BYU Education Week Notes Monday -- Part 1

BECOMING AN ONLINE "FRIEND" -- UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD OF ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS (KIMBALL BENSON):  He loves technology and likes to share new, exciting things that are going on.  Is the Internet good or bad?  Yes!  It's a tool that can be used for a multitude of purposes, for good or bad.  A knife can be used as a good tool for chopping up food or a bad tool for stabbing somebody.  The Internet is the same way--it can be used for good or bad.  The Internet is a gift and can be used well.  President Hinckley stated that the computer is accelerating the work and people are taking advantage of the new techniques being offered to them.  How can one escape the conclusion that the Lord is in this?  M. Russell Ballard said that Never in the history of the world have truth and technology been so available and so prepared to help bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. The Lord said to seek out knowledge from the best books.  If that was said today, the Internet would be included in sources of information.  He's heard people asked if they're on Facebook and they've answered, "No, I have real friends."  However, he believes that Facebook can strengthen friendships and create them.  What is social networking? Some are based on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities.  Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for interaction.  Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information.  The main types of social networking services are those which contain category divisions (such as former school year or classmates) means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust.  Facebook--Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while at Harvard.  Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University.  Facebook later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and finally to anyone aged 13 and over.  The website's name stems from the name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school, the boo, shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty.  In high school you got a yearbook that had everyone's picture and information.  But people change.  So we have class reunions, and some of them have a class book.  That's an update.  That comes out every 5-10 years.  You can think of Facebook as an ever changing update, that's not just for your classmate but for all your family and friends.  Twitter has also grown a ton since it was created in 2006.  It's kind of like Facebook on Slimfast.  It has to be written in 140 characters or less.  That's the limit of texts on cell phones.  Users send and read messages known as tweets.  Tweets are text based posts.  In 2009 Twitter was rated as the third most used social network. 2,000 tweets were analyzed and 40% were pointless babble.  38% were conversational, 9% pass along value, 6% self promotion, 4% spam and 4% news.  Lady Gaga has the most followers, followed by Justin Bieber.  Oprah Winfrey does her own tweets and has many followers.  You can feel like you're getting to know the celebrities.  Twitter is how he gets his news.  He subscribes to CNN and KSL.  It gives him breaking news and top headlines.  LinkedIn is a professional connection.  Instead of talking about going to the lake over the weekend, you'll talk about your latest work project.  It can help you find a job.  It can help you connect with people professionally.  Google Plus is a new networking system.  It's Google attempt to compete with Facebook.  It's grown really fast.  You have to have an invite to join.  His experience is that you get an account there and never come back because all your friends and information are on Facebook.  A problem with Facebook is that whatever you post is available to all your friends.  If you post that your boss is a jerk and your boss is your Facebook friend, he will read it.  Teachers who post that their students are horrible have been fired.  Google allows you to have multiple circles--circles of your coworkers, circles of your church friends, circles of your relatives.  So you can post things specifically for different people.  Facebook is much more established and it's the easiest way to connect with people.  You can form circles Facebook too.  The class members voted on what they wanted to talk about.  They voted for Facebook.  He talked about how to create an account.  Facebook is restricted to those 13 and over, but there are plenty of people under 13 on Facebook who lie about their age.  There are various ways to find friends.  The more information you give Facebook, the more it can help you find friends.  It will suggest friends for you.  Who should you add?  You want to add people you honestly care about.  When he first got on Facebook he added everybody and some of them started annoying him.  You'll start to notice personalities on Facebook.  Some are very political and that might get on your nerves.  Others might have inappropriate language or content.  You can either defriend the person or simply hide their newsfeed.  If you defriend them, they won't be notified and they may not even notice unless they try to access your page.  If you click on a post from a certain friend you can get an option to hide that particular post or hide all posts from that person.  If someone is constantly posting inappropriate things, you may just want to sever the connection entirely.  If you post something on a person's wall, all their friends and all your friends will see it.  If you want to say something privately to someone, don't post it on their wall, send them a private message.  Can bad things happen on Facebook?  Possibly.  But bad things can happen if you drive and that doesn't stop you from driving.  There's a little bit of risk with everything, but you need to be smart about it and that will minimize the risk.  You need to be careful what you share on Facebook.  You should never put your social security number or home address on Facebook.  If they don't have it, it won't appear.  You need to be careful about your privacy settings.  You can select whether you want things to be seen by everyone, friends only, friends of friends, or only you.  You can have a Facebook account that nobody can see, but that kind of defeats the purpose. He has his settings set for friends only on most things, but some very basic information for everybody so that people can find him on Facebook.  You can also have a block list where you can list people who are a real problem.  You can block certain games so you won't see all the things you friends do on Farmville.  He hides all the games on his newsfeed.  (So do I!)  You can create groups on Facebook.  You could create a family group and type in any of your Facebook friends that you want included in the group.  You're organizing your friends and putting them in categories.  You can post messages specific to certain groups.  You can post invitations or announcements to specific groups.  You can also hide certain posts from certain people or certain groups of people.  So if you post that your boss is a jerk, you can customize who sees it and block your boss from seeing your post.  Or you can block all your coworkers from seeing it.  If you click that you like something, it will start appearing in your newsfeed.  You can click on hiding certain ads.  Or you can use Ad Block (Google it) and it will block all your ads on Facebook and other sites. 

