I have long been a HUGE fan of ReadTheScriptures.  For those not familiar with their service, they let you log in and create free reading schedules that email you your reading assignment each day.  You can set up schedules for everything under the sun.  I used it last year to read all the standard works in a year.  Right now I am using it for our companionship study with my sweet wife.

Well, just recently they released an iPhone version of their software that lets you set up schedules on your Phone, read your scriptures, mark your scriptures, add notes, and more.

It is really an awesome program.   (Price: $10.99)

The church is having a video competition to make your own Mormon Message.

“The purpose of this video contest is to give more members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints an opportunity to strengthen their testimonies as they share their talents with worldwide members and to “join the conversation” in sharing the gospel with the world. This contest will also help gather videos and material that could be used in future Mormon Messages and other Church video projects.”

You can start submitting them on October 18th, so start brainstorming now.

Long time readers know that I love the Return and Report Home Teaching and Visiting teaching reporting application.  I used it for several years as an Elders Quorum President and it greatly reduced the amount of time I spent on reporting so I could focus on the families of the ward.  In any case, Brad, the developer made up a great getting stated video that really walks you through the program and getting started.  Check it out!

So I am the ward mission leader in my ward.  As anyone who has served in any leadership position knows, one of the hardest things to do is keep track of everyone.  Well, I wanted to make it a bit easier and harness the power of technology to do that a little better.  What better way than my favorite web app (WordPress).

DISCLAIMER:  I am aware of the work the church is doing on this front.  I did do research into other similar projects, alas those projects are either dead, or on the back burner, and I need something now.  And I want to be able to easily share what I an the missionaries are learning with the rest of the ward leadership.  My real hope is that this project can help get some ideas out there as to what is possible so when the Digital Area Book project get’s revived we might have some thoughts and experiences to contribute.   So.. onto the plugin.

Functions

This is still a project under development, but check out this video for a little introduction the the tool.   I am calling this the Ward Mission Plugin 0.5 release.

• Add Families and track teaching, commitments, goals, concerns, etc.
• Add Potential Families that Members and Investigators are working with
• Keep Log of activity
• Create custom cateogories
• Assign families to other users (ward missionaries)
• Upload CSV from Ward Website

Coming Soon:

• Custom Reports based off of data in families
• Schedule Automatic Email of Reports

Usage

I need folks to test it out.  If you are interested in using it, or even just playing around I set this up in a multi-site instance at http://ward-mission.com.  That means I can create a site for you with a click up a button with a URL like slc42ward.ward-mission.com or something like that.  I will open this up to all eventually and let anyone create their own site.

I want to just say right up front that this project is a free project and my intentions are to keep it free forever.   I am not trying to turn this into a business or anything like that.  I already have one of those and it takes up all my time.

If you are comfortable with wordpress can also download the 0.5 beta plugin here, and put it on your own site.

Getting Involved

I would love your feedback and have created a dev site where you can leave your feedback at http://dev.ward-mission.com.   If you are interested in joining me on the development shoot me an email or leave a comment on the dev blog.

As I mentioned yesterday, the church has opened up the new.lds.org site for everyone.  It really is a great site!

This morning I got a chance to play around with the new site and used the scripture study feature for the first time.  It took me a little while to find my way around and I thought it would be helpful for some folks to have a little intro.  So I made a video up.

Overall I am pleased with the scriptures.  I sent them a bit of feedback.  I’ll post it here.  Feel free to add your thoughts.  Perhaps you have found ways around the problems I was having.

Feedback:

• The biggest problem I have is the method for marking.  It is sometimes hinky to get the highlighting working.  You are supposed to just hover over the verse to make the highlighter open up.  But it doesn’t always work.  I think there should be a “Highlighting Mode” that you can activate when you are highlighting verses that allows you to click and select a part of a verse and then the menu pops up afterward to choose the color, add a note, AND add a tag (tag is not currently one of the options).  T
• Right now after you highlight anything it pops open a menu where you can edit the highlight, add a note, and add tags.  I think that should not automatically pop open even time.  It distracts from the scriptures.  Or at least make an global option for each user where folks can decide if they want it to have that pop open each time.
• I woud love to be able to highlight multiple verses at once (passages)
• When tagging, I would like a way to browse current Tags
• Multiple Versions of the scriptures.  Sometimes you want to just read the BOM and highlight all the places where it mentions a topic.  It would be great to have multiple copies of the scriptures for different times, and purposes.  Maybe you could use tags or folders for this as well if you could set a default tag or folder for when you were marking.  Or filter and show the markings based on the tag as you read (ie. Only show Tags: BOM Christ Reading 2010).

What are your thoughts?

I have been so busy as of late that I have not had the chance to post too often on here.  Sorry about that!

Well, yesterday I was introduced to one of the finest LDS resources I have ever seen!

OpenLDS.com

Their whole goal is to aggregate all the awesome LDS resources that are available out there on the internet (which is a LOT!)  You can take a look at the banner above to see how they split it all up so you can easily find what you are looking for!  My favorite part is certainly the Church Leaders section.   You can go there and find all sorts of great information about each church leader and links off to the things they have written and said in all of the different media formats that are available.  Check it out!

Let me start this post off with a little story. I started working in IT about 5 years ago. One of the downfalls of working with technology is that sometimes you think you can fix anything. Well… I knew I should be backing up my family pictures and made some paltry CD backups, but never really took it seriously. I told myself “I am a techie and can fix anything.”

Well… let me just tell you that there are some things I can’t fix. And hard drives DO FAIL!

