Digital Resources

As a missionary in a far off land, have you ever wanted to translate evangelistic material, discipleship resources, or a good training guide into the language of the people you're trying to reach? Have you ever wondered if it's legal to do so if you or your organization did not create the resources? Do you know how to get permission to translate the resource?

Tim Jore of Distant Shores Media and Door 43 discusses these issues and many more in his recent presentation at the Mobile Ministry Forum consultation. See the MMF Blog for videos of more interesting topics covered at the December 2011 consultation meeting.

Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation 2011 - Enabling Open Collaboration in a Mobile World from Clyde Taber on Vimeo.

Brian Ward of Mission Aviation Fellowship's Learning Technologies division discusses how MAF-LT helps ministries move forward with distance education and mobile learning. This presentation was given at the December, 2011, meeting of the Mobile Ministry Forum.

Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation 2011 - MAF-LT and Mobile Ministry from Clyde Taber on Vimeo.

As with the technology tools that we at Learning Technologies develop, we are always looking for resources that are free and easy to use or access. Well, ChristianCourses.com is one of those places where you can get great theological courses for free. I just received an e-mail announcing their latest course. Check it out!

Though the Psalms were written thousands of years ago, their words still have relevance today. Discover new insight into how the Proverbs and Psalms deal with issues of everyday life in the course Proverbs – Psalms: Singing the Sounds of Real Life (OT222) taught by Professor Douglas K. Stuart from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

 We are pleased to announce V1.03 of the Ibidem digital library system. The major new functionality is the ability to import a batch of items.

Please see the release notes for more details.

In mid-2010, we at MAF-LT began participating in the Open Library for Local Learning Communities (OL3C) project to create an online library website. The primary goal of the OL3C online library is to facilitate the localization of digital resources into the languages of left-out people groups. See this post for more details about the project.

As the OL3C online library project kicked off in August, 2010, the OL3C Consortium asked us to research the feasibility of such a library and determine how it should be implemented. For the next several months, MAF-LT team members Peter Nye and Elliot Dawson pored over the OL3C Consortium’s requirements for the online library. They soon recommended two changes to the Consortium’s plan.

What happens when you combine MAF - Learning Technologies' experience in the field of digital libraries with new technologies and mobile devices? Amazing opportunities appear!

Using a new database technology which enables simple synchronization between a variety of devices, MAF - Learning Technologies aims to put personal digital libraries into the hands of computer, internet tablet, and smartphone users around the world.

How could this be helpful for pastors and church leaders in the isolated parts of the world? Here's an example of what we could do with this new technology:

This internal (LT only) release improves upon the Alpha 1 in several ways. The user interface has been standardized across all pages, user help is available on every page, and it is now ready to translate into any Greenstone supported language.
 
This release has been more thoroughly tested than Alpha 1, but there are still a few known issues. See the README file for a complete list (in the download directory below).
 
Please post questions and comments about this release on the LTGreenstone forum: http://forums.serveall.net/index.php/board,9.0.html
 
LTGreenstone can be downloaded from: https://svns.maflt.org/rc/public/lt/release_packages/LTGreenstone/
 
Outstanding issues and enhancements can be found at: http://trac.serveall.net/web/greenstone.