IT IS TOO HEAVY FOR ME -- DEALING WITH DISCOURAGEMENT OF DESPAIR (S. MICHAEL WILCOX):  Some of the greatest people who have ever lived have faced adversity and been so discouraged that they wanted to quit.  1 Kings Chapter 19 suggests what we may do when faced with heavy adversities.  Elijah has just had prophetic power, calling down fire on Mount Carmel.  This is a battle of the rain gods.  Baal was a rain god.  If people switched to the wrong rain god (Baal) the Lord can show that by bringing draught.  The Lord then sent rain, showing the true God.  But then Elijah went from that great triumph to fleeing for his life.  He sat down under a Juniper tree and requested for himself that he might die.  He was a prophet who wanted to be released.  He felt like he was a complete failure.  All of us have our Juniper tree moments.  He has to remind himself not to sit under the Juniper tree, but that's what Elijah was doing.  An angel appeared to him and told him to eat.  Food and drink was before him, which he partook of and then he lied down under the Juniper tree some more.  Sometimes we're so discouraged we want to die.  We just want out.  Wanting out doesn't always mean wanting to die.  We just want to sit under the Juniper tree or hide in a cave.  It's unfortunate that we don't have a Book of Lamon that would have talked about his too perfect brother Nephi who never did any wrong.  2 Nephi Chapter 4 talks about being touched deeply with the death of his father and his brothers are after him.  He pours out his frustrations.  This was Nephi's Juniper tree experience. His soul was lingering in the valley of sorrow.  We all spend an occasional night under the Juniper tree, but we don't necessarily want to linger there and spend a second night there.  That is depression, despair, discouragement.  You don't want to do anything.  You could just sit under the Juniper tree and do nothing.  Hannah complains to the Lord because she is childless.  The Lord taught Elijah a great lesson about Juniper tree moments.  He gave a great display of power but the Lord was not in the wind, fire, or earthquake.  Instead, the Lord was in a still, small voice.  The Spirit calms.  It's a whisper.  The message is that God is not out there, he's right here, within whispering distance.  It's a beautiful description of the Spirit.  But we miss it if we don't listen.  The Holy Ghost doesn't need to shout or roar.  He's right here.  The answer isn't to linger under the Juniper tree or hide in the cave.  The answer is to act.  Do something!  You can't sit and linger and slacken and let your flesh waste away.  He told Elijah to return, go back, and anoint a new king, and anoint Elisha and have him take his placer.  We need to find things to do and act.  We can't run away from sorrow.  We are told to mourn with those who mourn, not take away the mourning.  We can't do that.  But we can act and help people to act and do things.  So Elijah returns.  The same thing is in Moses' life. In Numbers 11 Moses finds himself in the same situation that Elijah was in.  The children of Israel wept because of the great food they were missing, with nothing but Manna morning, noon and night.  Baked Manna, roasted Manna, fried Manna.  They wanted flesh. Moses was very discouraged with the "burden of all these people."  He felt it was too heavy for him.  He felt the burdens were too heavy for him.  He prayed "kill me!"  He was down.  He was angry down.  Sometimes discouragement makes you angry, even at God.  Sometimes we reach the end of our ropes.  The Lord told Moses to gather 70 men.  Act!  Do something!  He transferred some of the burden onto the 70 men.  This is the principle of delegation.  The 70 are an Old Testament organization that go all the way back to Moses.  God gave Moses something to do.  He acts.  Joshua Chapter 7 talks about another great individual.  Moses is not allowed to cross over Jordan.  Joshua was told they were not to take spoils in Jerico.  However, someone took spoil and everybody paid.  They lost their next battle.  In chapter 7, verse 6, Joshua rent his clothes and put dust upon his head.  He was saying he should have been happy on the other side of the Jordan River.  The Lord told Joshua, "Get thee up!"  Get out of the shade of the Juniper tree, get out of the cave.  Get up and do something!  Joshua deals with the problem and continues on with life. Sometimes we just need to hear the Lord say, "Get tee up!"  We act, we don't linger and waste away.  We move forward and do something.  Numbers chapter 13 tells about Moses bringing the children of Israel into the promised land.  It was not his intention that they wander the wilderness for 40 years, they were to go right into the promised land. 12 men are chosen to spy out the land of Caanan.  The fruits were enormous.  A cluster of grapes was so big it was carried on a pole between two people.  The land flowed with milk and honey.  It was a rich, bountiful land.  That was the Joshua-Caleb report.  However, the rest of the group reported giant warriors who were formidable.  They were like grasshoppers in their sight.  Joshua and Caleb reported the wonderful fruits and richness of the land and suggested they go up and take it.  The other ten gave an evil report and only saw the walls and obstacles.  There will always be walls and giants, but we need to look beyond those things so we don't in our own sight appear as grasshoppers.  