education

The Jesus SeM&Minar as Teaching Tool

November 27, 2012 By James F. McGrath 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned here before the class activity I use when teaching my course on the historical Jesus. I get students to bring M&Ms, and we re-enact the voting on sayings of Jesus undertaken by the Jesus Seminar. And we call ourselves the Jesus SeM&Minar. Keith Reich recently tried the activity in his class. Click through [...]

Filed Under: education, historical Jesus Tagged With: education, historical Jesus, Jesus SeM&Minar, Jesus Seminary, students, teaching, university, voting 1 Comment

How and What we Learn and Teach

November 13, 2012 By James F. McGrath Leave a Comment

I am taking an online course at Butler, offered to faculty who are gearing up ourselves to offer online courses. Here are some videos that were shared as part of the course, which I think offer important food for thought for educators. This classic bit of comedy makes the point that if you are going [...]

Filed Under: education, technology Tagged With: education, HTML, hypertext, interactivity, learning, pedagogy, students, technology, university, Web 2.0, XML Leave a Comment

What Religious Extremists Fear Most

October 13, 2012 By James F. McGrath 3 Comments

HT Jim West

Filed Under: education, fundamentalism Tagged With: book, education, fear, girl, Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan, Taliban, terrorism, terrorists, ملاله یوسفزۍ‎ 3 Comments

Jesus Learned

September 7, 2012 By James F. McGrath 33 Comments

I have been talking a lot lately about how Biblical inerrantists are forced to twist the Bible in order to defend their doctrine about the Bible. People with a certain way of viewing Jesus do the same to Luke's Gospel. There is a famous story in Luke 2 about Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem when [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Christology, education, fundamentalism, Gospel of Luke, inerrancy Tagged With: Apollinarianism, Christology, discipleship, education, Gospel, Gospel of Luke, heresy, Jesus, learning, temple, twelve 33 Comments

You Know What I Did Last Summer

August 29, 2012 By James F. McGrath 2 Comments

Summers are special times for professors. At the start of them, we make implausibly grandiose plans about what we are going to accomplish during them. At the end of them, we wonder where the time has gone. Here are some of the things I did this summer: Took students to Israel. Finished work on translating [...]

Filed Under: education, Israel, Mandaeans, monotheism, music, travel Tagged With: 40, Book of John, Butler University, education, electric guitar, holiday, In Your Eyes, Israel, keyboard, Mandaean, Pavane pour une infante defunte, Peter Gabriel, piano, professors, Ravel, research, songwriting, students, summer, translation, U2, vacation 2 Comments

Bible-Related Nonsense

August 24, 2012 By James F. McGrath 20 Comments

I focus on information literacy skills in my course on the Bible – i.e. the ability to identify and utilize reliable sources of information amid the wide array of sources of varying degrees of reliability – and ridiculousness – that abound on the internet. And so I asked them at the end of class last [...]

Filed Under: Bible, education Tagged With: Bible, Biblical, cafeteria, education, fear, information literacy, Louisiana, lunch, lunches, nonsense, palm, revelation, scanner, school, vein 20 Comments

Same Old Question

August 23, 2012 By James F. McGrath 1 Comment

I found the image at Political Graffiti. It seems to me that there is a more serious parallel that one can draw between Christian discipleship and education in general. Traditionally, Christianity has been characterized by the vast majority of its devotees thinking in this term, so that even its teachers have ended up “teaching to the [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, education, humor, New Testament Tagged With: cartoon, Christianity, disciples, education, ethics, exam, humor, Jesus, Mark Twain, morality, objective, question, reading, standardized, student, test, testing 1 Comment