LDSTech

Newsletter, a New LDS.org Tool To Be Released into Beta Mid-February

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Tom Johnson) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:01:52 +0000

Newsletter, a new tool on LDS.org, will be released into beta testing in mid-February. Newsletter provides a blog-like site that wards and stakes can use to provide local news to members. The application replaces the “News” feature on the classic local unit website and provides a digital alternative to the paper newsletters that organizations typically create.

Viewing Newsletter

Articles for Newsletter appear in one stream of news on the Newsletter homepage, arranged in reverse chronological order. Members can view the news they want to see by selecting the category on the right. The selected category filters the news.

To view a single article, click the article’s title. You can send the article to a group of people by copying and inserting the URL it into an e-mail message.

Administrators

When you sign in, Newsletter will be blank until an organization publishes news. Administrators for Newsletter include bishoprics, stake presidencies, clerks, and secretaries. As needed, administrators can also add publishers (such as organization leaders) by calling or name.

Creating articles

If you’re an administrator, click the Create Article button to create a new article. In the article body, you can style the text with basic formatting, insert links, and add images. Newsletter automatically resizes the images you upload to optimal sizes for the Newsletter display.

Below the article, type a category for the news, such as Relief Society or Sunday School, and then press Enter. You can select as many categories for each article as you want, or even add your own.

When finished, click Submit. Longer articles will automatically be truncated with a Read More link after about 200 characters.

Featured articles

To create an article that always appears on top of the list of articles for a specific category, select the Featured article check box when writing an article. Designating an article as featured means the article always remains on top of the category, regardless of newer articles that are published.

Featured articles are a good option for highlighting particularly important news, such as an upcoming conference, or a need for volunteers, or perhaps the stake president’s message.

Signing up for the beta test

Newsletter will be available for beta testing in mid-February. To sign up as a beta tester, join the Local Unit Beta Testing project by doing the following:

On LDSTech, click Projects on the top navigation bar.
Sign in with your LDS Account.
If you haven’t already signed the license agreement, you’ll be prompted to sign it.
Click the Projects subtab.
Scroll down and click the Local Unit Beta Testing project.
Click Join.

As a tester on the Local Unit Beta Project, project leaders will update you when the Newsletter beta opens and will send you the URL to the beta site. They will also let you know when other testing opportunities arise for local unit applications.

Once the application becomes official, Newsletter will appear on the Tools menu (on LDS.org) along with other tools for wards and stakes, such as Calendar, Directory, and Maps. Newsletter fills the last missing tool needed to retire the classic local unit website, which will be soon discontinued.

Submitting feedback

To submit feedback about Newsletter, post your comments in the Newsletter sub-forum in the LDSTech Forum. Project leaders and other members will respond more abundantly to comments in the forum than to comments below this article.

Roadmap

In its first release, Newsletter’s functionality is simple. With simplicity does come some limitations, but the hope is that members both tech-savvy and not will find it easy to read and publish news.

As you can expect, later releases will provide more advanced functionality, such as the ability to save drafts, send broadcast notifications, add comments, and more.

Testing Church Applications with Volunteers: An Interview with Jeff Brown

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Paige Guthrie) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:45:41 +0000

In a recent interview with Community Business Manager Alan Smoot, Jeff Brown, a quality assurance lead for the Church, talked about his experience using a group of volunteers to beta test version 2.0 of the LDS.org calendar application released back in fall 2011. You can watch the interview as well as read a summary below.

“We wanted to get the community involved,” Jeff said, “to give us some better assurance.” Jeff and his team realized that they could not test for every scenario and in every environment. “As QA testers, we don’t understand all the scenarios; we don’t understand what people are going to do . . . and that leads to a lot of uncertainty when it comes to release time.”

