Amy+Dee

See my new wiki project for my church at [|www.vcpc.wikispaces.com]

===Announcement: Valley Community Presbyterian Church has a job posted for a Director of Youth Ministries. If you would like more information, please contact me at a_dee@verizon.net As elder for youth, I can answer any questions about this job. We are looking for someone with experience in this area as well as the appropriate education. While we hope for a seminary grad, ordination is not necessary.===

=Project Proposal=

September 20, 2007
On Monday of this week, I presented the idea of a wiki space to the members of my youth committee group at church. These fine people were told about my course at George Fox and I explained that the space would allow us to communicate in one location and suggested that we try it for the task of discussing ways our ministry supported our new purpose statement. Our dear Jenny responded by asking if doing this would help me in this class! It was an easy agreement.

Wednesday, I spent two hours trying to remember how to set up a page and then do the links. The help videos were very useful in this process. The pages are functional. Adding participants was the most difficult because I could not find a way to get the addresses copied from the group e-mail list to the box where we invite members, so I had to print out the list and enter each individually.

Today, I got a response from our pastor telling me he joined the site. I then looked and actually saw additions to the pages! The fact that this is working is almost as mind boggling as it is exciting.

I tried to add our Presbyterian logo to the site, but keep getting a message that it is either too big or not the correct type of file. That will take another few hours another time!

September 29, 2007
At a church meeting this week, I had two people tell me they "liked" the wiki site, but had yet to add comments. I encouraged them to do so, but we will see. I think the hardest part of doing a project like this is the fact that all the potential participants do not necessarily have the computer skills or the desire to join a site and participate. We are dealing with a skill set along with a mind set!

I asked the youth director to send some digital photos to add to the site, but the site won't let me add them because they are all too big. I think wikis have tremendous potential for communication in groups, but as a place to post photographs, I am not so sure...

Most frustrating is the fact that I long on all the time to see if anything has been added. It is becoming sort of an obsession that I continually think/worry about.

October 10th, 2007
Last night at our session meeting (a sort of "governing board" in the Presbyterian church made up of ordained elders) I presented my wiki space. My fellow elders were somewhat impressed! In fact, Sylvia said my committee was "very hip!" I will have to agree. The following is a copy of my e-mail to all session members about the space and my project:

Hello Everyone,As discussed last night at session, our youth wikispace can be found at the following address: http://vcpc.wikispaces.com/ Please take a look and if you would like to add something, request to join the space and I will let you in. Currently all youth committee members are able to add to the spaces. It is important to remember that it works best if you click on the "home" when going from page to page. Any comments would be appreciated as I am working on this as a small part of my class entitled Christians in a Networked World. If you are interested, the text is __Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age__ by Quentin Schultze who is a University of Illinois graduate and is currently a professor of communications at Calvin College. Not quite a registered Luddite, but he has some wisdom about the benefits and hazards to the information age that we should all be aware of! Youth committee: Next week is our regularly scheduled meeting and you may now add items to the agenda on the wikispace. We will discuss the comments about our purpose statement at that meeting. God bless you all~Amy

As you can see, the cut and paste doesn't work very well on this space, but you all get the idea. So, now the space is officially in our church records and maybe some others will also add to it or build a space of their own. Unfortunately, the elders only meet once a month, so any feedback, unless it is informal at church or through e-mail won't happen until November. My youth group; however, meets next week.

I have requested a photo of our youth to add to the page, but have been met with resistance (see the first item on the very top of this page) Because this is a site that can be read by anyone, I am a bit reluctant to post my feelings as to why I get this resistance, but we are working on that!

October 17th,
We had our monthly youth meeting on Monday and we talked about the wikipage and about the ideas that were left on the pages. In fact, our agenda was printed directly from the page. (At first it was printed directly from the page, but we got the advertisements, so we did a cut and paste to make it look more professional.) I think those who are using technology regularly are accepting of the idea, but others are more reluctant to use the space. Surprisingly, one who is very computer literate is opposed to posting photos of our youth on the page! I guess it is not his problem if students are posting pictures of themselves on Facebook, but for us to post is another matter. That is not an issue for me because I do not find the space to be very user friendly when it comes to photographs anyway. All that I try to add to the page is met with the message that the image is too big.

