Still some snow on Southern Alps. Lovely views on flight down to conference this morning.
Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
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Over at Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins there a link through to the Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World project. This project aims to develop a set of curricular materials “designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments.”
Jenkins has some more detailed discussion about it and some of the case studies here as well.
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From the religion and media file: AFP: Hajj being live-streamed on YouTube.
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Interesting article on student evaluations at: How to Read a Student Evaluation – Do Your Job Better – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Institutions develop a myriad of forms and processes for measuring teaching and learning effectiveness in the classroom. Some of these are formative, targeting student understanding and learning during a course, while others are, more commonly, summative – the classic course evaluation form in the last hour of a course’s semester. For academics they play a significant part in things like performance reviews, promotion, and continuation/tenure applications.
One of the things I find them useful for is getting traction to restructure courses that I’ve inherited or team-teach – always useful to be able to identify where something can by significantly improved (often will minimal effort), or to see what is working well. -
From Toronto, the latest issue of Tyndale University College and Seminary’s magazine focuses specifically on church and technology, including the summary of some research they’ve done on technology use in church in Ontario.
You can access the entire magazine in electronic form here: Tyndale, The Magazine | eVersion | Tyndale
The summary article is available here: Church and Technology | Tyndale.
And you can download the infographic from the article here: Church and Technology Infographic | Tyndale
Hat tip to John Dyer at The Church and Technology Survey and Infographic | Don’t Eat The Fruit who has some brief comments on it.
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Related to last week’s posting Greenflame» Blog Archive » Election resources – 2011, there’s a joint church leaders’ release just out detailing their vision for New Zealand society. See Leader’s vision / Features / Anglican Taonga – Anglican Taonga.
Interestingly, no Catholic presence in the signatories, though an election related statement from the Catholic church can be found here: The Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand | Bishops’ Statements | A Statement for the New Zealand General Election 2011.
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We’ve pretty much played Settlers of Catan and its expansions to death (though recently we’ve been playing the Settlers of America Trails to Rails variant a bit). However, there looks like there’s a new update coming out that explores the impact of exploitation in the game, giving it a bit of an ethical twist. Could be interesting.
You can read about it at See Oil Springs of Catan explores the tragedy of the commons, while there’s more about the scenario at Tragedy of the commons – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For another game with an ethical dimension see Terra | Board Game | BoardGameGeek.
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Given the shift towards public and institutional libraries moving towards the eBook work, this raises some interesting questions.
See Amazon, OverDrive, and Kindle! Oh my! | The Digital Immigrant.
(P.S. Not entirely convinced by Auckland Library’s Overdrive link up in terms of pragmatics – just too fiddly and unfriendly to struggle with.)
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Just checked the letterbox on the way back from a walk with the kids and found my copy of this book in it. Was wondering when it would arrive.
Transhumanism and Transcendence | Georgetown University Press.
From the blurb:
Transhumanism and Transcendence
Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement
Ronald Cole-Turner, Editor
The timeless human desire to be more beautiful, intelligent, healthy, athletic, or young has given rise in our time to technologies of human enhancement. Athletes use drugs to increase their strength or stamina; cosmetic surgery is widely used to improve physical appearance; millions of men take drugs like Viagra to enhance sexual performance. And today researchers are exploring technologies such as cell regeneration and implantable devices that interact directly with the brain. Some condemn these developments as a new kind of cheating—not just in sports but in life itself—promising rewards without effort and depriving us most of all of what it means to be authentic human beings. “Transhumanists,” on the other hand, reject what they see as a rationalizing of human limits, as if being human means being content forever with underachieving bodies and brains. To be human, they insist, is to be restless with possibilities, always eager to transcend biological limits.As the debate grows in urgency, how should theology respond? Christian theologians recognize truth on both sides of the argument, pointing out how the yearnings of the transhumanists—if not their technological methods—find deep affinities in Christian belief. In this volume, Ronald Cole-Turner has joined seasoned scholars and younger, emerging voices together to bring fresh insight into the technologies that are already reshaping the future of Christian life and hope.
Essays include:
1. Introduction: The Transhumanist Challenge
Ronald Cole-Turner2. Contextualizing a Christian Perspective on Transcendence and Human Enhancement: Francis Bacon, N. F. Fedorov, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Michael S. Burdett3. Transformation and the End of Enhancement: Insights from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
David Grumett4. Dignity and Enhancement in the Holy City
Karen Lebacqz5. Progress and Provolution: Will Transhumanism Leave Sin Behind?
Ted Peters6. The Hopeful Cyborg
Stephen Garner7. Artificial Wombs and Cyborg Births: Postgenderism and Theology
J. Jeanine Thweatt-Bates8. Taking Leave of the Animal? The Theological and Ethical Implications of Transhuman Projects
Celia Deane-Drummond9. Chasing Methuselah: Transhumanism and Christian Theosis in Critical Perspective
Todd T. W. Daly10. Human or Vulcan? Theological Consideration of Emotional Control Enhancement
Michael L. Spezio11. Whose Salvation? Which Eschatology? Transhumanism and Christianity as Contending Salvific Religions
Brent Waters12. Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology
Gerald McKenny13. Transhumanism and Christianity
Ronald Cole-Turner -
With the general election approaching a number of different groups have started producing resources for churches etc. A couple of recent ones just out include:
- Resources for the General Election, Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago, New Zealand. Includes an introduction to thinking about faith and politics, and resources on:
- ‘Is there a New Zealand identity?’
- ‘Working for Families’ (on families and relationships)
- ‘AA – Alcohol and Advertising’
- ‘Justice, Judgment and Jails’ (thinking about crime and punishment)
- The Spring edition of the PCANZ Spanz magazine looks at the election and the wellbeing of children and families – See Spring 2011 | Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand (Available there as a PDF file)
- Resources from the Salvation Army’s Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit (SPPU): General Election – The Salvation Army New Zealand, Fiji & Tonga Territory
- New Zealand Christian Network – 2011 Voting referendum; Election questions 2011; & Useful Election resources
Some other resources from around the place – church and non-church – (and from past elections) include:
- Referendum on the voting system | Referendum 2011
- The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services have a number of publications from the 2008 election on their web site – haven’t seen any 2011 ones yet. Click here for publications in their database.
- Old, but still useful, CASI resources
Updated
I’ve now added links to all the major political parties web sites. Will see if I can find some blogs later to add (any suggestions?).
- National Party
- Labour Party
- Green Party
- ACT Party
- Maori Party
- Mana Party
- United Future Party
- New Zealand First (NZ First also have the web site nzfirst.tv, which made me smile as the ‘.tv’ bit means ‘Tuvalu’.)
- Progressive Party (for the sake of completeness)