Cue the volunteers. In came LDSTech forum-goers from the United States, Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, and more. The forum, Jeff said, has been there for a while—as have its loyal participants. “What we found is that these people are just excited to contribute. They’ve been using our software for years in their wards and stakes and they’ve seen all the bugs we’ve had out there before. They’re excited to . . . have an opportunity to make this better.” These users recognize the importance of LDS applications; they know they will inevitably be used in wards and stakes worldwide to further the work of the Lord.

Mobile devices and foreign technology restrictions offer particularly weighty challenges to those testing new programs and applications. Every scenario cannot be predicted. Members are no longer simply using applications on their personal computers; rather they often turn to the latest or most available mobile platform. Android, Palm, Apple, Windows, Blackberry. Smartphone, tablet, music player, PDA, e-reader. Wi-Fi, dial-up, broadband, 4G.

With so many possible combinations—and we’re not even getting into non-standard operating systems or jail broken devices—it’s next to impossible for quality assurers to test for every circumstance. This is where volunteer, “real” users make the most difference. They can use the application in whatever environment they have.

“It turns out that real users of the calendar are better testers than we are,” Jeff said. In the case of the calendar project, many high-priority bugs were discovered only because of volunteers.

Volunteers didn’t simply test, either. When they found a problem, they took time to troubleshoot and communicate with other users to verify whether or not the problem was universal or exclusive. “It was great to see how they figured things out,” Jeff commented. “[The users] did a lot of the legwork to validate bugs and see where the real problems were. We were able to take their findings and . . . make some really great improvements.”

The volunteer testers turned out to be the difference that identified countless critical issues that could have lingered in the application for months, not to mention the resources saved. Jeff estimates around 400 hours were saved because of user contributions. Because of the time saved and the impact the community made on the project, Jeff’s team delivered a much more thoroughly tested application.

It’s clear that we’ve come to a point where community help is necessary if we desire to hasten the work. Particularly when software applications are used on a plethora of devices and platforms, active community involvement in testing can help identify bugs and other issues much more rapidly than internal resources.

New FamilySearch Indexing App Now Available

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Danie Probst) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:34:54 +0000

The Church has released an early beta version of a new mobile app—FamilySearch Indexing—for iOS and Android platforms. You can start indexing right away by downloading the app. Just search for “familysearch indexing” in the iOS App Store or Android Market.

In order to use the app, you must sign in with your LDS or FamilySearch account. If you don’t already have an account, you can easily create one here.

Once you download the app, sign in with your LDS or FamilySearch Account.

About indexing

Indexing is the process of transcribing information on scanned or photographed historical records in order to create a searchable index. Without indexing, images of these historical records can only be browsed, making it difficult and time-consuming to find names of interest for family history.

A guide built into the app answers many common questions about indexing.

Snippets rather than documents

The FamilySearch Indexing app simplifies indexing by allowing you to transcribe individual names, or “snippets,” on your mobile device instead of downloading larger batches of names that must all be transcribed as part of a group. (You also have the option to view the entire document so you can see the name in context.) You can set a difficulty level and skip snippets that are too hard to read.

The app makes indexing fast and easy so you can do family history in smaller amounts of time. You can index while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, while on hold on a phone call, and many other times when you only have a few minutes.

Work offline

You can also index offline when you download more snippets into your queue. By default, you’ll store 25 snippets in your queue, but you can increase the count to 500, or decrease it to 5. The only drawback to working offline is that you can’t see the context of the snippet in the larger document, which sometimes helps by letting you see how the writer may have formed certain letters.

Confirmation rates

Because indexing involves interpreting handwriting that is sometimes hard to decipher, it can be difficult to get completely accurate results. To increase indexing accuracy, the app requires snippets to have a 75% consensus to be approved, at least for the app’s initial pilot period. This means that three out of four people who index that snippet will need to agree before it can be indexed. That number may be adjusted later as genealogists determine the most effective confirmation rate.

Feature roadmap

The app is still in its early stages of development, but FamilySearch will be working to enhance the user experience of the app and also add more features. Some of these features include giving administrators access to reports, keeping track of all indexing users have done, and more.

