Using Your Tablet for Bible Studies

Some weeks ago, we talked about a specific case of using several applications across one’s mobile and tablet to do bible studies. The response from that article has been quiet, but there has been something quite consistently stated: the amount of inking, drawing, and pictures was a bit overwhelming. So, how about we scale things down a bit to just using your tablet (iPad, Nook, Kindle Fire, etc) for studies.

[click for larger view]

The Setup

Safari Mobile Web Browser
Penultimate
Evernote
Dropbox

We are keeping things simple here with the use of the built-web browser, Penultimate to collect and organize our content, and then Evernote and Dropbox for the purposes of archiving and sharing (you only need one of these, but am including both as Penultimate works seamlessly with both).

The Study: John 8:1-11
Many of us might be familiar with this section of the Bible. Here, a woman is brought before Jesus by scribes and Pharasees and she is charged with adultery. This was one of those studies where we were given the text before the meeting, and then had to come to the study with items to contribute. I decided to collect my thoughts within Penultimate, and then again use the app during the study to capture additional thoughts.

Before the study, I read the text and started in Penultimate with some questions that came to mind about aspects of the section of text: location, timing, what the Temple looked like, etc. After getting a few of these, I began just by using a simple search to look them up, and then started collecting facts and images from image searches, Wikipedia, and other places.

Then in Penultimate, I just went at it. What I liked here is that my notes very quickly started looking like something in a composition book, but with better links to images and data. What’s missing from Penultimate is some kind of screen that keeps track of the items that you grab from websites (like of like an automated biblography).

During the study, I went back to the document that I started, and just added additional pages to correspond to the questions being asked. No styli, no keyboard. Just grabbing snippets of images and writing as I see fit.

The end product looked like this PDF. I exported the Penultimate file into Dropbox, and it created this PDF. I also did an export into Evernote which gives me the opportunity to view this notebook on my mobile or anywhere else that Penultimate doesn’t exist (aka, anything not named iPad).

All in all, this has become a pretty neat workflow and exercise. Its only one of a few ways that you can use your tablet for Bible studies. Of note, the ability to mashup content within your notes is something you should take advantage of, or encourage those you teach to take advantage of. If you can do somethingl ike provide them with an outline to start with, and then let them cut/create as they go, you’ve got the starts of building understanding (Proverbs 4:7) with the text – note just memorization and rote learning.

Could this work for you? Or, do you have your own workflow for how you use a tablet with Bible studies? Chime in the comments and share.

OSNOVA and Designing Effective In-Bible Interfaces

Of the few complaints that you tend to hear from those using Kindles/Nooks/Kobos and similar eInk-based reading devices, the primary ones have to do with the speed of navigating while inside of a book. Getting around to different materials isn’t so much the problem for some. Its when they want to get around inside of the materials that there’s a challenge, and sometimes a disappointment.

Over at This Lamp, a commentary on the user interface (UI) refinements made with OSNOVA have been published. This gets me excited because of my personal history with mobile Bible interfaces (Palm Bible+ and Katana specifically) and the amount of work that needs to go into making just getting around as efficient and productive as possible. Here’s a snippet of This Lamp’s observations:

…So, if a Kindle user wants to go directly to a verse, in many non-OSNOVA Kindle Bibles, he or she would have to go to the menu on the Kindle, then table of contents, then scroll through the pages until the book of the Bible sought after appears. Some ebook Bibles have chapter numbers listed, but I’ve seen other Bibles in which the Contents merely takes one to the first chapter in the selected book. With OSNOVA’s DVJ, a specific verse can be accessed directly by typing in an abbreviated form that works with the Kindle. So, if I want to go to Romans 1:17, I’d type ro 1 17 and the Kindle immediately jumps to that location in the Bible…

Read the rest of This Lamp’s experiences with OSNOVA. Also, check out the OSNOVA website for optimized documents for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and other eInk devices. There are also several tutorial videos on this interface at the OSNOVA blog.

The Efficient Interface Is the One That’s Transforms Lives

One of the best selling features for a Bible/reading application is the efficiency of the user interface. In talking with friends about my iPad during Thanksgiving meals, one of the comments against the iPad was that people couldn’t see how a device like a tablet would be conductive to annotation behaviors such as writing on margins, highlighting, proofreading, and cut-pasting-mashing up more than just lines of text. In that conversation, I demonstrated the abilities of Good Reader (an iPad document reader with many of those features). Upon using it for themselves, the viability of eReaders and tablets became more relevant.

Hence the challenge for user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) folks:design into content pleasurable experiences which take advantage of the technology, not simply repeat the behaviors of less capable media.

Fostering Meditation by Journaling and Sharing by Mobile

One of my favorite verses of Scripture is found in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures (Joshua 1:8 KJV):

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

There’s something direct and simple about that command that the Lord gave to Joshua. And it also happens to be effective to us in these days as well. Many people have the behavior of reading the Bible (I won’t get into statistics about this), but we don’t always hear as much outside of those whom are published what it looks like to meditate – contemplate, consider, debate within ourselves – the meaning of Scripture.

