A Phone App to Help Students & Academics

This post is for anyone who ever has to write a paper or publication that requires references, or who wants an easy way to save book bibliographic information.  A new smartphone application makes it very easy to cite books.

The app is called 'Quick Cite' and costs 99 cents. It is available for iPhones and Android-based phones. The phone needs to have an inbuilt camera. For the iPhone all you need to do is point the phone at the bar code on the back of a book and once the camera locks in on the code it takes a photo, creates the bibliographic reference and emails it to you in one of four citation styles—APA, MLA, Chicago, or IEEE. You can choose the style you want and the email address to receive the reference.

The app was developed by a team of seven Canadian students who tried to develop seven apps in seven days at the University of Waterloo. They called their project 'Seven Cubed'. Quick Cite took them eight hours to develop.

The app has a couple of minor drawbacks.  First, the use of barcodes only became standard publishing practice in the 1970s, but most of the books we usually cite will have barcodes. Second, it doesn't seem to work that well with literature and some non-fiction books, particularly if they are more than 10 years old. In the case of children's literature, the barcodes often don't lead to a citation. A third minor glitch is that sometimes the place of publication is missing. Hopefully, the developers will iron out these problems, but they may just reflect issues with barcode use, particularly for older books.

The many uses for the app should be obvious. Students and academics can quickly scan the barcode and have the full citation in seconds ready to be copied and dropped into a publication.  As well, it is a perfect way to record the details of books used in libraries, new books seen at bookshops and so on.

At 99 cents this is amazing value. I've already been putting the app to good use. Now any time I see an interesting book I can scan the citation details in an instant.

You can buy the app via iTunes HERE.
 

Christian writing for children - Part 2

In my last post on Christians writing for children I suggested that:

"The gospel of Christ is the central narrative to which virtually all other narratives have some relationship – certainly in the Western cultural tradition and literature."

I pointed out that the focus of the Bible is Salvation History, with its central narrative tracing both the history of Judaism and Christianity and God’s redemptive plan for his people. In the beginning God created…and it was good. But sin entered the world, man rebelled against him and so God placed a curse upon his creation that one day would end in judgement. But God always had a plan for such rebellion; a plan of redemption motivated by love. An amazing gift of grace; his Son sent to die and three days later to be raised from the dead to defeat sin and death. A plan that provides a way for God's creation to be restored to a relationship with him. Salvation for those who repent of their sin, seek the mercy of God and in faith commit their lives to following Jesus.

I also suggested that there are at least five forms or genres of writing for children that Christians could attempt, ranging from Bible stories that present the gospel explicitly or which teach biblical truth, through to literature for children that weave elements or themes of biblical salvation history into the narrative. In the latter, these references to, or echoes of God's salvation narrative have a key role in shaping the plot, characters and language of the stories. In this post I want to talk more about this form of writing and the motivations for writing it, because I believe that it is where Christians can make a greater contribution.


I find it depressing to examine the children's section when I visit Christian bookshops. Why? Well, at least three reasons. First, because I observe that virtually all of this material is what I referred to in my last post as Type 1 or 2 writing. While this is important writing for Christian families and for sharing biblical understanding with the children of non-Christian families, and I want Christians to write it, I know that most of it will never be read outside Christian families. Second, I know that much of this material is of doubtful literary and artistic quality (yes, there is good stuff too, but there is much dross). It is frequently not as well written, nor as well illustrated, as secular children's literature. Third, I know that there is little Type 3, 4 & 5 writing on these shelves and that when children and parents want these books they will need to go to secular bookshops to find them and that there will be few Christian writers who have written the books from which they will make their selection. But the good news (and the thing that encourages me) is that due to God's sovereign rule and his common grace, that much of this material will be used by him. Even in the literature of those who don't know Jesus, we find glimpses of the biblical salvation narrative and biblical truth. John Calvin while recognising hereditary corruption and the total depravity of humanity acknowledged that through the work of the Holy Spirit and what remains of the image of God in a fallen people, that God still works:

"In reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator" (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, ii, p16).