Crowdsourcing

The FamilySearch Indexing app shows how effective crowdsourcing can be in furthering the work of the Church. People all over the world can index names easily and effectively, which in turn makes it easier for others to search for and find information about their ancestors for genealogy.

Indexing is an easy way to get started with genealogy, and maybe after trying the Indexing app, you’ll have the momentum you need either to continue or start doing your own family history.

Exploring the New Youth and Family History Site

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Lianne Kruger) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:30:30 +0000

In his October 2011 General Conference talk, Elder Bednar encouraged the youth to get involved in Family History. He said, “It is no coincidence that FamilySearch and other tools have come forth at a time when young people are so familiar with a wide range of information and communication technologies. Your fingers have been trained to text and tweet to accelerate and advance the work of the Lord—not just to communicate quickly with your friends.” (The Hearts of Children Shall Turn)

During my high school years, my mother would take me to the family history library. She would put me in front of a microfilm reader with a list of names to look for. I tried not to fall asleep or get sick to my stomach as the film scrolled by. If I was lucky after five hours, I might find one name or a family.

Due to advancements in technology and information sharing, there’s so much more available now. When we were first married and had kids, I researched one of my family lines back to the first three land owners of Canada. As more children came and grew, I researched Denmark, taught family history as a volunteer at the Ogden Institute for five years, and now teach at genealogical conferences, blog, write articles, and act as president of the genealogy branch in my city, while I continue to do my own family history research.

Maybe my children were too young, or it was the wrong time to get them started, but after hearing about and reviewing the Youth and Family History website that Elder Bednar mentioned in the last general conference, I knew this site would get my high school children excited about family history. Now was the time, I decided.

Sunday afternoon I sat down with my two young-women-age daughters. Before beginning, the website states that you need to create an LDS Account. The girls had already created their LDS Account user names at an YW activity where they entered their values in the Personal Progress website. We started by watching Elder Bednar’s three minute movie.

The website has step-by-step instructions on how to find an ancestor who needs temple work, how to find the necessary information and make it temple ready, and finally how to go to the temple to do the work. Each step has a young woman (“Jessie”) on the video showing and explaining how to use the websites and prepare the names.

Getting started

The first step is to watch the instruction video for Step One on the Youth and Family History website. Then go to new.familysearch.org site, look through the ancestors listed (if any), and find someone who needs to have some temple work done. By the end of the video, the girls were in the new.familysearch.org website, looking at their family record on their own laptops.

For the Young Women’s value experience, they needed four generations. There were only three visible, so we learned how to expand the names we had. We took names from my genealogy materials to continue the lines. I heard things like “cool” and “wow” as we learned together how to do all of this. As I connected my ancestors, their line also opened up.

Recognizing names

They started recognizing names. One daughter saw the ancestor where one of her uncles and a cousin got their names. They found some fun names like two “Ebenezers” and noticed that first names were used over and over within a family line. They also discovered that their dad was born a few months after his parents were sealed in the temple. He attended the temple in his mother’s womb! Most importantly, we found people who need temple work done for them. We will work on these names during Step Two.

A few hours later, my daughter Rachel told me she had finally found the only Rachel in her ancestry. Our Rachel was named after her grandmother Rochelle. She looked through hundreds of names on the lines of her four grandparents going back to the sixteenth century, clicking the arrows to see the next generations and expanding each ancestor — but only found one Rachel. This Rachel Edwards was born at the end of the sixteenth century and married in 1607 England. We traced the lines back to find out she was an ancestor to Rachel’s great-grandmother, who died when Rachel was 10 and whom she knew very well.

Making connections

The following morning I found an e-mail from my daughter sent at 10:35 pm. She had followed Rachel Edwards’ husband’s line back farther to a couple of princesses and a King of Wales. I did not know about these ancestors as I had not found them myself, but the new.familysearch.org website connects your line with those of common ancestors and adds their information to yours.

