Apple Watch Review

I've now had my  Watch for 2 months.  I've held off writing about it for 2 reasons,  I wasn't sure what to say and how would it apply to Youth Ministry.

It's time to talk about it, but first let me put this out there.  I'm a tech guy, I love tech.  Which frankly, explains why I write for this blog.  Secondly, I'm a watch guy. Always have been.  And when the 2 combine...well, I'm in a better place.

IDEA: Have students text in their vote.

Our student ministry is about to have a simple and very familiar thing in youth ministry: a movie night.

It's simple until you get to 1 thing, the movie to be watched.  So as a group of student leaders and I were discussing what movie to watch they came up with a great idea... let's vote on it.  Allow the students to help make the choice.  It gives buy-in and allows everyone's voice to be heard in at least a general sense.

So rather than having a stack of acceptable DVD titles ready to go we did something a little different. We voted on it.

Is Facebook dead to our students?

This topic has been visited a lot recently, but according to a recent study, although the social media options are wide open, for many students Facebook is still a viable option.

Read the full article here.

Pebble-icious

I admit it.  Unlike the many younger, more "hip" people that get to hang out with as a youth pastor, I am a watch guy.  There I said it.  I like watches.  Always have.  I even prefer analog to digital because I like the classy look.  But since the invention of the calculator-watch (of which I saved up for as a young teenager - and I know that really dates me) watches haven't really evolved into much that could be considered "techy" at all.  While some have heart-rate monitors and such, the overall function hasn't changed much in the past 30 years.

I admit that I was one of those fanboys that utilized the square iPod Nano with a cool watchband and had a watch that people asked about, but it was far from anything more than a conversation piece.  I wanted something more.

My family surprised me on Christmas morning with just that.  A watch that was oh-so-much more.  A Pebble watch, that niche kickstarted project that has made it to retail prime-time.  It works with Android and with the latest SDK release it works REALLY well with iOS.  I mean it really is a fairly seamless experience.

[read more after the break]