Tech Forum

I have just been sustained as our Ward Sunday School President. Our Stake has asked us to begin holding virtual Sunday School meetings the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month. Has anyone else here started holding Sunday School virtually? If so, I'm especially curious especially how many classes are being held in your Ward, how long they are, what they are, and when they are scheduled (e.g. do you hold them simultaneously or staggered throughout the day?). I would like to know what meeting platform(s). If you take attendance, how do you do that?
Thanks for any insight you might have.

We have combined all youth and adult Gospel Doctrine classes, and they meet in the main chapel. I use a G Suite account to host a Google Meet event. I use a Logitech C922 webcam for video. We use a wireless Lavalier mic to capture audio from the teacher. We can't capture audio from the students in the chapel, but anyone joining the Google Meeting can see, hear, and respond to the teacher, because I connect a TV to the HDMI port on the computer.

Our ward has sacrament meeting at 12:00 PM (~40 minutes + sacrament at the end). We then have second-hour meetings using Zoom (no broadcasting from the chapel) at 1:30 PM or 2:30 PM (1st and 3rd Sundays, the youth at 1:30 and the adults at 2:30; 2nd and 4th Sundays, Relief Society at 1:30 and Elders Quorum at 2:30). The second-hour meetings are usually 30–40 minutes.

I don't know what guidance the leaders in my stake/ward have received from the area. I like having shorter 30–40 minute meetings, but I don't like the extra busy-ness it adds to my Sunday schedule to have one meeting, then a couple of hours gap, then another meeting. With my ward's 12:00 PM sacrament meeting, I think I would prefer Sunday School to be held before sacrament meeting, or later in the evening, or on a different day of the week.

sbradshaw wrote:I don't know what guidance the leaders in my stake/ward have received from the area. I like having shorter 30–40 minute meetings, but I don't like the extra busy-ness it adds to my Sunday schedule to have one meeting, then a couple of hours gap, then another meeting.

My ward is very similar. Mixed in-person/online sacrament meeting at 10 AM, and second hour only on Zoom at either 11:30 or Noon. I'm sure the gap is to allow those who are in-person to get home. Inconvenient for the stay at home, but I don't see any better options. Other wards use the chapel at 8:30 and 11:30. The classrooms are a little small for social distancing.

My ward is blessed to be the only unit in our meetinghouse. I just do a single 90-minute broadcast to cover both Sacrament and either Gospel Doctrine or Relief Society, with no break. The elders quorum sets up their own broadcast in the cultural hall, with the teacher at his home, talking to the rest of us, either at home or at church. The EQP and I both have G Suite accounts.

Half an hour would not be enough time for travel between meetings at church and home. Many of our members travel up to an hour to get to Church, a few even longer.

se han implementado las reuniones de barrio presenciales al formato virtual...todo por zoom

Thanks for sharing how you are all doing things. One additional follow-up question: do you use the waiting room feature, or do you allow people to bypass it? I’m nervous not to use it because of all the news stories about intruders causing trouble in meetings, but I also don’t want to accidentally prevent people from attending. I also wonder how useful the waiting rooms are if people haven’t set their names. For example, what do you do with someone who joins named “iPhone?” Is there any guidance on whether to turn waiting rooms on or leave them off?

I can only speak for our Stake. I believe all our units are just using a password instead of the waiting room feature. And from what I'm aware, we're all publishing the links and the passwords on our public FB pages (as well as any text/email outreach), and asking the missionaries to share this info with anyone who is interested, so in that sense it's an "open door". There's been no reports of intrusions in our Stake, and I'm not aware of anyone posting bad experiences on this Forum either. So I'd say it's something to be aware of, and be prepared to react to -- just like we do with our normal in-person meetings.

My wife was an online Seminary Teacher at the beginning of the year, so she had a licensed Zoom account active when quarantine started which I started using for my Ward Mission Council Meetings. My Elder's Quorum President asked me to help facilitate our first virtual class in July. In September the ward started a Zoom account (used for Sacrament meeting at 9 am, youth classes at 11 am, ward council at 1 pm, and adult classes at 2 pm (Sunday School 1st and 3rd Sundays, Elders Quorum 2nd Sundays, Relief Society 4th Sundays). All our public meetings share our ward name as the password. For meetings I host, I enable the waiting room for meetings when I schedule them, but after I join and admit everyone, I disable it.