The website gave me a great way to show them their family tree, and they completed a Young Women value at the same time while having fun. The girls can’t wait to try again — next week we will move on to Step Two: Discover a Family Record. This will involve researching the people we found that needed temple work so we can submit the work for the temple.

Conclusion

The Youth and Family History website is a great site for youth and their parents or their leaders to learn together. Elder Bednar said to the youth, “You have been prepared for this day and to build up the kingdom of God. You are here upon the earth now to assist in this glorious work.” (The Hearts of Children Shall Turn)

It’s easy to get started. To find the Youth and Family History website, from LDS.org, go to Menu > Family > Youth. Then click the Youth and Family History link in the Youth Menu. Or go directly to the Youth and Family History site here.

Adding MLS Functionality to LDS.org

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Riley Hamilton) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:33:16 +0000

Historically, clerks and other Church leaders have been required to be at their respective meetinghouse to perform administrative work because the Member and Leader Services (MLS) software could only be accessed from the clerk’s PC located at the meetinghouse. As a result, many clerks and leaders complete their administrative work on Sunday to avoid travelling to the meetinghouse during the week. Simple reports like the New Member Report can only be viewed or printed at the meetinghouse.

In order to ease the administrative burden of Church leaders, MLS functions are being added to LDS.org. Church leaders and clerks can now access records, reports, and other helpful resources from any computer connected to the Internet. This effort supports access from home or other locations, decreasing travel costs and time commitments. Making it easier for leaders and clerks to perform their administrative responsibilities will allow them to spend more time ministering to members.

Access to these MLS functions is through the Leader Resources and Clerk Resources pages on LDS.org and is dependent on members having an LDS Account and being assigned the correct Church calling in MLS. For example, a bishop will be able to access confidential membership information and reports whereas his counselor will not.

Adding all MLS functions to LDS.org will take time, with the initial focus being on those that are membership record-keeping related. During this transition, MLS can still be used at the local unit and the two systems will be synchronized. In the future, quorum and auxiliary leaders will also be able to access on LDS.org the MLS functions that relate to their callings.

Leaders are encouraged to explore LDS.org > Tools > Leader Resources or Clerk Resources for a complete list of what is available. Four examples are shared below.

Quarterly Report: Quarterly report information can now be recorded and submitted. Past Quarterly Reports can also be viewed.

Key Indicators: A chart of key statistics, such as sacrament meeting attendance, home teaching, and endowed adults with temple recommends is now available. The Quarterly Report is the source of this Key Indicators information.

Action and Interview List: The list identifies actions that need to be taken by priesthood leaders, such as interview those coming of age for baptism and confirmation or Aaronic priesthood ordinations.

New Member Report: This report provides details about members assigned to a unit who were baptized and confirmed within the last 24 months and used to help nurture these new members.

For those interested in more information about MLS functionality being added to LDS.org, a series of training webinars will be offered in February. In addition, Church leaders can learn more by visiting the Clerk Wiki or the Leader Portal article on LDSTech. Additional support, including questions and interactive discussions, on clerk’s responsibilities and MLS can be found on the Clerk and Technology Support Forum. Leaders can also contact their Local Unit Support.

For more information, you are invited to attend an online training on this topic. The first broadcast will take place on February 3, 2012. For more information on training broadcast times, see Training Sessions for MLS Functionality on LDS.org.

New Lesson Schedules Application Now in Beta

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Tom Johnson) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:28:16 +0000

Lesson Schedules, an LDS.org application that allows you to schedule lessons for Sunday School classes and priesthood and auxiliary organizations, is now in beta. Lesson Schedules replaces the old lesson scheduling features that were available on the Classic.lds.org site. Members are invited to test out the beta Lesson Schedules application and provide feedback.

You can visit the beta site for Lesson Schedules by going to https://lds.org/lesson. Log in with your LDS Account. Note that any data you enter into this beta site will be erased when the site goes live.