Since my unfortunate hard drive failure and the resulting loss of pictures and data I have researched dozens of back-up options. I now have a complex techie solution I use for my pictures, videos and documents that involves a script and automated backups to my own personal off site server where it duplicated the data once more on a Raid network device. But that is obviously not for everyone.

That being said I have long looked for a good solution that I could recommend to others. I finally found it. It is the Mozy.com folks.  And as an added bonus, they are based out of Pleasant Grove UT and I think they have Mormon connections.  I personally love supporting my brothers and sisters and gospel in their business efforts.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have signed up for an affiliate program that gives me a little bit on money when people do sign up so if you are going to sign up, please consider going there from any of the links on my blog. I figure this can help pay for the domain name and space I use to maintain this blog.

Versions

• A FREE version with up to 2GB of data (enough to back up important documents!)
• A super cheap version for $4.95/mo with UNLIMITED DATA (pictures, videos, etc!)
• Even an Educational and Business Version with local institutional administration capabilities.

Check out this comparison page for more information.

They even have a Mac version! How awesome is that? I have it installed and running now and it is GREAT!

How it Works:

You install it once, leave it and you can sleep at night knowing you have a backup. The first time takes a while, but it uses slow network time. I could still surf and even watch streaming video while it did the initial backup.

Restoring Data – There are three easy ways to restore data with the Free version.

• Use the client version to restore it right on machine.
• Web version to restore
• DVD sent to your home ($)

Overall, I am VERY pleased with this and highly recommend it to everyone! Even if you only use it for the free version to back up the important documents… give it a try!

One of the things that the LDS community is really good at is preserving memories.  Our keen interest in our ancestors helps us realize that we would like to leave a record for our posterity.

I know my family and MANY of my friends have all started a blog and write our family history as it happens on those blogs.  I have taken those posts and created books from them for my family.  (Technology makes it easier and I will post about how I did that in a future post).  But what about the past?

I ran across another start up today called “Remembering That.“  In their own words:

Our goal is to collect and present your memories and stories. Think of it as a bit of an historical archive and window to our past.

This is simply a site where you can share some of the stories about the past that you remember.  Some have to do with families.  Some just have to do with funny memories of the past.

What do you use to record your memories of the past?

I just came across a great new startup, Famplosion,  that helps you find family friendly activities in your area, or an area you are visiting.  Right now they only have the following locations, but perhaps they will expand one day.

• Atlanta
• Chicago
• Los Angeles
• Nashville
• New York City
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Tahoe City

Our local chamber of commerce also has a great website with local events that I use to find good and varied date nights with my sweet wife.

What do you use to keep up with local events?

I came across this great video this morning about a networked student.  It really get’s the old juices flowing when thinking about spiritual education as well. 

So how does this all apply in a spiritual setting? I’m glad you asked.   Here are a couple of points off the top of my head.

Distance Education
Notice that this “Student at 21st century high school” only spends 3 days a week in classroom, 2 days online.  This is a great model for increasing interaction.  Technology enables more interactions outside of the classroom.  Meaningful interactions that can build up students.  I think we should certainly encourage as much interaction as possible. 

That doesn’t mean we should spend less time in a physical classroom where that is possible, but rather that we can increase interaction with those that can’t make it to a physical classroom every day of the week.

Personal Learning Network

Students in the 21st century need to be taught how to build up a personal spiritual learning network.  A lot of the work that happens in Sunday School and Seminary/Institute classes are there to teach students how to study the scriptures.  Well, today there is  lot more information out there that they need to learn how to navigate as well.

Social Bookmarking Site

This student goes out and finds relevant sites about their topic and bookmarks them where others can find them.  In the church there is certainly a ton of information out there, just from the church alone… not to mention the millions of personally created sites.  Social bookmarking sites will help students navigate this sea of information in meaningful ways.  As students begin to find the best content (D&C 88:118) and pass that on it will also help put that information to the top of search engines. 

Blogs

Students have the opportunity to not only comment on blog about their “own informed point of view,” but as they create their own blog they think critically and have opportunities to expression opinions to a global audience.

iTunes / Mobile Devices

Students in the 21st audio and video podcasts that support his learning.  In the church that is certainly the case as well with BYU TV, CES video’s, General Conferences, CES Firesides, etc. all available!

Connection with experts – Skype

Students can connect with LDS people all over the world.  If they are having a lesson on missionary work I’m sure some of the folks at A More Good Foundation would be DELIGHTED to do a Skype video interview about using the internet to spread the gospel.   Then there is the added ability to connect with General Authorities, or others that may have a special story to tell that will help the students.  Oh, and think of the global impact as well.  Perhaps connecting with a seminary class in Germany and chatting with them on a regular basis to see how the church is different/same there.

Personal Student Projects

Perhaps my favorite part of this video is where they talk about a student’s work culminates into a project of their own.  Where a student share’s his knowledge with the world through video, voicethread, wiki, etc.  In the case of the church, a student is sharing their testimony with the world.  We all know that often a testimony is gained in the bearing of it.  This is certainly no less the case.

Teacher Role

Teachers teach how to build this network, offer guidance, serve as a modeler, help the students differenciate between good information and propaganda, and help the students organize information.  They teach them to set up network that will help the student navigate their future in the gospel. 

Other Ideas?

These are just a few quick ideas off the top of my head this lovely morning.  What did you get out of the video?  If you are a teacher, how can you apply some of this in your classroom?  It can be on Sunday in church or some other setting where you get to teach. 

Hey… we are all teachers to some extent in our homes… how can you apply this with your kids?!  Mine are just starting to use the internet.  I should show them how to bookmark and share things with others.  And how to search and find good content. It’s never too early!