FAQ for Supporting New Youth Curriculum Digital Media

[ulupoi]

To the people in charge of curriculum:

Please print a full teacher's manual and make DVDs available which include all of the recommended media content. We have many members who do not know how to use the Internet. Some are older, some have little formal education, and some are from less-developed nations. The new curriculum requires understanding of and access to technology. This creates a large and sometimes insurmountable barrier for many current and potential teachers, especially those who are elderly. If they are told that the answer is for them to learn, the spiritual will get lost in the technical as an 80 year old teacher with a lifetime of wisdom to share instead struggles to even find the lessons she is supposed to teach, much less download videos to a flash drive and find a way to play them at her local meetinghouse. I'm told that the lesson outlines, themselves, are excellent. Please make them more accessible. In its current form, "Come, Follow Me" is hidden under a technological bushel.

[dannykos]

To the people in charge of curriculum:

Please print a full teacher's manual and make DVDs available which include all of the recommended media content. We have many members who do not know how to use the Internet. Some are older, some have little formal education, and some are from less-developed nations. The new curriculum requires understanding of and access to technology. This creates a large and sometimes insurmountable barrier for many current and potential teachers, especially those who are elderly. If they are told that the answer is for them to learn, the spiritual will get lost in the technical as an 80 year old teacher with a lifetime of wisdom to share instead struggles to even find the lessons she is supposed to teach, much less download videos to a flash drive and find a way to play them at her local meetinghouse. I'm told that the lesson outlines, themselves, are excellent. Please make them more accessible. In its current form, "Come, Follow Me" is hidden under a technological bushel.

Well we were sent 1 printed copy of each 'manual' (collection of lesson outlines) - so there are obviously some available. I would suggest speaking with your bishop who may have a copy.

[rolandc]

Well we were sent 1 printed copy of each 'manual' (collection of lesson outlines) - so there are obviously some available. I would suggest speaking with your bishop who may have a copy.

You can print your own right from the lesson page, the link is at the bottom of the main page.

[dannykos]

Well we were sent 1 printed copy of each 'manual' (collection of lesson outlines) - so there are obviously some available. I would suggest speaking with your bishop who may have a copy.

You can print your own right from the lesson page, the link is at the bottom of the main page.

Yes - but the question was about for people who are less technically able. I've placed the 3 printed manuals that were received in the library for people to photocopy or borrow as they feel the need.

[ulupoi]

Ideally, the teacher's manual would include teacher-training materials, lesson outlines, and the recommended videos on DVD, and it would be made available through the usual distribution channels. You want something that you can hand to an 80 year old member saying, "Read this first section and you will know everything you need to know about how to teach this new curriculum. This second section contains all of the lesson outlines. These pockets contain DVDs with all of the videos recommended in the lesson outlines. This manual has everything you need except the holy scriptures, your experiences and those of your students, and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost."

[drepouille]

I would never want people to photocopy a printed manual, especially if it contains color and photos. I hate it when people photocopy pages from the Ensign for their TFOT lessons. It just dumps toner, which I suspect costs 10 or 20 cents per page.

We do have a few teachers of youth classes in our stake who refuse to touch a computer. They are struggling.

[Gary_Miller]

Your clerks could print the Manuals off using the clerks printer for those who may not have the capabilities themselves. This is what we are doing for the teachers so they don't have to burn up their own paper and ink.

[EarloftheWest]

