we can create large amounts of educational capital.

mLearning: A Mobile Opportunity

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Brad drives an hour from the closest paved road to his village of 2,000 people. His refrigerator runs on kerosene, he collects rainwater for drinking, and he uses solar panels to provide electricity. When asked how far he has to drive to get mobile phone coverage, he replies, “Oh, we have coverage at the house.”

A missionary teaching Bible classes in the poorest areas of Nairobi, Kenya tells of his students’ daily struggle to feed themselves. But almost every student has a mobile phone. They need them to get work.

Since 1994, Kay and I have pioneered internet technologies to help people understand God’s love for them and to help believers grow in their faith. We now have an amazing opportunity to help pioneer in the use of mobile technologies.

In many parts of the world, mobile phones are leapfrogging traditional internet connections. The U.N. recently reported that one-fourth of the global population use the internet, but more than half use a mobile phone. Text messaging is used everywhere.

Mobile phones are a convenience for us in the U.S and other developed countries. But for people like Brad in Tanzania, mobile phones solve the problem of the last mile: the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer.

We are excited to partner with a public university to develop a solution to the last mile. The university team is developing the technology. Campus Crusade for Christ’s Nairobi International School of Theology is developing the course material. Our Global Technology Office is helping organize a trial project in East Africa. The trial project will involve completing a class entirely through using a mobile phone and text messaging.

Kay and I will be in Manila, Philippines in mid-March to explain this opportunity to the International Leadership Consortium which gives leadership to all Campus Crusade’s 12 schools of theology. These leaders are very interested in the mLearning project.

How have you seen mobile phones used in discipleship?