Thomas
Technology facilitating the
interaction between theology, church and society in the
world of education
CICT-COCTI |Brixen
About
In general
• Thomas: Dutch acronym
• Founded in 2002
• www.kuleuven.be/thomas: a high quality
framework to enable collaboration between all
those committed to religious education
• Based on the Roman Catholic Religion Curriculum
• Hermeneutical-Communicative Model
Board of Directors
• Chair
o episcopal vicar for education
• Financial partners
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Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (KU Leuven)
Flemish bishops
VSKO (Flemish Secretary for Catholic Education)
Interdiocesan Office for Catholic Religious Education
• Representatives from
o academic staff of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies
o ‘Pastoral Theology’ research unit
o inspectors of primary, secondary, tertiary and special school religious
education
o high school lecturers
o pastoral workers at schools
Key aspects
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active role in Catholic religious education
powerful instrument of scientific communication
service to the catholic church and society
keep contact with alumni/ae
challenged to follow up on developments in religion,
church, and society
learning medium in the academic teachers’ program
new ICT-instruments / databases to generate new
research
PR-instrument
Political discussion
Interactive
platform
Main categories
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General information
Primary education
Secondary education
Special education
Higher education
Pastoral
Information exchange,
discussion & tools
• Provide general information
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Official guidelines
Flemish bishops on religious education
Roman Catholic Religion Curriculum
Opinions
• Facilitate user interaction and content sharing
o Databases (photo, video, prayers, poems, Q&A, …)
o User input is reviewed and labelled with keywords from the Roman Catholic
Religion Curriculum
• Tools to aid teachers and educators
o Course action plan
o Communities
o Assessment tool for Catholic identity within schools or user-generated groups
The hermeneutic
communicative
model
Objectives
• Feeding religious thoughtfulness: broaden the
hermeneutical horizon through databases with
strong confessional impulses
• Examples:
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Music database
Movie database
Poem database
Links database
Database of daily updated periodicals and radio and television
broadcasts
Objectives (2)
• Attention to the plurality of religious perspectives
• Examples:
o assess the capacities of students at the beginning of each school year
o Hermeneutical knots (or conflicts of interpretation) for all religiouspedagogical documents
o Attention to all ideologies in religious-pedagogical documents
Objectives (3)
• Introduction to the power of the Christian tradition
• Examples:
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Strong theological files
Biblical sheets
Post teacher training
Attention to spirituality: prayer book
Objectives (4)
• Supporting the development of one’s own
ideological identity
• Examples
o Religious diary (MyThomas)
o Post-critical belief scale
Methodological support
• Course action plan
• Competency matrices
• Methods, examples:
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Bibliodrama
Godly Play
Pecha Kucha
Kamishibai
Meditation
Interreligious learning
• Support the identity of the religion teacher
o As a witness
o As a specialist
o As a moderator
Context of religion
courses
• Course evaluation instrument between teachers
and inspectors
• Pastoral at school
• Catholic school identity
• Mourning at school
• Reflection evens
Research based
• Hermeneutic-communicative model
• Interreligious learning
• Catholic identity research
Technology,
site analytics
Technology
PHP Programming language
MySQL Database backend
Custom made CMS (content managment system)
Role based access model (administrators,
moderators, members, visitors)
• Hosted at the university data center in Heverlee
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o One of the largest websites
o +50 GB of webspace
Visitors
• 5,000 unique visitors / day
• 30,000 pages / day
• Visitors by country
o 77% Belgium
o 21% The Netherlands
• > 32,000 registered accounts
• > 15,000 newsletter subscribers
Strong theological files
• 41 files on current & topical events to give teachers
the necessary theological background for use in
courses
• 116 extensively documented files on religiousrelated subjects for primary and secondary
education based on the hermeneuticcommunicative model
• 8 thematic modules for higher education
• 34 film sheets
• 28 biblical sheets
Confessional impulses
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1,433 photos
450 videos
408 prayers
212 poems
719 links
25,000 references to radio and television impulses
1080 announcements
745 Q&A items
1309 liturgical celebrations
Interactive instruments
• 29,000 course action plan documents
o 4,130 course projects publicly shared
• 12,000 community item posts
• 46,155 participants to the Post-critical belief scale
Future?
• Content
o Continued updates on a monthly basis
• Initiative to provide new impulses for
o Primary school education
• Tools & instruments
o New community system
o Updates to course action plan instrument
o Research Catholic Identity
• From a technology perspective
o Improved search options
o Labelling content
o Mobile device compatibility
English content
• English content can be found here
o http://www.kuleuven.be/thomas/page/mary-magdalene/
o http://www.kuleuven.be/thomas/page/for-richer-for-poorer-till-death-dous-part/
Questions? Follow us!
• www.godsdienstonderwijs.be
• Thomas@kuleuven.be
• facebook.com/
godsdienstonderwijs
• twitter.com/
@thomas_1432
Thomas 2013
Prof. Dr. D. Pollefeyt | Jan Verkoyen