While knowing that God can work through all things for the good, our desire is to promote his purposes, to honour his name in all that we do. Christians have a responsibility to engage with and use literature for God's purposes in all of its forms. And now here's the rub (as they say), children's love of literature and their literary history is going to be shaped mostly by type 3 to 5 literature. This is what they will often read at school, and this is what fills the bookshelves of libraries and bookshops, and this is what their friends will read. Just as adult Christians are enriched by narrative accounts that are not based directly on the Bible's gospel narrative, or written deliberately about biblical truths, so too children will have a natural thirst for story. A thirst for story, for story is about relationships, and God made us to be relational beings. Related first to him and secondly to each other. We crave stories that offer insight into the human condition and we share much of ourselves through story.


I grew up in a non-Christian home and for many years when I reflected on my early literary experiences concluded that while my parents seemed to do nothing to encourage a love of literature or writing, I was influenced by two great storytellers. First, my father who was a consummate oral storyteller. He shared his life story through anecdotes – tales of mine tragedies, the deadly Rothbury riots that he was part of as a teenager, tales of great Scotsmen, sporting triumphs, the glory of the trade union movement, the merits of communism and the evil of the employers like the major mining companies. My father’s memories shared through story were vivid and lively. They were shaped by his values, his history, his fears, his prejudices, his hopes and the culture and class within which he was raised. His stories marked me in some way that I was unable to grasp until he was dead and I had reached middle age. This was long after I had rejected some of the underlying truths of what he had taught me in his stories of tough life as a miner.

The second storyteller was my Grandfather, a conservative Christian with Brethren background who was also of Scottish descent. A brilliant and inventive man who loved God and had a rich literary tradition shaped by the Bible, classic literature, Australian ballads and Scottish poetry. As a child he immersed me in Scripture as he spoke the Psalms and Proverbs to me and as he recites poetry at a moments notice when it seemed relevant. These somewhat conflicting storytellers helped to shape me through their stories and the narratives of others. God used each to shape me and prepare me to receive the truth of the gospel at the age of 31 years. I praise him for his grace and mercy and tremble at the thought that he would choose to spare me the wrath that is due to me, and instead place it upon his own perfect Son (Romans 3:21-26).

The Challenge

My challenge is simple. Where are the new Chronicles of Narnia, this century's Pilgrims Progress, the 21st century cautionary tales (or some equivalent), a new Christian Dr Seuss with strong biblical knowledge and intent? While professing committed Christians represent just 5% of the population in Australia, we are people of the Word and many of us have the potential to be writers. Language is central to God's communication of salvation and we are stewards of this Word and the gift of language. If Christians spent less time in difficult to win moral arguments about literature (see for example the argument about the word "scrotum" here) and more time encouraging Christian writers to write quality literature published by secular publishers, we would see a change in the mix of books available to the children of Christian and non-Christian families.

I've written widely for educators, teachers and researchers about the role that literature has in shaping knowledge, attitudes, values and family relationships. One of my key points has always been that story and narrative is part of the way that we relate to our children and how we build on these relationships. For Christians nothing can and should take the place of the Bible itself as the core of our teaching and nurturing of our children. But story in all its forms is part of the glue that binds us together as a family; part of our shared history - scarily, even television has a place for most people! One of the reasons that I have been so concerned at the potential demise of the book as the major vehicle for story is that it isn't clear to me what would replace it (I've listed a few previous posts below that touch on these issues from my blogs). There will always be children's stories published in some form, but what impact will new media have on the quality of these stories. If we look at the rise of adult literary forms like the mobile phone novel (see previous post here), and the impact of online newspaper delivery on investigative depth, the quality of writing and the content, I have some justification for my concern. But whether literature is delivered via a device like the Kindle (see post here), or via traditional books, matters less than the content and quality of the work. Christians must be involved in this, writing some of it and seeking to shape (or at least influence) discussion. We need to be questioning the motives and worldview of those who promote new technological forms, anticipating potential collateral damage to the literary form. What might happen should we embark on a brave new world filled with multimodal texts where word, image, sound, video, music etc are massaged together into a postmodern blancmange? Could we end up with a new textual form with lots of technological bells and whistles but with little of the substance that reflects the Bible's central salvation narrative?