This is something we’d hear from time to time with those in the pastorate. But, to hear the same from a layperson – someone not with some kind of official capacity to be teaching one or more people – is a bit different than what we are used to. Looking at this verse though, it would seem that its not just meant for the newly established leader, but for those who walk alongside that leader (even if not in a noted capacity) as well.

This past weekend, I had two experiences that brought to my forefront this idea of contemplation with Scripture, and there was an interesting intersection with mobile tech in both cases. In the first, I was speaking with a former pastor of mine (I visited my old church in Philadelphia) and spoke about what it is I’ve been doing with MMM. One of the questions that I asked him was, “how do you use your smartphone besides calls, texts, and an occasional game?” His mention was that he doesn’t do much at this time and my responses was something to the effect of, “have you considered using your smartphone as a means to share your sermon outline before you teach?” I gave him an example of how he could upload all of those sermons to Google Docs, and then simply text the members in attendance right before he gets up to preach the URL for that outline.

The second moment came later on in the same day. My mother had seen my notes in Evernote (especially the handwritten ones, via Tactilis) and remarked that she’d like to try that app on her Nook Color if that were available. So, I took her Nook Color, and showed her how to search for the app then download it. She then got a message noting she needed a memory card. So I took an 8GB memory card that I’d been using as an archive of my previous mobile, copied its contents to my 32GB USB memory key using just my Nokia N8 (the N8 can connect to a USB memory key and also has a microSD card slot), and formatted the card so that she could use it in her Nook Color. After doing that, I walked with her through the setup process of her Evernote account and she was ready to start writing her notes in Evernote. I had also added the Evernote app to her Windows laptop so that she’d have her notes in both places ready to access as needed.

In both cases, the central point was notes. How do we utilize this mobile and web technology to endear us towards contemplative moments in faith? I think that both situations give us two ways to approach it. We can play the role of a pastor-teacher and have some kind of outline or memory points ready to share that are simply shared directly to a mobile using SMS or MMS. And then we have the second where a person should be able to leverage their computing devices, network-services, and various methods of writing notes (pictures, typed text, etc.) to record and retrieve those notes.

One of the things my mother liked in my use of Evernote was that I had the ability to search across all of my notes from any device I was on. My pastor mentioned that he has over a half decade of sermons typed up, but they are simply sitting on his computer not shared with anyone unless he directly sends it to them. What can we realize in this life of faith when we take both of those matters and put ourselves towards utilizing the tools we have to be in that position ot meditate on the text everyday? Could you imagine the kinds of walls that would be ready to come down in our lives if that were to happen?

eBooks and the Pastor’s Library

One of the conversations that I had this past Thanksgiving holiday with a few friends studying in seminary was the idea of the pastor’s library going away – or being greatly diminished – in its current form. A traditional pastor’s office is filled floor to ceiling with commentaries, narratives, resources, and Bibles of countless translations. In some circles, this is probably seen as some metric of validation towards the ability of that pastor to teach (or teach effectively).

With my friend and I standing in front of the Christian resources section of Barnes & Noble this past weekend, I openly stated that this view might be a thing of the past. We might be seeing the last stand of many of the shelves that are noted here. My friend, totally building an impressive library of his own, not only disagreed, but maintained that he’d be the last person purchasing books in order to keep things from going all digital. He admitted that he’s had issues with screens and workflows, and this centers on his perception (as it does my own).

Yet, as I stood/sat there, I wondered. Yes, we have iPads, Nooks, etc. and there’s almost no need to purchase a book at retail given the amount of tools at our disposal to price compare at places such as Amazon – yet, there’s something to be said for that library. That collection of books that commands reflection, contemplation, and usually the kinds of questions that can only be answered when sitting in the midst of just the covers of the mosaic of thought around The Faith.

That being said, the conversation he and I had evolved into not getting rid of all books, but looking for the appropriate context for digital versus print. I wrestle with this often having now an iPad at my use. There are some books (I’ll change term and say collections) that are better in a digital format not because they are contemplative, but because their value is best met when connected to other sources of information. Logos’s library stands out here as an example of what resource material that has a common index and considers that each component is a part of the whole can look like.

Other types of readings might be better left in print. I think about one of the books that I’ve read in the past (The Alchemist). While an excellent book, I don’t read that in the same way that I read The Next Christendom that I’m very comfortable in reading on my iPad. The reflection-like characteristics of The Alchemist in a print mode lends itself better to that type of reading.

Nevertheless, I think some pastors might be better served in investigating and considering ebook readers or tablets*. I’m not sure that keeping the method of how one comes to a reflection or the sources used in making a specific point should sit on a shelf. These links can and should be shared with the community so that discussion around “how” to study also meets the current common question of “what” to study.

In respect to the library, it needs to stay as a place of reflection. But, maybe it needs some better windows (with shades) so that reflection and revelation isn’t anymore held behind a curtain as something mysterious.

*Church Tech Today recently published an article on the current slate of ebook readers and their value to pastors.

Update: Today, Google announced and opened Google Books, a browser-based eBook reading service.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Apr
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Mobile Ministry Magazine

Asking questions, presenting approaches, and experiments at the intersection of faith and mobile

Tag Archives: Nook Color

OSNOVA and Designing Effective In-Bible Interfaces