Tech Forum

I'm disappointed in the way this is proceeding. It feels like management forgot the end users and their reliance on the simple web pages in the Lesson Schedules tool.
There are still lots of members who do not access the internet daily. When using the internet can be a turnoff for them after having had a challenging experience.
I'm looking forward to the new integrated curriculum and hope that all members can use it.

I'm unhappy too about the way this discussion has developed. Evidently we have zero chance of getting the application reinstated. So we could just stop here. On the other hand, knowledgeable users are "leaking" information about future developments like an integrated curriculum. Nice to know, and if this were a public forum then I would be excited to be in touch with people with insider information. BUT THIS IS AN OFFICIAL CHURCH SITE !!! So why all the speculation and secrecy? Why doesn't someone with the appropriate calling and authority just tell us - who are all presumably members of the church - what's happening so that we can say "thanks for the info" and get back to the daily business of keeping the church running at the local level where we are called to stand?

If it is at all helpful to anyone here is a link to the lessons for our ward, I used Firefox over Chrome and Safari since that allows you to copy and past the manuals into Excel spreadsheet across multiple cells. Feel free to download as an Excel file and tweak as needed and reupload to google sheets to share with your ward.

http://bit.ly/2017ldslessons

Hopefully the lesson schedule will be integrated in the future into the LDS Gospel Library apps in the future.

adamolson wrote:
Hopefully the lesson schedule will be integrated in the future into the LDS Gospel Library apps in the future.

Thanks for the well-worked solution. I put my data straight into a Google Spreadsheet and it also worked fine (mine is in German, however): https://goo.gl/TvsifS

I see several possible solutions for the future: One of them would be Gospel Library, but the Calendar is also a candidate. Some folks in our stake are already trying to use the Calendar, but it means a very full (and confusing) personal calendar if you subscribe to several calendars as I do. A stand-alone app might still be the better way to go.

Hi, Last sunday we had the general conference. befor the GC we were studying the lesson 6. After the general conference should we study the lesson number 7 or should we study the lesson number 8?. The question is the same when we have the Stake conference.

Thanks

That might be a solution, put a lesson schedule on this site then there would be some correlation.

CaguaGG wrote:Last sunday we had the general conference. befor the GC we were studying the lesson 6. After the general conference should we study the lesson number 7 or should we study the lesson number 8?. The question is the same when we have the Stake conference.

That is up to your ward and stake leaders. There are not enough Sundays in the year to study all of the Gordon B. Hinckley lessons. In our stake, we have sometimes discussed more than one lesson. Other times, we have been asked to study a particular lesson at home during our personal study time.

Either way works. The stake normally schedules the lessons, unless they have delegated that responsibility to the wards and branches.

I submitted feedback about this feature, and got this response:

"You are correct, the feature was discontinued towards the end of last year, or the first of 2017. The reason is that the equipment used by the Church to maintain the site was outdated and antiquated. Also, it would have taken a sizable amount of money to upgrade it. And finally, a look at the usage of the feature revealed that out of about 30,000 units in the Church, only about 700 were using it. So, since there are other ways to handle scheduling of lessons, the economics of the site really didn't justify continued maintenance of it."

djsmith wrote:I submitted feedback about this feature, and got this response:

"You are correct, the feature was discontinued towards the end of last year, or the first of 2017. The reason is that the equipment used by the Church to maintain the site was outdated and antiquated. Also, it would have taken a sizable amount of money to upgrade it. And finally, a look at the usage of the feature revealed that out of about 30,000 units in the Church, only about 700 were using it. So, since there are other ways to handle scheduling of lessons, the economics of the site really didn't justify continued maintenance of it."

Yes, that's essentially the message that has been discussed multiple times in this topic, including this post and this linked article.

*sigh* I still greatly miss this feature. It really enhanced my gospel study and learning.

You can read the other threads referenced by aebrown. Realize you're getting the message the church decided to communicate about the tool, which likely isn't the whole story...it's just the explanation that was selected to be given. That's not intended as a slam at the church...it's just reality. Many organizations will determine an official story on how displeasing news will be communicated to an audience. I've seen it in several places where I've worked. Sometimes it's just reviewed (and revised) by a higher up person in the organization. Other times an outside "damage control" consultant will be brought in to advise on how to communicate about a situation.