Tech Forum

Add me to the list of disappointed. I'd prefer to focus on how awesome it is and how much it helps organize the lessons as well as help teachers invite diligent learning.

In my opinion this function should have been added to LDS Tools a long time ago. I've given my input in the past and I've seen several others. I think you would see greater utilization by adding it there as people are on their phones all the time these days and not on computers as much. The Lesson and Newsletter functions were the two missing items from LDS Tools. We will probably see the Newsletter function go away soon, too.

I had some ward leaders asking me about this today. They depend on it and are wondering what they're going to do.

lajackson wrote: While some wards use this function extensively, I suspect that most do not.

I find one of the unfortunate things about the technology the church has provided is that they haven't done a great job of publicizing what they've made available to us. It's almost like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I think the uptake of the church's development efforts would be better if matters like the Lesson Schedules tool were integrated with the curriculum planning. It's always been an afterthought. I've sent feedback many times that the annual curriculum notice should mention Lesson Schedules and that the data should be configured and ready to go when the annual curriculum is released. Of course, getting it integrated into something like Gospel Library would help, too.

lajackson wrote: Since I am among those who will miss having this function, we will now go out and do all of those things Lesson Schedules was designed to keep us from having to do.

Same here
This saved time, was accessible to everyone, and helped people to know what was going on. I don't think anything we implement on our own will work as well.

I do appreciate someone's comment about the calendar. I think I'll experiment with that option. Maybe I'll set up a curriculum calendar. At least it keeps it in the church ecosystem. I don't like the thought of "go to Google Docs for X, Facebook for Y, etc."

To add to what I mentioned above: Lesson Schedules also has a nice tie-in to the new Teaching in the Savior's Way initiative. See Part 4, Invite Diligent Learning.

Lesson Schedules could have been mentioned in this program as a tool to help the teacher and help the members. I think many members don't come to church knowing what will be taught. This gives them help to study in advance and ponder after the lesson is over. But, like with my annual curriculum example in my previous post, the technology isn't getting correlated with the programs. Instead of being considered a tool to assist members in learning the gospel and having revelatory experiences, it's probably viewed as a clerical tool.

I'm surprise about enthusiastic comments on this tool.
As leader of the Church and IT technician I strove local leaders and members using Lessons Scheduler tool, uselessly.
So I give up to use it. Then I went back to see if I've being missing some of its features.
Having seeing that that is not the truth, my question is: "Which feature are you missing so much?".
I can see only Administration: add and remove courses and see annual schedule; and Events.
Maybe do you miss the "automatic fill out"?
Strange enough, I miss the freedom to manage lesson according to members situation instead of having the same lessons around all the world.
Calendar seam to me a better tool for that. But maybe I'm wrong since I was released few mounts ago.

marianomarini wrote:Having seeing that that is not the truth, my question is: "Which feature are you missing so much?".

I suspect it was more useful for the leaders to keep the classes and teachers organized. It was "the" proper place for it. I tend to doubt if members used it all that much, which would have shown up as a low "hit" rate for page views.

Wow, I would like to add my voice also that this is sad and will be missed. We were just starting to make some progress in our ward. Yet, it was a long and difficult journey to get members to use this.

You are correct in that the calendar would serve the function however many wards already use the calendar quite extensively and putting every class schedule on would tend to make the calendar messy. Not to mention that rather than having a teacher or presidency alter a standard schedule for "events", this elimination would have teachers or presidencies create a schedule from scratch entering every lesson manually with links if someone takes the time to do it properly. I for one was planning on emphasizing this feature as I facilitate teachers councils. Admittedly wards such as ours have not utilized this feature to its fullest in the past but we were just about to turn that around with the new teaching program.

So yes autofill is a desired feature but so is availability. I don't think there is a teacher or substitute who has ever not had the question of what lesson are we on. I was going to direct teachers and students to this schedule for both preparation reference for the teacher but also for all of the students as the Bishopric is asking for families to direct personal scripture and FHE study at the subject of an upcoming Sunday lesson (either for adults or for the primary lessons as appropriate).

Perhaps the timing of this elimination is one of the issues. Many of us have faltered with encouraging full use of the tool in the past. But with this new teaching program had a refreshed resolve. It might be good to continue but look at analytics and re-evaluate in 6 months.

We are going to pilot this in the next few weeks using the Ward Calendar setting up a new calendar for people to subscribe to