We need to realize that God has made us able to withstand whatever life gives us.  We are not grasshoppers.  We can handle the walls and giants if we look beyond them and see the grapes.  The Lord would help us be grape gatherers.  We can focus on the fruits or gaze at the giants.  Let's focus on the fruits and move forward.  The people listened to the ten rather than the two and said they'd rather die in the wilderness than face the giants.  The Lord said, "Fine, granted."  He would wait for another generation to go into the promised land.  They faced Jerico and the walls came tumbling down.  The walls will tumble down if we look beyond them. Every journey in the scriptures can be compared to our life's journey.  We are eating Manna.  We want the promised land.  We want to cross over Jordan.  The Lord wants that for us too.  He doesn't want us to stop before we arrive.  He will give us continuous directions.  But sometimes we stop because barriers are in front of us.  Sometimes in life we'll cross rivers and lakes but then we stop at an ocean.  We sit and wait.  It's comfortable and shady under the Juniper tree.  So we sit on the beach.  The Jaredites did this when they came to the ocean.  They sat there for four years and didn't call upon the name of the Lord.  The barrier seemed to great to them that they just sat and waited for instructions.  Sometimes the obstacles look so great.  Ocean obstacles are not an excuse for inaction.  The Lord wants us to keep going and progress and reach the promised land.  If we'll ask Him what to do, He'll teach us how to build better barges because the old barges won't work.  If we have just a little faith, we can move mountains.  The mountain represents any obstacle that stands in our way.  Together with the Lord, you can move forward.  1 Nephi Chapter 16 indicates that the Lord made any human stronger than any burden placed upon him.  Face the day's challenges.  But sometimes we're not content to just bear the day's burdens, we want to carry an entire lifetime of burdens all at the same time.  So we reach into the past and remember all the bad things in the past and we project into the future and imagine all the bad things that might happen to us.  We're placing a lifetime of pain in one moment.  When Ismael died, that was a present challenge.  The daughters of Ismael mourned exceedingly because of the loss of their father and they murmured against Lehi--complaining about afflictions that they had suffered (past tense) and feared they would perish with hunger in the wilderness (future).  The Lord was not going to let them perish with hunger, but they were carrying a whole lifetime of sadness all at the same time.  We can see negatives past, present and future, and then the soul can't bear the weight anymore and we want to give up.  College students want to quit, missionaries want to come home.  The Lord encourages--keep going, have patience, don't give up.  The daughters of Ismael wanted to give up.  Sometimes marriage partners want to give up.  Sometimes we give up on talents.  Sometimes we want to give up on life itself.  Nephi in chapter 17 sees the good.  He sees the ways the Lord blessed them.  If we keep the commandments, the Lord will strengthen us and we'll be able to do what's required of us.  However, Nephi became discouraged at the death of his father.  He asks why his soul should weep because of his afflictions.  Just before that comes Nephi's view in the past when the Lord preserved him and filled him with His love and confounded his enemies and heard his prayers.  All the good memories of the past causes Nephi to ask why his heart shall weep because of his afflictions.  When we find ourselves under the Juniper tree, discouraged, act!  And if we're going to look into the past, let's look at all the good and beautiful things in the past that will lift our spirits, so we can look into the future with hope instead of despair. There's the "all these things are against me" principle when Jacob didn't know that Joseph was still alive and he and his family was starving.  He sent his sons down to Egypt where they met Joseph but didn't realize it was him.  When the brothers go back to Jacob but without Simon, Jacob laments that he's lost his children, which was not true.  He projects that Benjamin will be taken away, which didn't happen.  He says all these things are against him, but all those things were for him.  Soon he would have all his sons and no fear of famine.  Jacob needed to remember that when he thought Esau was coming to kill him and his family, but that didn't happen.  Esau came and fell on his neck and kissed him and it was a wonderful reunion.  Sometimes when we perceive that things are against us, they're really for us.  There was an old Chinese man who lived against the wall in a dangerous section.  He had a single mare who ran away into enemy territory.  His friends said, "Oh how awful that you lost your only mare." The man said, "We'll see."  But months later the mare returned, a stallion in tow.  All the people said, "Oh what a blessing."  The man said, "We'll see."  His son rides the stallion, falls and becomes crippled.  His friends thought that was terrible, but the man says, "We'll see."  Then there is a battle and most soldiers are killed, but his son doesn't have to go because he's crippled.  The Lord can take all the negatives in our lives and make them positives.  May we get out from under the Juniper tree and act! 