Lesson Schedules requires some initial setup. Once set up, when you visit Lesson Schedules, you can select the check boxes next to the classes you want to see. The scheduled lesson for that class appears, with direct links to the lesson material.

Lesson Schedules not only helps members know what lessons are planned each week, it helps leaders organize and coordinate lesson topics and teachers.

Administrative rights

Lesson Schedules is available at the ward level only. As such, bishoprics, clerks, and secretaries are administrators by default. Organization leaders (including their counselors and secretaries) have administrative rights to create classes and lesson schedules for their organization.

Submitting feedback

To submit feedback about Lesson Schedules, go to the LDSTech Forum. Under Current and Future Technologies, in the LDS.org Web Site section, click the Beta Testing sub-forum. Then click the Lesson Schedules sub-forum there.

Joining the Local Unit Beta Testing Project

For more information about beta testing opportunities, join the Local Unit Beta Testing Project in LDSTech. Joining this group allows technology leaders at Church headquarters to communicate with you through e-mail about testing efforts for local unit apps.

To join the Local Unit Beta Testing project, sign into LDSTech. Click Projects in the top navigation bar. Then click the Projects subtab, scroll down, click the Local Unit Beta Testing link, and then click Join. If this is your first time signing in, you will need to complete the Skills and Profile subtabs.

The beta period for Lesson Schedules is expected to run several weeks before the application goes live. For more information about Lesson Schedules, see the Lesson Schedules Help. If you have questions, comments, or other feedback about Lesson Schedules, please post it in the LDSTech forum.

Training Sessions for MLS Functionality on LDS.org

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Ben Hutchins) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:19:04 +0000

"Using MLS Functionality on LDS.org" is the topic for our next LDSTech Broadcast, scheduled for February 3 and February 7, 2012. You can attend a live or recorded broadcast at the times listed below.

Using MLS Functionality on LDS.org

Many MLS (Member Leaders Services application) features are now available in a web format through “Leader and Clerk Resources” on LDS.org. These web resources provide information and reports about priesthood quorum, auxiliary, and general membership; organization and calling lists; and other tools. By providing these resources in a secure, online location, leaders and clerks can spend less time managing administrative duties and more time ministering to members.

Choose your training session now

Click the Attend button on the day of the event. Try to join fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time. You will be asked to fill out a five-question survey before being directed to the training session.

Friday, February 3 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM MST	Live Broadcast Live Chat	Attend
Tuesday, February 7 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM MST	Pre-recorded Live Chat	Attend
Tuesday, February 7 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM MST	Pre-recorded Live Chat	Attend

If you're interested in attending the training in-person, come to the Zion room of the Riverton Office Building (ROB) for the Feb 3 live broadcast. The ROB is located at 3740 West Market Drive, Riverton, UT (see map).

Who can attend

Anyone is welcome to attend. This training will be most useful for:

Stake and district presidents and counselors
Bishops, branch presidents and counselors
Stake, district, ward and branch:

Executive secretaries
Clerks
Assistant clerks
Assistant clerk for members

Mission presidents
Members interested in learning more about LDS technology

Additional Details

During the training, you can submit questions through the LDSTech IRC Chat Feed. Depending on the number of questions, some may not be answered until after the webinar. For more information, contact mhtechtraining@ldschurch.org.

Feb 4, 2012 Update: The recording of the MLS Training broadcast has been posted on the LDSTech Broadcast page on the wiki.

Additional Features in Reading Scriptures on LDS.org

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Curtis Palmer) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:03:11 +0000

While many of us enjoy reading our printed set of scriptures and hand-writing notes in the margins, the online scriptures on LDS.org provide the same text as the print version and have additional features, such as pop-up footnotes, My Study Notebook, and audio playback, that might be helpful in a number of ways.

You can access the scriptures on LDS.org by clicking on Menu, and then under the Study, click Scriptures. The scriptures homepage shows links to the standard works in the sidebar.

