Automatic Palaeographic Exploration of Genizah Manuscripts

The Cairo Genizah is a collection of hand-written documents containing approximately 350,000 fragments of mainly Jewish texts discovered in the late 19th century. The fragments are today spread out in some 75 libraries and private collections worldwide, but there is an ongoing effort to document and catalogue all extant fragments. Palaeographic information plays a key role in the study of the Genizah collection. Script style, and–more specifically–handwriting, can be used to identify fragments that might originate from the same original work. Such matched fragments, commonly referred to as “joins”, are currently identified manually by experts, and presumably only a small fraction of existing joins have been discovered to date. In this work, we show that automatic handwriting matching functions, obtained from non-specific features using a corpus of writing samples, can perform this task quite reliably. In addition, we explore the problem of grouping various Genizah documents by script style, without being provided any prior information about the relevant styles. The automatically obtained grouping agrees, for the most part, with the palaeographic taxonomy. In cases where the method fails, it is due to apparent similarities between related scripts

Towards a new approach for teaching Religious Education in Catholic schools

How should Catholic Religious Education look in the twenty-first century? Today’s challenges are many, including diverse student faith backgrounds and levels of teachers’ religious knowledge, understanding and commitment. There are differing curriculum structures, time and space constraints, challenges in accessing suitable resources, and the authentic use of proven pedagogical practice. This study was a journey that explored these challenges. It followed a path opened by Maria Montessori, trodden in turn by Sofia Cavalletti and, more recently, developed by Gerard O’Shea into a way for teaching religious education in Catholic schools. This was a design-based research study that adapted, trialled and refined O’Shea’s work, under the name of the Scripture and Liturgy Teaching Approach (the SALT Approach). The journey, following a design-based research structure, was completed in stages. The landscape was first scanned through the review of literature and then preparations were made, with the building of the first prototype. Then the road was trodden for one year, accompanied by teachers and twenty-six Year Two students. During that time, the road was refined and restructured. Following the journey, there was a time of reflection, when conclusions were drawn in preparation for the next stage. The lenses used on the journey brought valuable confirmations and discoveries: that children, given the opportunity, are drawn to the spiritual and can respond with sensitivity; that teachers can become co-learners alongside the child, as they, themselves, are drawn towards a more personal relationship with God, as well as becoming aware of key pedagogical strategies that will draw out children’s contributions, reflect respect for the child, and develop trust in the child’s ability to learn through making choices; that accountability demands can be met, even if they run contrary to the holistic approach at the core of the SALT Approach; and that the approach can be successful within a diversely populated school, bringing a fresh response to the call for a new evangelisation. The results confirmed that the SALT Approach that can offer a paradigm for religious education, involving a move away from the restrictive demands on school and teacher accountability and towards the recognition of religious education’s own iv valid academic approach, fostering the spirituality, faith and response of both students and teachers. The study points towards further research and the possibility of building a network of academics and educators, working closely together to develop the SALT Approach within a variety of educational climates both within Australia and beyond

Eucatastrophic Tales: Tell the Story of God through Children\u27s Literature

In this Project Portfolio, I will address the following NPO: Teachers of children have underappreciated or not recognized the faith formation possibilities found in children’s literature. The overall key finding of my research is that children’s literature is an ideal medium through which adults can facilitate conversations about God with children. This finding emerged from the ministry setting of the local church, and as an extension, the Christian university. My project is a thorough, informative book on the faith formation possibilities of children’s literature, and a more accessible companion resource: a universal bookmark guide. The book contains 5 chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. The bookmark is standard size, front and back with a side that appeals to children and a side that helps adults facilitate God-conversations with any children’s book

Discovering & Raising the Trafficking Awareness Level (TAL) in Avalon

“Awake, O sleeper, arise from the dead, and Christ will make you aware.” Eph. 5:14 Earlier this year I stopped at a table under a sign reading “January Is Human Trafficking Awareness Month.” The table’s material did awaken me to the scope of human trafficking (global), the amount of money traffickers are making (billions), and where to send money to help fight the problem – but there was little information on being more aware of human trafficking within MY town. A lifetime focus on community safety helped me realize that a high level of awareness of the signs of trafficking occurring within my community directly correlates to its’ safety… and that being awake isn’t enough – being aware is critical! If my community’s ‘trafficking awareness level’ (TAL) is low, the probability of trafficking occurring is high. I also realized that the smaller the scope, the greater the hope for dealing with this ‘hidden crime,’ for at the community level human trafficking is less able to hide. In the verse from Ephesians 5 Paul pleads with Christians to awaken from their sleep. When we truly wake up, we become aware and this awareness keeps us alert and alive – especially if that awareness includes Jesus Christ as Lord. Similarly, to protect lives in our Avalon community, the Community Awareness Core (CAC) – in partnership with the Avalon Community Church (ACC) – proposes to assess Avalon’s TAL and, if low, raise it by training community members to identify, or ‘see,’ the signs and indicators of trafficking as they occur in daily interactions. When community members ‘see something,’ they’ll be trained to ‘say something’ (report to law officers). This project offers faith-based and civic organizations a grassroots approach to collaborating with law enforcement agencies to keep their communities safe from human trafficking

Teaching the Art of Sacred Storytelling for Use in Ministry

Storytelling is of immense value in ministry today for enriching preaching, liturgy, teaching, worship, pastoral care, mission, evangelism and discipleship. I serve as a part-time pastor in rural Maine and have a passion for using storytelling in all these aspects of ministry. I observed an opportunity for teaching storytelling in my local ministry schools and churches. I designed a curriculum for oral storytelling instruction that includes teaching techniques for sharing personal experiences and the re-telling of myths, legends, wisdom, folklore and Biblical stories for use in preaching, ministry, mission and pastoral care. This storytelling educational program consists of online and in person courses, standalone classes and workshops. Each course, standalone class or workshop is an organized independent unit while being in synergetic connectedness with the others. There are no prerequisites and each course is open to both beginner and experienced storytellers. These are practical courses where students learn to utilize fundamental storytelling techniques. While the tools to listen, learn and tell a story by heart will be consistently repeated in all the courses, each course will focus on different themes, lessons and skills essential to practicing the art and ministry of storytelling. Students who have taken my classes are active laity, people who are discerning a call to ordained ministry and ordained clergy. Those who have taken my classes have reported feeling excited, encouraged and motivated to include their newly gained story gathering and storytelling skills in their sermons, chaplaincy care, mission work and Christian education. I have collected feedback forms from over 65% of the students. I have used their feedback to modify and improve the curriculum. From the core material of this curriculum I have continued to customize workshops and classes that fit the individual requests of churches, ministry schools and retreat centers seeking to offer storytelling education

Conceiving God: Literal and Figurative Prompt for a More Tectonic Distinction

John Sanders’ Theology in the Flesh, the first comprehensive overview of the toolkit that contemporary cognitive linguistics offers for theological appropriation, despite its remarkable success, gives rather minimal attention to blending theory, one of the discipline’s most formidable tools. This paper draws on blending theory to offer an alternative to Sanders’ chapter on conceiving God. Central to the proposal is claim that God-talk, like many of the advances in science, technology, and art, entails a kind of tectonic understanding and conceptual mapping that is neither literal nor figurative

Image indexing and retrieval: some problems and proposed solutions.

Image processing technologies are offering considerable potential for library and information units to extend their databases by the inclusion of images such as photographs, paintings, monograph title-pages and maps. Discusses problems and potential solutions in a structured fashion based on categories of thesauri (text and visual), hybrids, description language and automatic content analysis, with state-of-the-art examples