THE APOCRYPHA--WHAT'S IN IT AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM? (JARED W. LUDLOW): The Apocrypha is a specific volume of 15 books that some Christians accept as canon of scripture.  It's not terribly long but has a lot of great stories in there.  The adjective apocrypha, (not capitalized) refers to writings that are not considered as authorized as other scriptures.  These texts have been found in a variety of languages.  If it's the "Testament of Abraham" it wasn't necessarily written by Abraham and may have been creatively embellished.  There are apocryphal texts about various New Testament authors.  Are they true?  We don't know.  Some thought they were true enough that they copied them and passed them on.  Some people copied them with remarks like "This is not true.  This is ridiculous." They were valuable in some communities and continued on for centuries.  Today we're not going to talk about apocryphal writings, but about the Apocrypha (capitalized). The LDS Church policy stresses that we should read the canonical books first and then if you want to, you can peruse the Apocrypha but they don't consider it on the same level as the canonical scriptures. Alexander wanted a copy of every book in the world and made a significant library.  He wanted a copy of the Hebrew Bible, but wanted it in Greek.  He brought together 72 translators who produced a finished work.  Once they translated the Hebrew Bible, it included extra books that aren't in the Hebrew Bible.  These books were written after the time of Ezra and Malachi.  They include the stories of the Mackabees and their revolt.  They preserve the history that comes later.  The scripture history for the Jews it ends with Malachi but the Christians have the story continue with the New Testament.  Tobit and Judith are early set stories. Wisdom of Solomon refers to the Solomon from the Old Testament but contains additional information.  Barach was the scribe of Jeremiah, and there is a letter of Jeremiah.  There are other books of Ezra.  There are first and second Macabees.  Then there is Prayer of Manassah.  The Jews didn't accept these as canonical after 70 AD.  They felt that prophecy ceased after Ezra and Malachi.  Today a lot of Jewish scholars use this material to study the history of the period, but it's not part of their religious canon.  The Catholic Church has an interesting story in their use of the Apocrypha.  Jerome wrote the Vulgate and put a preface to these books, saying they're not part of the Hebrew Bible and he didn't  accept them as Canon but he translated them anyway. But later translators copied the Vulgate but deleted the preface. So they later got accepted as canon.  They incorporate them directly into the Old Testament text. That's how a lot of Catholic Bibles treat this.  However, the Protestants rejected these books.  Part of the reason why was just because the Catholics accepted them.  They have always had a non canonical status.  When it's translated and included, it's often treated differently.  When the King James Version first came out, it had a copy of the Apocrypha in it, but later editions left it out.  Russian Orthodox also accept it as canon.  As Joseph Smith was doing his translation of the Bible, he asked the Lord what he should do about the Apocrypha.  The Lord's response was that there were many things in it that are true and mostly translated correctly, but there are other things in it that are not true.  Whoever is enlightened by the Spirit will be benefited from it, but it's not necessary to translate it.  There are additions to Daniel and additions to Esther.  It talks about the three companions of Daniel.  It discusses when they are in the furnace and there is a prayer and their deliverance.  It's interesting to get their perspective inside the furnace praising God and praying.  The message is that Daniel was worshipping the true God and other people are worshipping false idols.  Bel is not a living God.  Daniel laughed at Bel which was clay and bronze.  The king said Daniel was blaspheming Bel.  He set up a test to see if Bel was eating the offerings made to it.  They sealed up the room with Bel but the priests of Bel came in through a secret entrance to eat the food.  However, Daniel spread ashes so the next morning the king could see the priests' footprints and knew they had really eaten the food, not Bel.  He had the priests killed.  Susanna is the story about a beautiful woman who is married.  She bathes in her courtyard and two elders sneak in to watch her as she bathes.  They told her if she didn't lie with them, they would claim she was with a young man.  However, she refused to sin and cries out with a loud voice.  They had a trial.  The two men witnessed against her that they caught her with a young man, who got away.  Susanna prayed out loud to God, who was the only one who could help her.  She was afraid she would be executed. Daniel came to her defense.  He took each of the elders separately and interrogated them, asking them where they saw the young man and what tree they were under.  Their stories didn't match up so they were executed and Susanna was saved.  The book of Esther in the King James Version never mentions the name of God.  So some people question if it is really God delivering them.  So some interpreters who were uncomfortable with this idea put six additions to the Book of Esther. Also, in these additions Esther says how horrible it is to have to be with this Gentile king.  What do we do with these additions?  Are they just later creative writings of somebody who saw the tensions in the Book of Esther?  We don't know the answers.  We focus on the fact that Esther was placed at the right time and place to help her people.  We don't know how she feels about having to do this.  These additions try to explain that, but we don't know how accurate they are.