My two posts about Christians writing for children and my presentation to the Faithful Writers' conference have multiple messages and intent, but there is one that I want to stress once more. I want to challenge Christians who have demonstrated the ability to write (and this doesn't just mean that you have a university degree - writing a children's book is not the same as writing an assignment in engineering, law, literature or theology), to consider writing for children. Here's how you might start:

• Read lots of children's books - see what makes the difference between good and bad writing for children.
• Test some of the books you like by reading them to children of different ages, including other people's children.
• Try writing a simple short story for children. Test it with some children (not just your wife, your husband or your mother - they'll all think its great even if it's terrible).
• Begin collecting ideas for writing (get a book and write them down) - words that you love, words that make children laugh or take notice, topics that children seem to like, unusual things that you've deserved, opening lines for a poem or novel, rhymes that amuse you etc.
• Again test these ideas by writing something, then re-write it, and then re-write it and then...(you get the message).
  
• Then get some advice about submitting manuscripts, research the publishers to see what they publish and submit a manuscript.

You might just be able to write a successful book at your first sitting but for most writers it takes years of effort and multiple rejection letters. Give it a try.

Some related previous posts

Christian writing for children - Part 1
Truth and the Internet
Mobile phone novels
Books that stand the test of time
Death of the book?

Other related CASE references

In the latest issue of our CASE quarterly magazine there are a number of articles that have indirect relationship to my post. The theme of this issue was God, Creativity and Creators - Case

Anna Blanch (2008). Echoes and patterns. Case 16, pp 13-16
Trevor Hart (2008). Creation, incarnation and redemption - in the arts? Case 16, pp 9-12
Andrew Lansdown (2008). Fantasy and its place in the Christian imagination. Case 16, pp 4-8
Scott Monk (2008). The Word and the wordsmith. Case 16, pp 17-21

Christian writing for children - Part 1

Last Saturday New College hosted the 2008 Faithful Writer Conference. In all, 120 people came to discuss and learn about writing. The event was jointly sponsored by Matthias Media and CASE (which is part of New College). The plenary speaker for the day was Mark Tredinnick a well-known writer, poet, editor and teaching or writing. As well, seminars were run on essay writing, writing for sceptics, editing other people’s work, poetry writing and writing for children. I ran the latter seminar and thought I’d share some of the things I discussed.

Writing for children

The starting point for my seminar was the central proposition that the gospel of Christ is the central narrative to which virtually all other narratives have some relationship – certainly in the Western cultural tradition and literature. The central focus of the Bible is Salvation History; with its central narrative tracing both the history of Judaism and Christianity and God’s redemptive plan for his people. In the beginning God created…and it was good. But sin entered the world, man rebelled against him and so God placed a curse upon his creation that one day would end in judgement. But God always had a plan for such rebellion; a plan of redemption motivated by love. An amazing gift of grace; his own son sent to die and three days later to be raised from the dead to defeat sin and death. A plan that provided a way for his creation to be restored to a relationship with him.

Drawing on the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien I suggested that the central Bible narrative account of God’s redemptive plan and work is the central narrative that gives shape to all other narratives. In every story there is a sense in which there is an echo of the biblical narrative.

J.R.R. Tolkien once said (to C.S. Lewis) that “The Christian story is the greatest story of them all. Because it’s the real story. The historical event that fulfils the tales and shows us what they mean.”

Lewis and Tolkien both saw the gospel narrative as the central or foundational human narrative.

