Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

technology

AI, Google Assistant, Robotics, the Church, and Your Faith

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Are you paying attention to the rapid advancements in AI?

We often joke that Siri, Alexa, or Google are listening into our conversations to gather data and serve us up with targeted advertisements, but they know better and would obviously never admit to that (ask any one of those assistants if they’re spying on you to see what they say). So if they aren’t, then why does the internet increasingly feel personal and up in our business?

AI, or artificial intelligence

Recently, Google stunned the tech world (and everyone else) with their new Assistant. You can watch it in action here, but here’s basically what they showcased: the ability to call a human being and have it intelligently make an appointment for you!

Can you believe that? That wasn’t a human making the appointment for you!

Have you heard of Move 37?

A couple years ago, Lee Sedol and AlphaGo faced off in a historic Go match where the 37th move made history. If you’re not familiar with Go, it’s “an abstract strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent.”[1] It was invented over 2500 years ago in China and is exponentially more complex than chess (fun fact: it’s one of the few games that I’ve yet to beat my dad in).

This match was partly so historical, not just because one of the world’s best Go players (Lee Sedol) lost, but because he lost to a bot. Okay, maybe “bot” isn’t the right word to describe AlphaGo, but the fact of the matter is that AlphaGo is not a human—it is an artificially intelligent machine designed by DeepMind, a London AI lab owned by Google.

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4 Ways to “Flip the Classroom” in your Church

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*You can watch a video of me explaining this concept here

Common leadership dilemmas:

  • When’s the last time 100% of your leaders showed up at a training event?
  • Do you ever find yourself summarizing training for those who missed it?
  • How frequently do you hold orientation training for new leaders?

You wouldn’t have these problems if everyone just cleared their schedule for your training events (like they should!!), but sadly this just isn’t the case. So what’s the solution? Is it to hold additional training events? Or is there a smarter way to train all of your leaders?

The purpose of this post is to introduce the concept of “flipping the classroom,” as well as provide you with ways to use this in your church leadership.

Have you ever heard of “flipping the classroom?”

This is a hot topic in the educational world that is rapidly gaining ground as the new standard amongst educators. Let me explain it for you.

In the traditional classroom…

  • The teacher is the sage on the stage.
  • The classroom time consists of the teacher lecturing, possibly answering questions, and then assigning homework.
  • The teacher needs to standardize the lesson, so she can’t possibly engage both the lowest common denominator, and the overachiever.
  • Homework is completed at home. So, if the student doesn’t understand something, they have to either ask a parent, tutor, friend, or go back to class with their homework incomplete.

In the “flipped classroom”…

  • The teacher is the guide on the side.
  • The student watches the lecture at home via video, and then completes their homework in class. So, if the student doesn’t understand something, they can ask their teacher.
  • Since the classroom time consists of homework, case studies, discussion, projects, and processing, every level of learner can be engaged.
  • The teacher is able to customize learning to every student – spending more time with those who don’t get it, and in turn, catalyzing forward the students who do get it.

——- There’s an infographic at the end of this post for more information ——-

What does “flipping the classroom” have to do with leadership development in my church?

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The Future of Technology and Education?

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Watch this fascinating vision of what the future of our classrooms could look like as technology becomes more accessible and affordable? Imagine if this is how learning took place in our churches?

The sermons would be more interactive and captiviating.

Our discipleship classes would be focused more on holistic and transformative learning, with an emphasis on a variety of learning styles.