When I joined the Church at 16 in 1986, if we wanted to watch a video in our classrooms, the teacher would roll in a TV and put in a VHS video tape and we would watch the video.
This would happen infrequently regardless of the fact that there were lots of videos available.
Do I feel "any worse for wear" because I didn't watch more Church videos in Sunday School and Priesthood as I was in Young Mens? Doubtful. I don't think I needed to have watched more videos than I did when I was a youth. I would say that it was certainly a nice change. Regular lessons could certainly be considered occasionally "boring" by the youth but the messages would typically have a positive outcome in all cases regardless of the interest level of the content.
Fast forward 30ish years. What has changed? From a distribution method, we certainly have more ways to distribute content. But let's break this new youth curriculum down a bit.
At the end of the day, we have a lesson and video that's used to teach the lesson. The difference is that it's available online - the purpose of which is to encourage youth to review the messages outside of Church.
While at Church, if the lesson calls for video, does it have to be shown from a tablet or a phone? After reading this thread, give me a DVD and a Television (reliable technology that everyone knows how to use) and I'm all set. What's better, having youth huddle around a 7 inch table or watch the video on the 10 year old CRT? Give me the reliable method.
I do not want my grandpas and grandmas who are teaching lessons to the youth to even think about USB drives and plugging them into the television.
On the other hand, if the youth were given the assignment to download videos and burn them to DVD or come up with a way to show the lesson in class, I'm all over that because that means that the youth are spending hours online at LDS.org and spending time converting the videos to a playable format.
However, the problem with having anyone convert online videos to a DVD format is that the quality may be in question. I have seen many converted media where the voice and video is out of sync. This really distracts from the lesson.
As much as I think the people in the curriculum department have a great idea, I think they still need to put the content on professionally produced DVDs.
There was this great concept: Let's use the technology that the youth are using to distribute content and lessons. But the technology gaps that exist from an execution perspective appear to not have been taken into consideration. The more I think about it, the more I want DVDs of the content (or ISOs to be burned if speed of distribution is an issue) to use in class.
Rather than spending thousands of dollars per building, let's use a solution we already have available and have been using for 20 years.
(Sidebar) Do we REALLY want to support Western Digital Live TV devices? That seems like a lot of overhead for a Stake. I think about Firmware updates, for example. And how long is that device really going to be usable? Interestingly, with the Roku, you can watch byutv and general conference. It also plays files from USB sticks and plugs into regular TVs. It also has a Mormon channel app that probably has all the youth content already available. Hook up the Roku's to the TVs and stream directly from the Mormon Channel app. It seems strange/interesting that the Roku device wasn't recommended.
(Sidebar ends)
It comes back to grandpa and grandma. Is it worth the overhead so we can show stuff with new technology? What's wrong with the old technology?

[johnshaw]

Why hold back those that wish to use the new technology? In my mind we make both available, then those of us who think it's a huge hassle to haggle and fight over the single allocated TV to a unit to play that very simple DVD... or trade around the tv between classes disrupting the flow of a class, etc.. I'd rather that we do both and make both available methods.

[Bizegrama]

Today, I had the Branch Clerk, Branch Secretary, & Youth Leader ask me - What's the password to the wireless? (Since from early on as FHC director I had the knowledge of our internet set-up, how to reboot, etc.) The Youth Leader was trying to stream a video over wireless.

We have extremely slow internet (through Sprint broadband card that keeps dropping connection) at present. I have tried to explain to them that the wireless (for anything) isn't a option at present, wireless has messed up Cisco 881W in some cases, and that the Church prefers that they download the videos to other media.

Luckily, when I got home I found on the LDS Tech forum the link to "Showing Videos in Meetinghouses Guide" PDF and forwarded a copy to them. I offered to help them if they needed the help to download the videos.

Some leaders have laptops, others I Pad's, and some might just need to do teaching via the old verbal method. Our meetinghouse has old CRT TV's, and I agree with JohnShaw about the haggling & fighting over the TV's. When I was teaching a Sunday School Family History Class, someone came & got the TV & DVD player I had all set up & ready to go. I just taught the class verbally. From then on I just used my laptop.

I'm trying to decide if we need to do some training on downloading videos. My husband was recently called as Sunday School president, so we may consult with all involved and see if they need any training.

I know from personal experience, sometimes even with fast broadband at home, the buffering slows the download with church videos, so agree that downloading the videos to other media is a better idea. I have had to do that with some of the FHC videos.

Let us use the technology wisely. Some may or may not be able to deal with the technology. I happen to be a "Grandma" that does know the newer technology, but there are others young & old who are either afraid or intimidated by the technology. Give them the tools to use whatever format they feel comfortable with.

Great discussion. I find so much useful & helpful information on the forum. Thank you, all.