Drawing on this central proposition I suggested in my seminar that for Christians there is much fruitful writing that can point children towards Jesus. I suggested that there are a number of very direct forms of narrative writing for children that are worthy of our time, energy and creativity (I’ve add an extra one in this post that I didn’t share at the seminar):

Type 1 – Stories that directly present the Christian gospel explicitly, often in the form or the retelling of Bible stories suitable for children. Children’s Bibles and collections of Bible stories fall into this category.
Type 2 – Stories that allegorically present the gospel (e.g. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress).
Type 3 – Stories that present or address essential biblical understandings and teaching; where the key elements of the Biblical plan of salvation are woven within the story, or can be seen as explicitly reflecting the key elements of the divine narrative (e.g. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis). While some would see the latter as allegory, Lewis denied this and instead claimed that the narrative came first and the biblical parallels followed.
Type 4 – Moral tales that have direct biblical parallels or that reflect moral principles consistent with the Bible’s teaching (e.g. evil will be punished; sin has consequences; honesty is better than falsehood). Nursery rhymes and many fairy tales fall into this category as do many cautionary tales (of course not all such tales reflect biblical moral insights, but many do).
Type 5 – This is really a variation or extension of the above. Here the links or parallels are at the thematic level rather than in the form of moral teaching. Stories of this kind demonstrate or echo biblical teaching (e.g. salvation narratives, stories of redemption, parallels to biblical narratives or parables). These narratives parallel the gospel narrative without explicit commentary. Such stories can be read at one level as simply a nice tale, but at another level the key themes parallel biblical themes that can be discussed. The following examples demonstrate what I mean.

Example 1 – “Charlotte’s Web”, by E.B. White

This is a well known book written for 6-10 year olds. It is a beautifully written tale about a group of talking farmyard animals, a spider, a rat and a little girl named Fern. While it makes no attempt to teach the gospel narrative, or even disguise it within an allegorical telling, it has themes that parallel key themes within the biblical gospel narrative. At one level, it is the celebration of loyalty, love and friendship. But it is also a salvation narrative. The story of a runt pig rejected by the farmer, sentenced to death but then rescued first by a small girl and later by the work of an intelligent and literate spider. At this thematic level, the narrative points to the power of faith, hope, love, charity, sacrifice and new life.

Example 2 – “Why do you love me?” by Martin Baynton

This is a beautiful little picture book written for 3-6 year olds. It is essentially a dialogue between a dad and his little boy, prompted by the boy’s question, “Do you love me?” This is one of those conversations that only a parent could full appreciate. The little boy asks, “Why do you love me?” “Do you love me because I’m kind?” “..brave?” “..funny”? “…clever”? “…good”? “…naughty?” To each question the Dad says “Yes”. “So why do I try to be good” says the boy. “You tell me,” says his dad. “Because I love you too”, replies the boy. The echoes to the biblical account of God’s grace are evident. Like God whose love towards us is an unconditional act of grace not linked to who we are and what we do, the father loves the boy in spite of who he is and what he does unconditionally. He loves him through the good and the bad. And the boy, in response to the love of the father, loves his father as well and seeks to please him.


Example 3 – “Cowardly Clyde”, by Bill Peet

This is a picture book written for children aged 4-7 years that tells of a brave (foolish?) knight and his trusty (cowardly stead) who set out to solve the problem of an ogre who is devastating the countryside. Clyde is terrified but the knight (Sir Galavant) heads into a dark forest to kill the ogre. They follow the trail of horse bones and find him. Clyde turns and runs, reaching the edge of the forest only to turn and discover that Sir Galavant has gone; the victim of a low branch. He goes back, and in an act of bravery bites the tale of the ogre to divert its attention from Sir Galavant. The ogre pursues him to the edge of the forest only to explode just as he grabs Clyde’s tale and disappear in a puff of smoke as the sun’s rays strike him, “An owl-eyed monster who thrives on darkness and gloom can’t last ten seconds in the bright sunlight, and he knew it….” The parallels are not as strong as the above examples but they are there – good conquers evil; and evil belongs to the darkness and cannot survive the light.

