Tech Forum

When teaching the 14 year old kids in Sunday School, I gave up trying to use the analog TV/VCR/DVD equipment. It was much easier to bring my laptop to play the church DVD segments for the lessons. The remote on the meetinghouse equipment never worked for the DVDs, so I could never select the right segment for the lesson. Plus, we couldn't read the text on the TV because it was so fuzzy. Many of the church DVDs have scriptures, general authority quotes, etc. on the short segments that go with the lessons. There are 20 or so segments for the lessons throughout the year and reading the menu on the DVD was next to impossible. I had the same problem at home trying to read the text on a DVD with an analog TV, so we replaced them with the LCDs.

sammythesm wrote:One thing, however, that was not brought up was the fact that the church, even in new meetinghouses, are not using LCD screens,

Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

RussellHltn wrote:

sammythesm wrote:One thing, however, that was not brought up was the fact that the church, even in new meetinghouses, are not using LCD screens

Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

We have a flat screen on a cart in our building. It isn't mounted, it just has the weighted base.

It has been nice to use as I've done training for our bishopric.

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

Looks like there are a lot of models out there: http://www.google.com/images?q=LCD+cart - and securing the TV to the cart is done more securely than you can secure a CRT to one of those really tall carts. There are even locking mechanisms on some carts that prevent the LCD from being removed from the cart.

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

Our library has two of them. The base is cross strapped to the top of the cart. The player is on the shelf below as before. Works fine.

This is an interesting discussion. Our building has two wards in it, and a fairly small library. My wife is one of the librarians. We have three TV's one crt and two LCD's and between the two wards they are used 3-5 times a Sunday. Each has a VCR and DVD player and both formats are used by the teachers in the Wards.

As far as the large pictures go, many of them are used each Sunday. My wife made a list of each of the pictures by number and description and mounted it on one of those foam boards, large ones on one side and Gospel Picture's on the other. The teachers then can look at the board and have the ones they want retrieved for them. The idea of the photo catalog is an interesting one too, though.

Someone said that "most of the members have. . . " "Most" means "one more than half". I would not want to make any of the information or materials unavailable to 49% of the members of the ward because they didn't have or were not comfortable using the newer technology. I hate to break it to some of the people who use this forum, not all, probably not even half of the members of the Church are as "Tech Savvy" as you are.

And along those lines, many of the leaders and teachers in the Wards and Branches don't have iPods or iPhones or iPads or laptops or any of the other toys that some of you seem to have.

The technological revolution is continuing, and that is good, but let's not assume that all the people in the world or even in the U.S. are jumping on the bandwagon.

My rant is over. God Bless and let us all work together for the progress of the Lord's Kingdom on Earth.

In thinking of the bishop's initial observation, I am impressed that the root of the problem may lay with the teachers. Having taught primary, YM, Elders, HP, and most importantly, Teacher Development, I find that most teachers do not adequately prepare their lessons as the Brethern & Sisters teach us. If they did, and were aware of the library's resources, they would soon make better use of it. I, for one, seldom taught a lesson, particularly in Primary, without two or three large laminated pictures. As the Scoutmaster Basic course teaches, "use your resources".

mprusse wrote:I'm the agent bishop this year in our three ward building and I've been watching the use of the building library in anticipation of making some changes. After obtaining feedback and some observation, I've noticed the large library now primarily serves to distribute chalk, scriptures and to make copies. The several shelves of VHS tapes, TV/VCR combos, large laminated pictures and overhead projectors are never even touched.

This year I would like to direct a complete overhaul of the building library and I'm looking for ideas of how other wards have transformed their libraries into a more usable tool. I can already see us dumping the overhead projectors at least. Perhaps even the laminated pictures in favor of several copies of the Gospel Art Book (06048090). I definitely don't want to transfer the old VHS tapes to DVD as they are of a by-gone era and not appealing to many members. They can easily be replaced by copies of the newer DVDs recently produced by the Church. If we go DVD, then we can dump all the TV/VCR combos.

Thoughts & ideas? Thank you.

I am new to the calling and looking for ideas too.
Thanks,

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

We got an LCD last year. It's bolted through the base to a cart.

Just a quick comment... The new Helping in the Vineyard site (vineyard.lds.org) allows anyone to help with Church volunteer projects, one of which is to tag Church pictures, video snippets, whole video segments, etc... to later be used. I imagine some of these resources will one day allow some of the ideas on this thread be implemented, like pulling up specific stories or segments of Conference talks.