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My journey toward the Digital Discipleship Boot Camp began when I attended a Digital Church Conference in Cincinnati. As a youth minister, I understand the importance of using technology and social media as evangelization tools in order to reach younger generations. Although I had been using video (e.g. movie clips, YouTube) in youth ministry settings and had been communicating with students via text, Facebook and email, I felt there was much I could learn from the Digital Discipleship Boot Camp to reach more students and their families.

The Digital Discipleship Boot Camp’s format in using technology to teach technology greatly enhanced the learning process. The use of webinars to facilitate the learning process was a big help for me personally. With an irregular work schedule, the ability to make-up missed webinars allowed me to keep up with the workload and assignments. I was able to make practical applications for each of the modules throughout the boot camp allowing me to reflect on the various ways I could add value and excitement to my ministry.

As mentioned above, social media has been a big part of my youth ministry for several years. Since the beginning of the digital boot camp, I have incorporated several of the Web 2.0 technologies into my ministry and into the work place. The first addition was to get our religious education staff members working with wikis as a way to record, maintain and update meeting minutes of our meetings. Using Wikispaces has allowed us to be more organized and on track with regard to events, duties and deadlines. It is becoming a useful tool for us. The second addition was in using mobile devices as a learning tool and not just for communication. We have incorporated the use of cell phone into some of our high school lessons and have used them in a scavenger hunt. This use of technology engaged the students in new ways and is something we will do more often. A third way in which Web 2.0 has been used in our youth ministry is through making videos for use in our retreats. This is an active way in which the teens can develop skits and commercials to help enhance our learning of the faith and the overall retreat experience.

My project has been to create a blog. This blog is geared to helping parents teach and model the Catholic faith to and for their children. As the blog develops, we hope that we can get parents in the parish to help as contributors by sharing their experiences on the blog. Our blog is linked to our parish Facebook page and to our parish website making it more accessible.

The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS/S) established by the ISTE were new to me prior to DDBC, but have become a resource for using Web 2.0 technologies. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has developed a social media policy, which we follow. With the NET/S standards and the social media policy, I am able to create and model responsible and safe use of technology that promotes Christian values. The standards help me to be more intentional about creating this safe environment. We are using these standards with our core team and weaving them into our lessons where applicable.

Although somewhat teach savvy coming into the DDBC, I have learned much that will help me evangelize better and reach more teens, especially those that are non-gathered as well as reaching their parents.