Listen rather than read

While you’re viewing a chapter online, you can listen to the scriptures like an audio book by clicking Listen in the right-hand navigation list.

This option not only helps those who are seeing impaired; if you’re too tired to read, or traveling in the car, or if you just prefer to hear the words, listening can be a welcome switch from reading. You can also choose the Listen option during family scripture study, or in other settings.

Share with friends

Another feature while reading scriptures online is the ability to share chapters with your friends through social media. Clicking the Share button while viewing a chapter makes it easy to be a member missionary. Share options include Email, Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious.

Posting your favorite chapter on Facebook or Twitter is an easy way to invite others to learn about the gospel. Also, your sphere of influence online may be a much larger group than in your immediate physical location. When you share content on Facebook, others can also share the same content you posted, expanding the influence.

Navigate to scriptures quickly

When you’re reading scriptures online, you can click links to jump quickly from passage to passage. This can be especially helpful if you’re studying a topic and moving through a list of references to the topic. Rather than searching out each passage — an exercise that not only tests your knowledge of where each book is, but also your dexterity to turn pages and navigate chapters and verses — you simply click a link and go straight to the highlighted passage.

As an example, in the sidebar of the Scriptures page on LDS.org, click Study Helps, and then click Topical Guide. Choose a topic, such as Last Days, and then quickly click through each of the references to that topic.

Filter your search results

When you search for words in the scriptures, you can use the filters on the left to narrow the results to the sources you want to see.

For example, suppose you search for living water. After the search results appear, use the links under "Refine Your Search" to narrow the list of results to the category you select. If you select Old Testament, you will see only results for “living water” that appear in the Old Testament.

You can further limit the filters by expanding the Old Testament link and selecting a sub-link, such as Genesis. Parentheses after each link show you the number of times the word appears in that book.

To cancel the filter, click the X next to the filter you selected. Overall, these filters make it easy to sort and narrow search results based on the sources you want to see.

View footnotes without losing your place

Like the scriptures in print, the online scriptures have footnotes embedded throughout the text, but instead of flipping back-and-forth to find the reference in print scriptures, you can just click the footnote.

When you click a footnote, a small window pops up containing references to other scriptures, related topics in the topical guide, and Greek or Hebrew translations. When you click links in the footnote to read a cross reference, the reference appears directly within the footnote window, rather than directing you to a new page. This makes it easy to explore footnotes without losing your place.

If you don’t want footnotes cluttering up your view of verses, you can also turn footnotes off entirely with one click by clicking Hide Footnotes in the sidebar. This turns off all the footnote references in the verses so you can focus more clearly on the words. When you’re ready to turn them back on, click Show Footnotes.

View your highlights and notes in one place

When you’re reading content on LDS.org, you can make notes about verses, bookmark chapters you want to remember, and save the content to a personal, private space on LDS.org called My Study Notebook.

My Study Notebook can be especially helpful if you’re preparing a topic or lesson. For example, suppose you’re preparing a lesson on the Word of Wisdom, and you’re searching for stories, quotations, doctrine, and media to use. You’ll be searching a large number of pages on LDS.org. How will you keep track of everything you find? How will you organize all the content into a useful set of notes for your lesson?

My Study Notebook can help. First make sure you sign into LDS.org. Then navigate to a scripture, lesson, conference talk, or magazine article. At the bottom, look for a black toolbar that includes buttons to share, bookmark, and write journal entries.

Now highlight a passage. In the black pop-up window that appears, click Add note/tag. Then add a note and select a notebook to add it to.

Once you’ve gathered your content, you can view it all by going to Tools > My Study Notebook. When you select a notebook folder, you can drag your notes into different arrangements.

For a more detailed tutorial using My Study Notebook, click the Help link in My Study Notebook’s sidebar.

Study anywhere at any time

Through the Gospel Library app, you can easily fit the digital version of the scriptures in your pocket and take the scriptures anywhere you go. Any highlights, notes, and other bookmarks you created on LDS.org through My Study Notebook automatically sync to your mobile device.

