Whew! Saturday at SBL 2009 proved rather busy and hectic for me, and the first half of Sunday looks about the same.

Remember those iTunes U and YouTube videos that I’ve been posting recently? Pepperdine University funded the equipment and software to produce those videos with a Faculty Innovation in Technology and Learning grant. As part of that grant project, I brought my equipment with me to SBL ’09 and partnered with the SBL folk who are working on the new World of the Bible web site. I spent a good bit of Saturday working with that project, and will do the same the first half of Sunday. If all goes well—I have some concerns about lighting and sound quality, but hope I can fix those issues in post-production—Pepperdine’s iTunes U and/or the SBL web site will soon feature the likes of Mark Goodacre, Aren Maeir, and others delivering 5-minute (or so) mini-lectures on the Philistines, Mary of Magdala, and so on. I’ll give more details later as I learn how well the video did or didn’t turn out.

I also gave my presentation “Drowning in Paint: The Deluge in Western Art” on Saturday afternoon. Aside from misusing one German word (audience members graciously corrected my error, and I learned that what I had said was true of Danish, but not of German), I thought it went reasonably well. The questions and comments offered afterward were helpful and on-point, and I didn’t get any of the “Why didn’t you write the paper I would have written?” or “What do you think about a completely different topic?” questions. (I hate those.)

The only other presentation I attended was David J.A. Clines’s presidential address. David gave a good talk, but I was weighed down by dinner and found myself nodding—not in agreement, but with sleepiness. Essentially, David put forward a lengthy-ish case for active learning. I completely agreed with his proposals, but didn’t find them as “new” as he seemed to cast them.

It’s now Sunday morning, 6:50, and time for me to head out to the “Church of Christ Professors Meeting” (a.k.a. on-site worship). See you around!