Free Range Learning

One of the big things I've noticed recently is a surge of online multimedia that takes advantage of the web's simple tools to explain complicated phenomena.

Planet Money is a podcast produced by National Public Radio that does a fantastic job of looking at the economic crisis in terms that non-economists can understand. All while avoiding over-simplification and dumbing-down, not an easy task. Having scored a C+ in my introductory college economics course, I never thought I'd be faithfully downloading and listening to radio that talked about the subject. But I'm hooked.

Our own WorkingPreacher.org offers quick and helpful exegesis and aids for preaching, including the popular Sermon Brainwave Podcast.

CommonCraft is a marketing company who makes its living doing this very thing (tagline: "our product is explanation").

Another of these simple-tools-complex-ideas is created by an evolutionary biologist at Brown University. CreatureCast is a series of stop-motion animation videos that describe the complexities of biology in a way that elementary school kids could understand (see video below).

One of the things that I keep thinking with all of these resources is, "how do we teach complex theology, history and biblical literacy in ways that make sense to somebody who is not 'in the field'?" What would a video explaining the theology of the cross look like? How do we educate people who may not be "professional" leaders in the church?

CreatureCast Episode 2 from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.