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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:26 am
by richmanll
With the new integrated curriculum coming in 2018 for children, youth, and adults, there will be less of a need to have a tool to schedule lessons for the year and post them. The materials to be provided to teachers and students will include a study schedule.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 8:20 am
by mevans
richmanll wrote:With the new integrated curriculum coming in 2018 for children, youth, and adults, there will be less of a need to have a tool to schedule lessons for the year and post them. The materials to be provided to teachers and students will include a study schedule.
That's the first I've heard of a new "integrated curriculum" coming in 2018. I guess we'll see what happens and if your predictions about needs are correct. Rght now it's 2017 and the tool you're taking away is very useful for the curriculum we still need to use. It would have made a lot more planning sense to have communicated in December 2016 that 2017 would be the last year for Lesson Schedules and that the tool would be removed in 2018 because it's not needed with the new curriculum coming in 2018. By the time I received notice the tool was being discontinued, I already had wasted time setting up 2017 in the tool.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 1:33 pm
by marianomarini
mevans wrote:I already had wasted time setting up 2017 in the tool.
Before or after the warning message appear?
If the message was issue too late, then HQ can let the page for this year.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:52 am
by RLLawrenceJr
I would like to see this come back. We used it all the time especially for the Priesthood and Relief Society lessons that come from the Stake and the Ward. I can't imagine that it would take that many resources to keep this function going and it seems to be used by many.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 10:52 am
by AndrewsenLA
Our stake and ward have each created a Lessons Schedule calendar in the Calendar tool. There we put all the lessons. Members can easily subscribe to this calendar along with others they have and see the lesson for each Sunday for each class. It is working fine.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 1:27 pm
by dtolputt
Unless we tell them they won't know what happens out here. It also would be nice to be able to give some feedback regarding changes and new stuff.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:32 pm
by johnshaw
richmanll wrote:With the new integrated curriculum coming in 2018 for children, youth, and adults, there will be less of a need to have a tool to schedule lessons for the year and post them. The materials to be provided to teachers and students will include a study schedule.
Ahh... some information starts to trickle out. A simple explanation that says.. hey, in 2018 this whole things gonna change, in your families you'll be studying stuff that will carry over into church everyone will have a schedule (one ring to rule them all) and this tool is not going to be as relevant to the new stuff... is that so hard to tell members of the church? Man, seriously....

It doesn't explain, however, why we wouldn't just keep it through 2017 and deprecate it when it's no longer needed.

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 7:11 am
by erojng
I am a HPGL and will have to create the form manually such a shame that the church has taken a backwards step on the Sunday lessons

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 1:07 pm
by wrigjef
The use case is valid. Assuming that the intensity at which this was publicized by the Church is going to continue, and had "Teaching the Savior's way" not been introduced as a new enhancement opportunity, the lesson schedules tool is too underused to merit any updates or support this should be discontinued. BUT

There is a new focus on teaching . I facilitate the teachers councils in our ward and virtually every discussion on any topic includes using tools both to prepare and to present. Teachers are wanting a tool that they can share with students to help them prepare for the learning. In addition, the Church wide implementation of "Teaching the Savior's way" provides the opportunity for a Church wide effort to promote the lesson schedules tool.

There is no debate that under the "status quo" that existed this time last year, the lesson schedules tool should have been discontinued. However some huge opportunities and benefits have been missed or negated by this decision.

Now on to solutions, I'm not as technical as many on here but I understand resources, especially those that have to be paid for. I don't see a web based solution as an option because I don't see wards, including ours, paying for hosting. I am looking for an effective free option to put a schedule out there. The Church has recommended paper but many members want a link. So far the option that sounds best is to create a document with clickable links to cirriculim on LDS.org
We have investigated the policy on Facebook groups and are going to set up a closed group for the ward using "friends of...."
there is a little known feature on groups called "files" where documents can be posted including a lessons schedule document. I have not tested this yet but it sounds like it should work.

I'm open to any other free, simple suggestions

Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:11 pm
by aebrown
wrigjef wrote:There is no debate that under the "status quo" that existed this time last year, the lesson schedules tool should have been discontinued.
Sure there is. The usage statistics that were published, although not impressively high, were far greater than the usage statistics that lead the Church to still publish the Book of Mormon and many other published materials in languages that have far fewer readers than there were users for the Lesson Schedules tool.

That doesn't mean that such a debate had any impact on the Church's decision -- that's not how the Church operates -- but there were certainly valid arguments against the discontinuation of the tool.