On Sunday, our communications elder, Shirley told me that she really liked our wikipage and asked many questions about it. She then asked if I would be interested in working with her on our church webpage. I had to decline, as this class has me stretched as it is, but I suggested a few of our youth who would be good at that. The problem with a church web page is that is seems to be a monster that needs to be fed daily and keeping that up to date is a large chore. The office personnel are doing their best, but the site still has old calendar items on it, etc.

As soon as I get the minutes from the last meeting, I will create a space on our page for minutes, so everyone can look at them. I will then let session know where they can go for minutes. I will also include last month's so we can see progress in our committee.

October 20,
Today, I visited three colleague's pages (Tom, Jeanette, Nanci) and left feedback. What great ideas. See their pages to read my postings. Just click on the discussions tab at the top of the page...something I just discovered after reading Scot's directions for this module. There are so many different places to leave or post information, it is hard to keep track of it all.

November 5th,
This has been a very trying couple of weeks both with the youth program and coordinating people...unfortunately, the wiki would not have worked due to the sensitive nature of our situation and I can't use a public forum to take care of many of these issues. I have, however; added a link to our minutes and they will be updated monthly. I received an article from one of our committee members about the use of wikis for 'whistle blowing" and she feels this is an indicator that the wiki is not a reliable place to leave information! Sometimes, it is best to use humor to try to steer people away from ideas that don't make much sense. I am hoping to find the time to meet with the office person who does our webpage so that we can link to that and maybe even find a program that allows for the same type of member editing but with greater flexibility in formatting and adding photos.

November 20,
The best news yet...with no reminders the site was used for addtitions to our agenda for the meeting last night! Right before I left for chruch, I checked the agenda and it was complete and I didn't do it! Also, Kimberlee had mentioned that she read the minutes that were posted on the minutes page. In addition, it was suggested that I talk to Angie in the office about linking this wiki to the chruch website. Do I really want to monitor that as well???

November 29th,
While the site was used for the agenda, I just received the minutes from the last meeting and noticed that they were not posted to the site, so I went ahead and did that, but I also e-mailed them to everyone so I know that they are read by those who are not checking the wiki. This is the difficulty of the wiki, some will not use it, so I end up doing things twice. Another thing I forgot to mention last time was the fact that printing the agenda from the wiki page is very difficult. It prints out so small, I must pull out the dreaded glasses and I already feel old enough...We have discovered that the agenda must be cut and pasted into a word document and then printed out so that it is a normal size. Is this saving us any time?

December 3rd,
Having presented my project, I realized that this has been quite a journey. I learned that it is very difficult to get people to change overnight...especially when it comes to technology! At the Advent Faire on Sunday, a couple committee members asked if the session had all reviewed the wiki site. Honestly, a few have commented on it, but as for the others, I really don't know if they have really looked. Only those who have said something can be counted! As for continuing, we will! There will be no meeting in December, so all business will take place on the wiki! Next week at our session meeting, I will bring the group up to date on my progress and present the ideas generated about our new mission statement. These will be printed directly from the wiki pages and distributed.

December 10, 2007
Yippee!!! Yesterday at church, Pat asked about the need for a mission coordinator and I asked her who told her about it and she replied that nobody did but that she read the minutes on the wiki!!! Success! I wish that had happened before I gave my presentation! OK, it is only one person, but if we start small and celebrate the little steps, we can make progress over time. I will mention this tomorrow night at the session meeting. I do anticipate that in this Advent season, we will have a slow wiki month and that is fine as I wish to celebrate, anticipate and worship during this time.

December 12, 2007
I will be meeting with our Pastor tomorrow at 2:00 to talk about goals and objectives for the way session operates and does church work in hopes of turning it into "the work of the church" as well as goals for improving our communication between elders. I am thinking that a wiki is not it. In fact, I am sure that we first need to improve our interpersonal communication before we can move to technology. With such diversity on our session, some discussions can become quite heated and there are many issues we need to examine well. Social justice issues don't get the time deserved if we are unable to listen well to the voice of God in those around us. There will be no youth meeting next week because of Christmas preparations, so we will see if anything gets posted!