This week, Con Campbell shares how he uses technology in his role in teaching and studying theology.
Con Campbell is a lecturer at Moore College and contributor to Read Better, Preach Better. Over to you Con.
There are lots of ways in which technology helps me to do what I do. I think the best way to illustrate this is to describe how I’ve used technology during a week teaching at Moore College.
Monday
This was an exciting teaching/technology day for me. Facebook enabled me to get access to a pre-publication journal article that I used to prepare for my Advanced Greek class that day. I met New Testament Professor Jonathan Pennington in the US last year, and we became facebook friends. About a month ago he facebooked me to ask some questions about some of my work that he was planning to use in his teaching at Southern Baptist Seminary. And last week I facebooked him about an issue he’s been working on. He then sent me and article he’s written that won’t be published until later in the year. So, it’s fair to say that facebook helped me to have cutting-edge research feed into my lecturing!
Tuesday
For my New Testament 3 class, I used the Mac that’s built into the classroom lectern, and the built-in projector, to teach on 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. I had flowcharted the Greek text of the passage on my Mac, and brought the flowchart to class on my USB drive. With the text on the screen for the whole class to see, I used my laser-pointer to talk through the text. We were able to talk about the text, while looking at the same thing, and I could show exactly what I was talking about by using the pointer. This is my preferred way to teach New Testament texts.
Wednesday
I did some writing for my blog on evangelistic preaching (plug: [url=http://www.readbetterpreachbetter.com]http://www.readbetterpreachbetter.com[/url]). I’m relatively new to blogging (writing posts that is, rather than just reading them), and have found it a good way to generate conversation about preaching, theology, and exegesis. I did a series on keeping your Greek over the summer that several of my students read, as well as pastors from around the world. I’ve found blogging to be a great way to extend my ministry, and it helps to sharpen my thinking about certain issues, since readers’ feedback is immediate and often quite helpful.
Thursday
I’ve been reading Tom Wright’s new book, Justification, and wanted to test out some of his claims. So I used the software program Accordance which makes it very easy to search through the Bible in its original languages. I was able to search Paul’s letters for certain terms that I was interested in, and looked up how they were used in the Greek version of the Old Testament. Technology has absolutely revolutionized the way biblical studies is conducted now, and this was just one of the many, many times that it has helped me in my research and preparation for lecturing.
Friday
I received two emails from scholars with whom I expect I’ll be interacting in the future. One was from a scholar who didn’t like my review of his book. The other was from a scholar inviting me to write a commentary on the Greek text of Colossians. While I was in an all-day meeting at college, I stayed in touch with these scholars using my iPhone. I hope no one at the meeting noticed!
