It has happened to all of us at one time or another. We visit a website and find an article we absolutely must eventually read, but later the page seems to be gone. Or, we want to cite a page from an online article in a column or school assignment, but a few weeks later the article has been edited. Or, you find an article that features someone in your congregation that you'd like to share with that person, but when you print the article it looks nothing like you think it should.

In situations like these, screenshot software can be just what you need. A screenshot is just an image of a web page or portion thereof. If you've ever looked at a software tutorial online, you've undoubtedly seen screenshots. Recently, a new online tool, Aviary, has made the process of taking screenshots of entire web pages (and not just the visible portion, as many other tools do) a...um...snap! The videos on the Aviary page do a great job of explaining what their tools can do (which is a LOT more than just screenshots! Aviary can take and edit images, edit colors, edit vector images, markup images, and even edit audio.) And, amazingly, you can do it all for free! Aviary was even named the #1 underhyped web application of 2009 by Lifehacker.com.

If you still use color inkjet or laser printers in your office, computer lab, home, or elsewhere, you undoubtedly know well that ink and toner costs eat up a huge chunk of your tech budget. There are, of course, simple and free solutions to reducing your ink/toner usage, such as printing in draft mode, previewing pages to print only those you really need, and setting your default to greyscale.

However, these solutions are not always perfect, and they are hard to enforce in a public setting like a church computer lab. That's when print software can be helpful. Here are several tools worth exploring...

I would say that I know just enough about computers to be dangerous. Generally, I know how to make the computer do the things I need it to do, but I do not understand much about how that actually happens. The same is true of audiovisual equipment. We do not have a TV, VCR or DVD player (except for our computer) at our house, so my experience with these machines is limited. Essentially, I am in the position of knowing how to use technology, but when something goes wrong I am not the person that you want in charge!

Fortunately, I have what I fondly refer to as my own personal tech support. When I need help with technology, I call my 15 year old son.

A Google Profile is a special page in Google's system that makes it easier for people to find you or learn more about you. When might this be useful to you as a Christian educator?

Suppose you're at a school event and someone you meet wants to continue the conversation the two of you had. You could, of course, pass on your business card, but if you didn't have one handy you could simply provide your new friend with your Google profile name, which he or she could easily find online later. Or, if you were applying for new Christian education positions, a Google profile helps you to make sure that one of the first pages potential employers would see if they searched for you would be a profile you created. Your church staff members - especially the clergy - could (and perhaps should) have a completed profile so that potential visitors can learn more about them. (A side benefit: this simple act -- if you include the church website -- can potentially help your Google ranking, which is based in part on the number of outside links that go to a site.)

Last week I encouraged you to think about how and where you can share your news, publications, class handouts, and so on online. Today, let's think about the flip side: when should you keep things off of the web?

There are no "standard" rules, so you will need to develop your own as a congregation. Here are a few guidelines to get you started. You probably will not want to post...

• Photos of children or youth, unless you have explicit written permission from parents. As a "Safe Sanctuary" practice, if you do include photos of young people on your website, consider identifying them only by their first names. 
• Images that are poor in quality. Not only does this refer to images that are poorly framed, out-of-focus, or clearly outdated (bad clip-art, anyone?), but it also includes images that could reflect poorly on your programming. As a friend reminded me, don't post "...images of VBS or other activities where all you see is kids running around."
• Newsletters that are more than a month or two old. Many congregations keep newsletters online far too long. Honestly, who wants or needs to read the old news? Two months of newsletters is certainly plenty, with a link to the newsletter editor who can be contacted if back issues are truly required.

If you want to move beyond having a church website that is essentially a digital brochure to one that is part of an Internet ministry, you need to continually put the web and other digital technologies on your agendas -- your personal to-do list, of course, but also on the agenda of your committees and teams. Talking about the website and other digital forms of communication reminds your leaders that ministry in a digital age requires everyone to learn to "think digitally."

Here are 22 examples of questions you could ask:

• How will we share this information on our website?
• Are there other websites where we could promote this event / share this information?
• Who can share this on Facebook / Twitter / MySpace / etc.?
• Who will take digital photos that can be shared on Flickr?
• Can we capture this event on digital video to share with others?

Jose Bowen, dean of Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts, uses a teaching technique in his college classrooms he calls, "Teaching Naked." Don't worry - it actually has nothing to do with the removal of clothing, but it is an interesting idea worth considering. The basic concept is laid out in this article and audio story (which I recommend you listen to now), but here's a quick summary. Rather than using technology in the classroom to communicate information via PowerPoint or other methods, he introduces a topic briefly, then instructs students to do online exercises and research before class. When the students come together, the classroom setting becomes a place for debate conversation, role-plays and the like.

Bowen makes the point that far from being an anti-technology approach, it recognizes that students are engaged with technology at many times during the day and are very comfortable with games, simulations, and other ways of exploring digital information. This concept could be adapted for use in your own educational setting. Here are three examples to get you thinking about the concept.

One of my favorite tech bloggers, David Pogue of the New York Times, has started a campaign called, "Take Back the Beep." The whole post is worth reading and is hilarious, but if you're short on time, the bottom line is that he's angry about the moolah that enters the coffers of the cell phone carriers (Sprint, Verizon, etc.) every time we wait through those inane instructions, "Press 1 to leave a message, or just wait for the beep." You and I are paying for that airtime, even though by now we know what to do. I'm all for it, and here's one reason he doesn't mention: millions of low-income individuals in our nation use prepaid cell phones, and they don't need to be wasting their money waiting through an unnecessary message. [Note: I wrote this email the day after the campaign started because I was leaving for vacation. It's possible the campaign has morphed by now.]

Pogue has pointed out just one example (one I had never thought about before) of the ways the tech industry is great at tapping our wallets. Now, if your congregation has an unlimited tech budget, just hit the delete key now. If not, here are seven suggestions to trim a bit of fat from your tech budget without it even hurting.

One of the things that amuses and amazes me about the internet is the way that one can stumble across information. While looking at a website, you click on a link, and then you click on another link and this process continues until you are on a web page and aren’t really sure how you got there. The website that I am reviewing today was discovered in this manner. I can’t tell you exactly how I stumbled upon it, but I can tell you that if you are interested in youth ministry, I recommend you take a look at this site.

Waytolive.org is a website companion to the book, Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens by Dorothy C. Bass, Don C. Richter, et al. I have not read the book, and the website states that it is not necessary to have done so in order to use the material on the site. I have found this to be true, although after perusing waytolive.org, I am interested in reading the book.

The number of digital photos you accumulate for ministry purposes can begin to grow quite large over time, making it increasingly difficult to find the photos you desire quickly. No one filing scheme works best for everyone, but here are a few tips to follow that will make finding photos easier down the road.