The qualities of good Christian writing for children

My conclusion to this seminar was that there is great merit in Christians seeking to write literature in its many forms for children. I suggested that such writing needs to first meet the basic criteria for good writing – good tales well told; language used well; narratives that work at multiple levels; rich authentic characters; interesting ‘page-turner’ plots. But beyond this they should:

• offer knowledge that is a celebration of God’s world and his purposes;
  
• act as a mirror allowing the reader to reflect on life and their future;
  
• lead us to consider aspects of the human condition (life and death, fear, loneliness, pain, loss, frailty, brokenness etc);
• point to the central redemption narrative of the Bible.

Related Links

'Between Two Worlds' link to this post (here)

'Christian writing for children' - Part 2 (here)

Writing, communication, technology and relationships

This is my third post about writing. In this post I want to make some comments and pose some questions about the impact of new forms of information communication technology on how we communicate.


The impact of technology

I write this Blog as a 55 year old who can remember as a child our manual exchange home phone being the only one in our street (and everyone using it) and the day our first (black and white) TV arrived (I was 11). I have participated in many subsequent technology advances – colour TV (I bought one just after our kids were born and kept it till they were grown up), personal computers (I bought my first one in 1984), faxes, videos, mobile phones (my first in 1989 and I still have the original phone number), the computer mouse (a big step forward), email (1989), websites, call centres, DVDs, a Blackberry (will I ever escape email again?!), Blogs, Facebook and so on. We've come a long way since Eniac was commissioned in 1946 (photo is a US Army Picture).

With some lived experience of technology I know firsthand that it changes things. I also know that the changes are not always good. When television arrived it reduced family time together (certainly in terms of interaction), it had negative effects for children who watched too much TV, it closed lots of community cinemas etc. I could repeat this for other technology forms – there are always negative impacts, as well as the positive. So as we continue down this path of constant communication technology change it is good to pause (before the next development hits) and question just where each major new wave is taking us.

Language changes

Language is changing all the time (both spoken and written). The most obvious way this occurs is in terms of language use, particularly in relation to words, spelling and grammar. New words are added to the lexicon with each passing year. What was once seen as an established grammatical form slowly disappears (e.g. the split infinitive rule – I know some of you out there are still holding out on this one). Incorrect spellings become optional spellings and in some cases (over time) preferred spellings. Text genres also change and are adapted to changing needs and purposes. The company memorandum (on paper) has largely been replaced by emails. Personal letters have largely been replaced with SMS messages, emails, Blog posts, Facebook entries. Even literary forms such as the novel are less often straight-forward narratives to become more complex and diverse forms. This type of change has always occurred, but seems to have accelerated in the past 30 years. One of the key drivers of such change has been communication technology (and with it globalisation) which has had an impact on language use as well as the way we communicate.

The word and new media - multiliteracies

One of the most significant changes has been the extent to which the spoken or written word has been supplemented, replaced or changed by images, video and film, and even led to new representational forms (gaming is a perfect example). This has led some to suggest that the written word is less relevant than it was once. There is little doubt that the written word is used increasingly with other forms of communication and that in our world we are surrounded by more complex ‘multiliteracies’. By this I mean new forms of communication that are multimodal and require much more interplay between words, images, sound, video, spoken language etc. However, we still have much to learn about this topic. For those interested in reading a more scholarly discussion of some of this as well as a defence of the importance of narrative for children, you will find a recent paper I presented on this on my website.


Anyone who reads a Blog will know that there are communication options available today not dreamed of 20 years ago and this is changing the way (at least) some people communicate. If there are people out there (probably not readers of this Blog) who don’t think new forms of communication are emerging, they need to consider the more recent Web 2.0 developments such as MySpace and Facebook. There is little doubt that these new forms of social networking are having a big impact on the way under 30yr olds communicate. Of course, we’re not sure what impact this might have long term on the way we relate to one another, but members of Gen Y have embraced it with great enthusiasm.

