Thursday, September 20, 2012

Ideas for Mormon Info Badges Project


Thanks, everyone, for the social feedback about my Mormon info badges today.  We all know there is a lot of misinformation or sometimes just a lack of information about the Church.  We’ve all been annoyed by people who share their false assumptions about the church without bothering to check facts.  But at this moment, because of all the Romney hype, everyone wants to know what Mormonism is about.  It’s our chance to help people get informed and get accurate.  Here are some more specific ideas about the project: 

Purpose
Use badges to inform people with little to no knowledge about the Church about our basic beliefs and clarify common misconceptions or controversies.  Create publicity for the project by encouraging people to push their badges to their blogs or social media profiles so others will see them and want to earn them too.

Project Tasks
·         Learn Mozilla specs, how badge-baking (I think this just means embedding a link to the host website into the badge icon) works.
·         Write badge content.  I imagine reading material followed by multiple choice questions to test knowledge.  Any different ideas? 
·         Design host website for badges.
·         Design attractive looking badge icons that will catch people’s attention.
·         Find a way to publicize: get large numbers of BYU students to earn the badges, post them, and invite non-member friends to earn them?  It would be great to release the badges before the election.

Possible Badges and Content – I’m not sure how many we’ll want to make.  How many is too many?  I think it would be best if each badge only took 5-10 minutes to complete, but what do you guys think?  We want them to be accessible, but I certainly don’t want people doing a 5 minute badge and thinking they know everything about the church.  Here are some ideas for badges.  The bolded words are badge titles.
·         How Was Mormonism Founded?
o   Prophets and apostasy (define term: restoration)
o   First Vision
o   Book of Mormon
o   Missionary efforts today
·         What Do Mormons Believe about God?   (this badge could maybe be combined with the following two badges under the title What Do Mormons Believe?, but I thought it might be too long.)
o   God is our loving Heavenly Father
o   3 separate beings
o   God has a body like ours
o   Heavenly Mother too!
·         What Scriptures Do Mormons Use?
o   Book of Mormon
o   Bible
o   Doctrine and Covenants
o   Pearl of Great Price
·         What Do Mormons Believe about Family and Community?
o   Eternal families
o   Importance of Service
·         Why Mormons Don’t Drink Coffee
o   Word of Wisdom background
o   Good: fruits, grains, small amount of meat  Bad: tea, coffee, tobacco, illegal drugs, alcohol
·         Articles of Faith (a short explanation of each one)
·         Mormon Controversies: Polygamy
o   Brief history of polygamy in the Church and the Manifesto.
o   NO member in good standing practices polygamy.
o   Polygamist groups in S. Utah, Arizona, etc. are NOT affiliated with the church in any way.
·         Mormon Controversies: Banning the Priesthood to Blacks
o   For their times, early church members were racially progressive and opposed slavery.
o   President Kimball and the lifting of the ban in 1978.
o   Statement by President Hinckley warning against racism, BoM scripture that says all are alike unto God, both black and white, male and female, etc.
·         Mormon Controversies: Women and the Church
o   Women have played an important part in the Church since its founding.
o   Although women do not hold the priesthood, they do serve in some leadership positions.  (Women and men have complementary roles.)
o   Relief Society?
o   General authority quotes about the importance of women, respecting women, etc, including quotes by female general authorities.
o   Maybe some quotes by regular Mormon women about how they feel about Mormonism and womanhood.
·         Meet a Mormon
o   Mormons come from all parts of the world and all walks of life.  Some of them probably have a lot in common with you!
o   This badge would require participants to read a certain number of mormon.org profiles.  But we’d have to make it clear our badges aren’t affiliated with mormon.org.

So, who wants to work on this project?  What suggestions do you have (even if you don’t want to be a project member)?  Which badges do you like?  What others would you suggest?




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