A New Way to Take Attendance?

[missrlynnf]

I'm the ward librarian/technology specialist and my husband is the Sunday School secretary. When it comes to taking attendance, let's just say it's less than desirable in its current state. Our attendance rolls are 13 pages long - I have taken these down to 4 pages based on a combined effort to identify who is actually still in our ward boundaries and other criteria. This has helped significantly, but paper attendance logs are a tad annoying to pass around to all the different classes and we recently (somehow) lost on of our roles for primary. So, we've been trying to just use LDS Tools to take attendance, at least for primary, but it's clunky and time consuming. Much like the paper rolls, we still have to go through all 13 pages essentially, or we have to search every member up to mark their attendance.

All of this background is to simply wonder: is there a better, more streamlined and efficient way to take attendance? And if not, can we figure out something new? I've had a few thoughts on it but I'm not tech savvy enough to know if that's even a feasible concept.
But, if anyone has a better method for taking attendance that they'd like to share, we are all ears.

[jonesrk]

All of this background is to simply wonder: is there a better, more streamlined and efficient way to take attendance? And if not, can we figure out something new? I've had a few thoughts on it but I'm not tech savvy enough to know if that's even a feasible concept.

What are your thoughts, even if you are not tech savvy the forum members may be able to help use those ideas to find a way to do it.

How many people do you have that regularly attend gospel doctrine (I'm assuming that's the problem one)? One thought I had is to split the gospel doctrine class and put those who attend regularly in one class so that you have a much smaller roll to use.

[BrianEdwards]

I don't want to imply taking second-hour attendance is not important -- I think attendance information an underutilized tool for org presidencies. But from a practical pov, are there action items or leadership discussions occurring in your ward, based on who is and who is not attending SS classes? Just to say that while magnifying your calling is always what the Lord asks of us, I personally would be a bit nonplussed if I found out that all my efforts to capture accurate attendance data, was never even looked at by anyone in a leadership position.

Your ward might be doing a good job of reviewing and discussing attendance patterns. But if a discussion is needed, I'd also encourage your husband to speak with the SS Presidency and perhaps RS/EQ Presidencies, to see if they ever use the SS attendance data for any of their own discussions about individuals.

[russellhltn]

Eons ago, when I had to do reports on paper, one of the questions was to list the new individuals who hadn't attended a meeting. By that, I mean members who stopped attending and now fell into this category.

"Out of sight, out of mind". It's all too easy to overlook someone who is falling into inactivity.