Advantages and disadvantages of ICT

The advantages of modern Internet enabled communication forms are obvious:

• The Internet offers global reach at minimal cost.
• It is very easy for anyone to publish and communicate ideas (including Christian truth) in forms that are visually attractive and effective.
• It is possible to build cyber networks of relationships and to engage with others concerning just about anything, including matters of faith.
• We can have access to written texts, images, audio files, video material from our lounge rooms, including significant historical source material, newspapers, images, videos – the web is an incredible resource.
• Search engines like Google are powerful tools for learning when used well.

But there are disadvantages:

• Web-based communication is less permanent (links quickly disappear, websites close down, Blogs 'mutate' into new untrackable forms etc).
• The reliability and accuracy of any communication is largely untested and unreviewed, hence anyone can present themselves as an expert on anything.
• Individuals are also able to misrepresent themselves more easily to unsuspecting audiences.
• The ease with which anyone can self-publish may well give individuals a misplaced sense of their own expertise and knowledge.
• There is a tendency for the message to be limited in depth.
• There are moral questions for any Christian about the less than helpful content that is available at the click of a mouse for adults and children and at times the negative impacts a technology application might have on us personally. Nicole Starling (my daughter!) has an interesting post that talks about eBay and the impact it can have on us.
• The shear amount of time that the Internet can consume can be excessive – new communication forms can become addictive (Josh Harris has an interesting post on why he left FaceBook after a week).
• The fascination with new communication forms may well lead to the neglect of traditional forms. What is lost when children don’t read (or hear) as much literature? When adults don’t read novels or even their Bibles as much as they once did?
• There is a danger that for some the “medium is the message” to quote the Canadian educator, philosopher and professor of English Marshall McLuhan, who suggested that for many the generic form of media is more important than any "meaning" or "content" that the medium conveys (something I'd contest of course but he'd see new ICT forms as evidence of the validity of his statement).
  

Some random implications

Here are what I think are just some of the implications of the above:

1. When we communicate have a clear purpose and audience in mind and choose the most appropriate form for your message. A Blog is a perfect way to establish and encourage interaction and knowledge sharing amongst a network of people interested in a specific topic and who have similar life experiences. But it isn’t the best way for the Australian Tax Office to fulfil its responsibility to inform citizens of changes to tax laws and interpretations. One reader of this Blog commented in a response to one of my previous posts on writing that he isn't about propose to someone by email, but I've observed some examples that come close.

2. Make the most of new media without reducing the importance of the written word - remember the message is the key, not the medium. By all means use data projectors in churches but don’t discourage the personal use of Bibles by projecting all passages and removing Bibles from pews. Conversely, do use the data projector for showing an alternative translation of a passage or to draw in additional material that might support the teaching of God’s word. And all should know about BibleGateway.com. Some churches might even consider using Blogs, Facebook, and MySpace as part of its community building strategies (hopefully not as a replacement for other things).

3. Encourage young people to evaluate critically the impact of each new form of communication and to be aware of potential problems (e.g. web scams, net predators, the dangers of publishing personal information on the internet for the world to see; how relationships might be affected by the way we communicate etc).

4. Don’t replace personal conversations with your friends, family and neighbours with SMS messages, Facebook, emails and Blog posts. Yes, they can work well when you’re on the other side of the country or the world but there is no substitute for personal communication.

5. Do use new media to point others towards significant wisdom and knowledge. A communication diet based exclusively on YouTube, SMS or Facebook entries has some significant limitations. But all are mediums that could be useful ways to communicate significant messages such as biblical truth and to strengthen relationships and networks of people exploring life’s big topics together.

Readers interested in more posts on literacy, communication and related issues might find my blog Literacy, Families and Learning of interest.