With your scriptures ever present and available, you can study the scriptures at almost any spare opportunity — while standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, at the dentist’s office, at the beach, in bed late at night when you can’t sleep, riding the elevator, traveling as a passenger in the car, and so on.

In the Gospel Library app, when you tap and hold a verse, you’re prompted with a Study toolbar that allows you to highlight and add notes to the verse. Your highlights and notes sync with Study Notebook on LDS.org, integrating the experience across both online and mobile formats.

Conclusion

The online format for the scriptures goes beyond merely arranging the same scriptural content on a web page. The online experience for studying scriptures allows you to do all of the following:

Listen rather than read
Share with friends
Navigate to scriptures quickly
View footnotes without losing your place
View your highlights and notes in one place
Study anywhere at any time

By no means are we suggesting that the online version of scriptures is superior to reading the printed formats. There’s an immeasurable benefit to isolating yourself from online distractions and focusing on words on a page in front of you. But in some scenarios, the online features may be helpful, and if so, you can make use of the resources available.

How Are You Using the Gospel Library App?

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Whitney Denney) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:28:05 +0000

The Gospel Library App helps bring the scriptures, conference addresses, and other gospel works into members’ lives. In this article, a few members share their experiences using Gospel Library.

On The Road

“My husband and I were stopping for lunch on our way to Las Vegas. We went into a fast food restaurant. Near the end of our meal, I noticed there was a scripture reference on the bottom of my cup inside the edge. There was another scripture reference on the burger wrapper. So when we got back on the road, I was curious what scriptures they thought were important to covertly share with the world. I pulled out my iPod and looked at my Gospel Library and read the scriptures out loud. Then we had a little discussion about the scriptures and the restaurant. It actually helped us get through the heavy, construction backed-up traffic by giving us interesting conversation and putting our mind set on a calmer plane.

“It is nice to be young enough to be able to learn some of the new technology and old enough to appreciate it. It’s amazing how things are changing. I am wowed by what I know, which isn't that much, and look forward to learning and exploring new things.”

— Jennifer Wallace, Salt Lake City, Utah

In the Car

"The Gospel Library App on the iPhone is absolutely wonderful! There are two things I always carry with me: my keys and my phone. Crazy enough, I sometimes leave the house without my wallet, but I always have my phone. Having the Gospel Library App on my phone gives me access to the scriptures and other study materials whether I am waiting in a doctor’s office, taking a break at work, or traveling in the car.

"It is exciting to me to have this much access to the scriptures wherever I am, even though I am totally blind. Just to illustrate, my family and I were on our way to visit my parents and siblings for Christmas. The trip takes about six hours by car, and while traveling in the car I was able to use my iPhone with the built-in voice over feature and open the Gospel Library App. I then found the manual I would be teaching out of in the next couple of weeks. I was able to easily review and read the lesson during the trip down.

"Often, I do my scripture study on a laptop using the LDS.org website and I find it extremely useful and convenient to have the notes and other markings I make on my online account sync with the Gospel Library App on my phone. One of my favorite features is the dictation option while searching the database. I love how easy it is to tell the phone a phrase and have the Gospel Library App give me several options where that phrase or those words are found. It searches through its entire library and organizes the results in a way that makes it fast and easy for me to find the desired reference. I also enjoy watching, or hearing the church videos, and am excited to share them with my family.

The app offers a great deal of access to the blind, though it is not completely accessible. A few of the features that have not worked for me include activating the links for footnotes, highlighting text, or navigating by headings in the manuals. With that being said, I am excited for the continued improvements to this app and feel blessed to have access to the scriptures all the time."

— Adam Rushforth, Orem, Utah

At Home

“Nearly every morning before I get up to start the day, I read a few chapters of scripture on my smart phone (Android). The phone is right there on the night stand, it's much easier to hold than my large scriptures, I can read without turning the lights on and disturbing my wife, AND I can quickly link to the cross references.

