4 Responses for "Overcoming the Tital Wave of Church Information"

1. Bryan Beckman July 9th, 2008 at 10:14 pm 1

   I think there are a few things worth noting here. The Church does have a lot of content on its servers, but it remains fairly difficult for the average member to access. This was true both before and after the LDS.org redesign, which in my opinion cleaned up the home page at the expense of everything else. Not only is most of their content 2 or more levels deep in the navigation tree, but the lack of usable permalinks makes it nearly impossible to bookmark content for later viewing. Regardless of what you want to see, be it content for handheld devices, PDFs, video clips, or the class member study guide for the coming week’s Sunday School lesson, you’re practically forced to go to the home page and click-and-wait, click-and-wait, click-and-wait your way there.

   In addition, the Church has so many registered domains these days that I’ve given up keeping track of them. Each of those domains has a different look and feel and (somewhat) different content than the other. So if I’m looking for material for a lesson on temporal self-reliance, where do I go? LDS.org, ProvidentLiving.org, or both?

   Given the above, it’s no wonder most people just throw up their hands and do a Google search to find something good! It’s certainly a lot easier than navigating the maze of poorly designed sites the Church’s IT group has thrown up.

   And don’t even get me started on LUWS.

   That said, I would be really happy if the Church would post PDF versions of all its magazines published since 1970. There are several decades’ worth of pictures and artwork that need to be accessible to more than just the meetinghouse librarians. Having the text of all these magazines is great, but it’s sad to see only the photo credits at the bottom of the article, tantalizing us with what we could have seen if we only had the original publication in our hands.

   Something else to keep in mind is that I believe we’re soon going to reach a “saturation point” when it comes to LDS-themed or -oriented blogs, meaning that if we encourage everyone to create and post their work online, a lot of wonderful words and images will go largely unseen, simply because most people don’t have the time to visit more than a few blogs each day. And people are only going to publish if they know others are going to read it.

   Now, if there were a way to publish work onto a centralized, Church-owned repository, that might be a little different. But I can’t imagine the headache that would cause the people in Salt Lake, because they’d have to essentially moderate every single thing posted to the site.

   But maybe a class blog would work. I can definitely see myself as a teacher sending students to my website to download additional materials, submit assignments, and participate in bulletin board conversations about the principles we discuss in class. But I can’t see the Church being very comfortable with that – that’s how we got LUWS in the first place.

   Certainly no easy answers.

2. Jeff VanDrimmelen July 10th, 2008 at 7:07 am 2

   Great points Bryan, as always. Yes, the information is overwhelming, but rather than being overwhelmed students need to be encouraged to start using it in some form. If their passion is music, they can start with the music site… words, perhaps the gospel library. In any case, encouraged through assignments.

   You bring up a GREAT point with a class blog or website of some kind where students can add their content. I think that is a step in the right direction, but ultimately we need the students to create content for the world to see. This will allow them to think critically about what they are saying and get the feedback they need to sink it deeper into their hearts.

   Thanks for your thoughts!

3. Bryan Beckman July 10th, 2008 at 7:47 am 3

   Just so I don’t come across as too much of a pessimist, I’ll add that I think the Church’s music site is terrific in its design and ease of access. The Interactive Church Music Player is a thing of beauty that allows visitors to interact with existing material in just the way you’ve described.

   I agree that students need feedback on their work so that both they and it can be polished and refined. The question is, what kind of feedback do we want them to receive? There are a whole lot of angry and ignorant Internet posters out there who’d love to give “feedback” on a youth’s fledgling testimony. There seems to be an unfortunate positive relationship between the popularity of a forum and the types of views represented on it. Therefore, the more we take a “walled garden” approach, the less likely we are to get the number of views and the type of constructive, external feedback that both teachers and students feel is acceptable to justify the effort.

   If you disallow feedback entirely, like the Church has done with its YouTube presence, then you can throw yourself to the wolves, figuratively speaking, while housed inside a Sherman tank.

   I really, really like the class blog/discussion forum idea, but perhaps a somewhat aggregated approach would work best. Allow CES sites to be built by stake or geographical area and managed under the direction of CES area administrators. A decentralized network structure would relieve Salt Lake of a heavy burden, and the multi-unit structure would allow for feedback from students in other areas – or perhaps even from ward members themselves. That could go a long way toward generating a stronger ward community with ties at both the physical and virtual levels.

   The only major issue then (I hope) would be managing the digital divide on the local level. Many ward leaders with whom I’ve worked operate on the mistaken assumption that everyone has Internet and e-mail access, and that broadcasting announcements through LUWS is the best way to reach everyone. Sigh.

4. Jeff VanDrimmelen July 10th, 2008 at 8:09 am 4

   Thanks again for the response Bryan. First off to address the Feedback issue. Yes, there is a danger in allowing the students to get feedback from everyone in the world… and first and foremost those comments would be moderated. I envision a site disclaimer something similar to this: Students would then be taught how to respond to comments appropriately (not combatively).

   That being said I really love your ideas about a decentralized approach and having it managed by the local CES folks. And your idea about feedback from the ward members and family is GENIUS! They then become involved in the classroom… and are sure to have good comments.

   You see this is why I love blogging and the internet. I would have never met you without this blogging and who knows when I would have, if ever, thought about the ward members involvement in this… awesome!