New Curriculum for Adults

There were two articles published within the last few days. One of them From the official Newsroom website says that "Brother Callister hopes a program similar to the youth curriculum will soon be available for adults." The other article, From the Deseret News, reports that "A new program is being developed for the adult classes held each Sunday in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and may be implemented soon, the faith's new Sunday School general president said this weekend."

So it's not clear if the Deseret News reporter inferred something which was not yet announced or if the Newsroom article downplayed an announcement of a new curriculum for adults. Either way, if a program similar to the "Come, Follow Me" program is going to launch soon for the adults (including Sunday School, Priesthood and Relief Society) then will this include a video element? Will this necessitate each building having more TV monitors than the number "recommended" now?

The Deseret News article included this quote: "Elder Pieper has said that as the adult curriculum rolls out for Relief Society, Sunday School and Melchizedek Priesthood classes, time will be set aside in classes to help adults learn and understand online tools." So that would seem to mean that, one way or another, those of us who are familiar with the online tools will need to develop ways to train others.

mrrad wrote:So it's not clear if the Deseret News reporter inferred something which was not yet announced or if the Newsroom article downplayed an announcement of a new curriculum for adults. Either way, if a program similar to the "Come, Follow Me" program is going to launch soon for the adults (including Sunday School, Priesthood and Relief Society) then will this include a video element? Will this necessitate each building having more TV monitors than the number "recommended" now?

Purely speculative at this point. Much is also made of the "interactive" vs. "lecture" mode of teaching.

I'd be surprised if a new curriculum were to be rolled out mid-year. If it's starting next year, then there's time for budgets to get updated.

I wish it will start next year.......

The curriculum for 2015 has been announced. We will study the New Testament in Sunday School and Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson in priesthood and Relief Society.

Perhaps the new curriculum similar to the Youth will begin in 2016, at least in Sunday School. The Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants materials that would be used in 2016 and 2017 are no longer available in the Gospel Library app.

lajackson wrote:The curriculum for 2015 has been announced.

And it is available at https://www.lds.org/manual/2015

The new curriculum would and will be fantastic I am sure, however, the administration needs to consider the need for significant upgrades to building infrastructure when it comes to technology. Currently, as I have been told, just streaming services alone are significantly taxing the Church servers and with a change to a program similar to "Come Follow Me" the strain could lead to server overload and blackout.

I wonder if a new approach needs to be taken with a dedicated VPN to salt lake for LCR only and an other general open server (local firewalls) for streaming and other services?

Just brainstorming here.

BEWilson wrote:The new curriculum would and will be fantastic I am sure, however, the administration needs to consider the need for significant upgrades to building infrastructure when it comes to technology. Currently, as I have been told, just streaming services alone are significantly taxing the Church servers and with a change to a program similar to "Come Follow Me" the strain could lead to server overload and blackout.

The advice from the beginning has been to download content prior to the class. I don't see that changing.

There has been some exploration about installing local media servers in the building so that there is no reliance on the Internet connection to support streaming. But I haven't heard much about that in some time. There is a community effort to simplify the download of the content onto USB drives to make it easy for the teachers. Perhaps that will gain traction.

There is an app called "Gospel Media" (previously "Presentations") being developed that will allow people to create presentations with downloaded videos, images, music, etc. for teaching the gospel. I don't know the intended scope of the project (i.e. is it just for missionaries? all members?) or when it is expected to be released, but you can download the beta version for iOS or follow progress on the JIRA page after joining the project here:
https://tech.lds.org/projects?controlle ... jectid=171

russellhltn wrote:The advice from the beginning has been to download content prior to the class. I don't see that changing.

Well, the advice, after-the-fact when FM was faced with angry mobs of Stake and Ward leaders wondering how their 15-30 year old tv equipment was going to work with the new curriculum this is true. I'm confident that tunes will remain the same, all is well, whatever you have now works and will continue to work (just make sure members keep bringing in their own equipment to supplement the needs).

sbradshaw wrote:There is an app called "Gospel Media" (previously "Presentations") being developed that will allow people to create presentations with downloaded videos, images, music, etc. for teaching the gospel. I don't know the intended scope of the project (i.e. is it just for missionaries? all members?) or when it is expected to be released, but you can download the beta version for iOS or follow progress on the JIRA page after joining the project here:
https://tech.lds.org/projects?controlle ... jectid=171

wow, it is still and iOS only app? I saw that app at Thanksgiving of 2013 If it gets realeased as ios only I'm going to ball up into a fetal position and cry just a bit for my church

The local media server idea was just getting off the ground then as well and was beta testing in 2014 - I can't believe it has been kept such a huge secret from all of us because it is THE SOLUTION - My guess is the partnership with Microsoft Azure cloud has muddled it up a bit.

But we are seriously getting close to 2016 budget time frames for many FMG - hope news comes in time.

johnshaw wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:There is an app called "Gospel Media" (previously "Presentations") being developed ... for iOS

wow, it is still and iOS only app? I saw that app at Thanksgiving of 2013 If it gets realeased as ios only I'm going to ball up into a fetal position and cry just a bit for my church

I imagine it's still in the "experimental" stage that hasn't been tried in the real world. It looks like a great and useful app, but since it hasn't been available or publicized nobody knows if it will meet the needs of teachers. If it may not meet the needs of the worldwide church, then they have to minimize the resources that are going towards it.

Alternatively, maybe it's intended for missionaries, who currently just have iPads.

UPDATE: I found an Android project page here:
https://tech.lds.org/projects?controlle ... jectid=179

johnshaw wrote:Well, the advice, after-the-fact when FM was faced with angry mobs of Stake and Ward leaders wondering how their 15-30 year old tv equipment was going to work with the new curriculum this is true.

Different issue. That can be fixed with a one-time equipment purchase. I'm having a hard time seeing the church paying the re-occuring fees required for a YouTube-grade infrastructure and Internet services world-wide to support the kind of data transfer needed. All to support a peak need during Sunday School which would only occur 4-5 times a month.

I'm all for making it easy for the teachers, but I'd think that some kind of local storage solution would be more reliable and cost effective. Especially since some times, even YouTube has been a disappointment outside of church.

The solution I saw being put together was not a centralized streaming solution, but a solution that synchronized the LDS Media Library content to distribution points inside local meetinghouses. All Media content is downloaded just once (and could be pre-loaded with the bulk of the content creating quick-synch times) This can easily be done through multiple technologies today.

This would mean all streaming would be local to the meetinghouse, something I have experience doing extremely successfully - particularly for those without the ability to download videos from their homes or just didn't have their own equipment to use in a meetinghouse.