“Having the library on my phone has really helped me start each day in a good way. Without the app, I probably wouldn't be doing this each day.

“I like to use the hard copy scriptures when teaching or speaking, but when studying for teaching I like to use the library because of the hot links from the lesson manual to the references.

“I love the app. In fact, I should volunteer to help work on it.”

— Geoff Barton, Borrego Springs, California

With Kids

“The Gospel Library app makes it much easier for my ten-year-old to find books in the scriptures. She navigates the app almost as if she were born with innate knowledge to use it. My wife prefers to bring Gospel Library to church because she can easily slip it into the diaper bag and can reference scriptures even if she’s holding or nursing our baby."

— Tom Johnson, Lehi, Utah

At Bedtime

“I use the Gospel Library iPhone app to read the scriptures to my kids while I am putting them to bed (as part of my personal study). They love to see the screen and my soft reading voice puts them to bed fairly quickly. On nights where they have a bit more trouble going to sleep, it is all good because I am getting extra scripture reading in and they are hearing even more from the scriptures. This has made bedtime a much more pleasant experience. Sometimes I will combine this with soft music playing from the Mormon Channel as well.”

— Dave Martin, Herriman, Utah

During Personal Study

“I use gospel library to read with my 5- and 2-year old before they go off to bed.

"I used the app for lessons until recently, as the option to copy has gone. This makes creating keynote presentations much more time consuming and cumbersome.

"I love using the app for personal study. It allows me to look quickly at cross references and make notes where needed."

— Wayne Herridge, Portsmouth, England

At Church

“I used to get a little annoyed when I would see people with their phones out at church. I always thought, 'Why don't you just use the manual or scriptures?' Then, I got my phone, and it's really handy if I forget my book or something. And if you're looking at the lesson it's really cool because you can just click on a scripture reference and it's right there.”

— Nancy Fox, Glenns Ferry, Idaho

While Teaching

“I use the app on my iPad to prepare and give my Sunday lessons. I add my notes and comments right into the lesson/talk and highlight the portions that I want to cover. With the sync feature I always have my iPhone as a backup should I forget the iPad or the battery die.

“We also use the app for Duty to God each Sunday. I have a lot more YM that have scriptures they can read and follow along when doing Duty to God, since they all have the app.”

— bsgillis

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If you haven’t tried the Gospel Library app, you can download it by searching for “LDS Gospel Library” in your mobile application’s store. Gospel Library is available for Apple, Android, Palm, BlackBerry, and feature phones. Gospel Library gives you a mobile version of the standard works, general conference addresses, Church magazines, Hymnbook and Children’s Songbook, and other Gospel content right at your fingertips. Recent updates have eased the way for members to use this tool by synchronizing annotations with My Study Notebook, integrating media playback, and adding other content.

How are you using the Gospel Library app? Feel free to add your experience in the comments below.

Registration for 2012 LDSTech Conference Now Open

JohnsonTH@ldschurch.org (Tom Johnson) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:22:10 +0000

The 2012 LDSTech Conference will be held March 28-30 in Riverton, UT. The LDSTech Conference consists of two days of information-packed sessions about Church technology, community sessions for testing and developing Church software, and opportunities to interact with other community volunteers.

Registration for the conference is now open. You can register for the conference by going to https://tech.lds.org/conf/.

Breakfast and lunch are provided each day of the conference. Be sure to bring your laptop, tablet, and mobile devices for development and testing. During the conference, you can expect to do the following:

Learn about new Church technologies, sites, and applications. Browse information booths, attend technology sessions, and participate in tutorials and workshops.
Help beta test and improve new, unreleased software. Identify bugs and other issues to help development teams refine and improve applications.
Lead community projects. Get involved in project leadership by managing and prioritizing tasks, integrating community volunteers, and coordinating development.

For more information about the conference, see the LDSTech Conference wiki page.