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.

Gradually over the past 5 years the web and web published has changed dramatically.  It used to be that you had to be a super techie to publish anything on the web… now a days anyone can publish… anything… anywhere.  With tools like blogs, wiki’s, podcasts, video/photo sharing sites, social networks, and hundreds of software sites, anyone can write on the web now.

I envision a classroom that has many assignments online that leverage the power of the internet and the tools mentioned above.  Compared to a traditional classroom with several papers and students passively listening to a teacher talk, I have created a list of four benefits to publishing content online.  I will incorporate some of the paradigms from Steve Hargadon’s “Web 2.0 is the future of Education” into my list.

1. Motivation – When students publish on the web they are publishing to a global audience.  Typically they will spend more time pondering and thinking about what they are going to say.  The work they do then becomes part of them.  They go from passive learning to passionate learning.  They have to think deeply about what they believe and that brings the gospel deeper into their hearts.

2. Potential Projects – When technology and the web come into view the potential for projects becomes much larger.  Students are not limited to a paper, but can interpret the assigment in what ever medium best suits them.  That may be writing (my best medium), or it may be music, video, some sort of social experiment, or something totally different.  It opens the doors of creativity and also allows students to express themselves how they best learn.

3. Feedback and Participation – Traditional writing only has one, or at most a few people that will read the work, so the feedback is limited to that small circle.  In most cases those people also think and act like those writing so their feedback will not vary.  With a global audience the feedback is much more diverse.  Students will also have the opportunity to defend their work.  The work they do not only is a presentation, but it become participative as they continue to talk about it, and defend it in some cases.

4. Engagement - Most of all projects that use the technology that students are familiar with engages them.  They don’t check out, or turn their minds off when they come to class… they are excited and will often spend hours and hours outside of school working ont these projects because they are what is exciting to them.  The more time they spend working on these projects and thinking about them, again… the deeper it get’s into their souls and helps them determine who they are and what they believe!

Over the past year I have seen several good examples of teachers who are already giving their students assignments like this.  In 2002, Seth Adam Smith created a YouTube video about the prophet Joseph Smith for a Church History Project at the BYU Summer Navoo Program.  Since then he has made over 90 other video’s and continues today.  Here is one of his more recent one’s.

Another video I found that I really like is this “BackPack and Brick’s” video about repentance. I honestly don’t know the background to this one, but I have emailed the user to find out. I suspect it was an assigment… if not, it would have been a great one.

I also came across this funny video that was the winner of an Institute Academy Awards activity that was certainly thought up by the digital natives that are so comfortable and excited by this type of technology.

Although these examples only have to do with video, students can also blog, compose, write software, or a myriad of other things that they know about, but I’m not familiar with. They are, after all, the experts in this field. Let them do their work and see what they can come up with!

On the heels of yesterday’s post about older conference talk audio, I read this morning a post from LDSWeb guy that the Joseph Smith Manual has audio now for English, and has plans for 11 other languages. Awesome! This could be great for returned missionaries trying to keep up on their languages… or missionaries for that matter…

That reminds me… a couple of weeks ago, I saw that the church had posted the audio for preach my gospel as well… awesome! That means that people can listen to the lessons without a missionary. Might be a good starting place for someone who is not willing to meet with the missionaries quite yet.

I love listening to scriptures/lessons while I run. It is a great way to spend a little time pondering about the eternities!

So you remember those weekly reports you had to send to your mission-president while you were on a mission. You know… “I just love this area President, and my companion is awesome. We are doing just great… ” Yeah, I know that is exactly what they sounded like. Well apparently the church is testing out electronic weekly reports from missionaries… Great idea!

Great video about Missionary work. Good to share with some friends about what I did/the missionaries do.

This is GREAT!  He talks a bit about why we should use the internet to preach the gospel and the awesome new JesusChrist.lds.org website.

Okay, I admit I really like the title of this article, but it is a good article as well. This morning I read “Called to Blog: Fighting for the Church Online.” It deserves a read. A couple of excerpts:

An Orem woman posted a video of her testimony on YouTube. A man in another state watched it four times and emailed, asking for a copy of the Book of Mormon.

A man in Vegas wrote on his blog that he was grateful for the law of tithing. A questioning reader asked him why Mormons like commandments. After several online conversations, the missionaries began meeting with the man.

That is just cool… I love stories like that.

Curtis… thinks the web is an easier venue for members to share the gospel. Even students can be sharing the gospel, he said, even though most of the people they live with are already members. With the web, students can reach out to people everywhere.

“People don’t go to their neighbors like they used to,” Curtis said.

Instead, people google things, Curtis said. The Internet is where many people will go to find answers to religious questions as well.

“I’ve had a handful of people that have started asking me questions,” he said.

One woman found Curtis online and the two began conversing about the gospel. She had been converted when she was younger but went inactive after her mother disapproved. That testimony in her never left, Curtis said. After a while, she began attending church and took her family as well.

Awesome! So go out and spread the word! Technology was created just for this!

LDSTech posted a little article about a system they have been working on for a while for Mission Offices.  From their website:

“Internet Mission Office System (iMOS) is a Web application designed to
help mission office staff manage mission information and perform other
tasks.”

The main task pointed out is to visualize transfer scenario’s for the mission.  There is also a mention of financial features.

I imagine this will be a huge help for missionaries that serve in the office…

I was just finishing up the Ensign for this month (before the month is through) and came across this section about people using technology to serve more.

Using a Web-based telephone program, the missionaries, who can be located anywhere in the world as long as they have broadband Internet access, respond to as many as 10,000 inquiries per month. Patrons’ questions span many topics, including family history research, indexing, and submitting names to the temple.

Though her eyesight is poor, Sister Taylor—now a supervisor over six fellow missionaries—can increase the font size on her computer enough to read patrons’ e-mails and respond to their questions.

Service missionaries are given extensive online training they can complete at home. They also have access to a team of individuals to help them with their questions and provide individual training and help. Once they’ve finished the training, they have access to a database that includes some 4,000 articles they can refer to for answers to patrons’ questions.

Sister Taylor didn’t learn how to operate a computer until she was 66 years old, but she says it is a beneficial, useful skill. “Your age doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re not too old to learn how to use [a computer].”

The article goes on to to relate who can serve is this capacity.  This is great stuff.  This is the type of thing that makes me think that the Lord has certainly inspired the internet to proclaim the gospel, redeem the dead, and perfect the saints!

As you have seen, I like YouTube video’s, There are a lot of great video’s out there and YouTube had a strict policy about content.  Well, some of these video’s would be useful and powerful in the classroom for either getting the attention of students, or allowing them to even create their own content. 

As an example, SethAdamSmith created a YouTube video for a BYU class a couple of years ago.  It turned out so well, that now he has over a hundred (116 at the time I wrote this) great uplifting video’s on YouTube.  To me, this is joining the internet conversation, as Elder Ballard encouraged us to do.  This is not allowing others to define who we are online, but allowing others to feel the Spirit so they can decide for themselves based on real information.  Here are a just a couple of his video’s!

As a side note, I read another article this morning posted by Michael Wesch from Kansas State University.  He posted notes from a presentation he just did about why we should use YouTube in the classroom.  Although focused on the school system, I think it would be useful for church teachers looking to use YouTube videos in the classroom as well.  Topics he covers:

• Legality of using YouTube video’s
• Why we use them
• Tips for finding good video’s
• Ways to Download them locally
• Tools for Remixing them
• Ways to incorporate them into our teaching

So, what do you think?  I know we obviously need to be careful about any content we bring into the classroom, but we have used outside books, and comics for years, why not the media of today as well?