Author Archive
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
mLearning Project in Nairobi Business Daily
A man walked into the NIST (Nairobi International School of Theology a.k.a. International Leadership University Kenya) office here in Nairobi today wanting to talk to the person organizing the mobile phone pastor training. He had read the article in today’s paper. Sure enough, there it was.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/-/539444/1169182/-/1232lbaz/-/index.html
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Mombasa Singing
My favorite music is African, and hearing it sung live is the best. I recorded this at a church gathering of pastors in Mombasa using my video camera, so the audio quality is terrible and the men are only visible halfway through the video. But the music is pure enjoyment.
No Comments » - Posted in Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
mLearning Project Video
An overview of what it’s all about.
2 Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Mobile Learning in Mombasa
Zarc Teaches a Group of Pastors
Class #2 of our mobile phone pastor training included a group from Mombasa, Kenya. While Mombasa is not exactly a remote location, having another cohort of pastors there allows us to learn how to run multiple classes in parallel.
Mombasa is like Orlando in the summer without air conditioning; warm and muggy. The culture was closer to Orlando, too; casual and relaxed. I didn’t have to wear my suit. The church in which we met had a dirt floor and a corrugated steel roof that was open to the sky in some parts. Fortunately there was an electrical outlet that kept our batteries charged long enough to register the new students.
Not only does the student learning application run on a mobile phone, but parts of the computerized learning system run on mobile phones as does the student administration program. Registering new students only requires access to the Internet on a smart phone.
Jerry with some of the pastors
As with the other groups that have started using this mobile phone training, this group learned how to use their new phones in a short time. Most of them had never used a touch screen device before, so they all had to learn new concepts. Eventually they all learned how to run the training application on their phones before we left.
Flying To Mombasa
We flew into Mombasa from Nairobi early in the morning, and we flew back to Nairobi in the afternoon. So I never got to see the coast of Kenya. What I saw of Mombasa looked the same as what I have seen of Nairobi. Maybe next trip to Kenya I’ll be able to spend some time in Mombasa on the coast, something every Kenyan tells me I should do.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Monday, March 7th, 2011
Review of mLearning Class 2 Launch
[We did this analysis a couple weeks after the launch of mLearning Class 2, but I dated this post earlier, so it wouldn't show at the top of the page.]
Post Launch Review
(a very internal look at how we did)
What Did We Set Out To Accomplish?
- Affordable course payments
- Course locking
- Communication module working
- Effective educational materials
- Achieve cost efficiency
- Bookmarking
- Note taking feature
- Working quiz system
What Actually Happened
- The software enabled affordable partial payments by the students
- The course locking as designed didn’t work, but as implemented worked.
- Communication module works but with some questions.
- Possibly non-Safaricom quiz and communication not working
- SMS Gateway communication became unreliable during student registration
- SMS Gateway software needed frequent restarts to keep functioning
- SMS Gateway software ran on a regular Android mLearning phone.
- Note taking, bookmarking worked, media played
- It cost 2000 KSH to register 10 students in Nairobi (students #10 – #20)
- 1000 KSH in account went away Thursday night March 3
- Safaricom account was blocked after money ran out for SMS Gateway Thursday night March 3
- Troubleshooting remotely using Email, Skype, and phone communication was sufficient.
- We encountered situations/conditions that had not been tested; e.g. registering lots of students in a short time.
- Quiz system worked.
- There is some question about whether different network are causing problems.
- Backend worked very well
What Went Right
- Backend – Allogy Admin
- Student registration
- Student payments
- Quiz tracking
- Facilitated a side-install
- Quiz creation/course building
- Lightweight enough for easy mobile phone use
- Facilitated a testing environment
- Bookmarking – passive mode was good
- Progress bar is good
- Note taking – worked as advertised
- SMS-based communication
- Eliminated the need for student data plan for all necessary communication
- Quiz results easy to view
- Client worked
- Updates on Client, SMS Gateway, and backend were timely and addressed the problems
- Rooted SMS Gateway phone worked as intended (able to bypass 100 SMS/hr limit)
- Zarc teaching new students how to use their new phones and Allogy
- Test sites worked well. Easy to test and throw away.
What Could We Have Done Better
- Testing
- test real situations
- needed more testing time
- Process for pushing updates that involves local and remote testing.
- Client stability
- Changing orientation
- File decryption
- Correct home screen display
- Support different screen sizes and resolutions
- Additional visual indicators of progress through list of lessons
- Remove initial client authentication layer (“Verify” step)
- Cost – arranged data service with Safaricom immediately upon turning new SIM on Android.
- Eliminate noisy SMS updates
- Using SMS technology better
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
mLearning Trial Class Ended Well
The first mLearning class is complete, and it was a success!
33 students registered for the Institute of Christian Leadership class, and 32 of them completed the class on their mobile phones. All 32 returned to Nairobi for the final exam with a class average of A- on the same exam that the ‘reference’ group of in-class students took. We are excited and amazed.
Pastor Robert, from Rongai, returned with two of his lay church leaders and told us about the changes he experienced in his own life and the changes he observed in his two lay leaders. I smiled when he referred to the class material as ‘this gadget.’ Clearly it made a difference in his life.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
What They Said
mLearning Students
Here are some of the things we heard when we interviewed these present and future church leaders after they completed the first mobile phone training class, the Institute of Christian Leadership.
I love Jesus more and have a deeper desire to share the love of Christ to others.
I have been personally helped to grow in the Word. I am adequately equipped to bring about changes in church.
I have grown in reflecting on the word of God, and knowing how to prepare and preach and study the Word.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Pics from trip to Kenya with Audrey
This trip to Kenya with Audrey has gone well.
Our friends, Michael and Rebecca, took us along to visit two of their recently formed farming co-ops as part of their community development work in rural Kenya. This was a fascinating adventure and gave us a view of the world we had never seen before. Yesterday we walked around Nairobi with my friends, Paul and Peter, and today we walked in Kibera for a while and had another amazing day.
No Comments » - Posted in General,Ministry by Jerry
Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Contrasts in Kenya
Some things in Kenya form an interesting contrast compared to life in America.
Audrey and I took a walk through the Kibera slum, today, with our friend, David. In order to dress as close to normal African garb as possible Audrey wore a skirt, and I wore my nicest pair of dress shoes. I almost never wear them back home, but they just looked normal here. With them I walked on the dirt roads in Kibera where the pot holes were filled with garbage and there is no sewage system. Same with Audrey. She never wears skirts in Orlando, but it was the most normal thing she could wear here. In order to look normal in one of the poorest parts of Kenya I had to wear my nicest pair of shoes and Audrey had to wear one of the nicest outfits she has ever worn in years.
My phone provided another irony. In this same slum is the highest concentration of mobile phone users in Kenya, as I understand it, and it seemed there were more ‘M-PESA’ shops than anywhere else in the city. M-PESA is the cell phone money transfer system that most Kenyans use to send money between people and between small businesses. The M-PESA shops are where you make cash deposits and withdrawals from your account, like a bank. For 2011 they estimate that 15% of the Kenyan GDP will flow through M-PESA.
My high-end Android smartphone, like the ones we gave tomorrow’s graduating mLearning Class students back in September at the start of the class, was not completely out of place in one of the largest slums in Africa. But since it has no “M-PESA” program on it, it couldn’t even perform one of the most basic functions that most Kenyans depend on for doing business.
Many Americans expect the rest of the world to follow the same development path America is on, but the reality of life today is that each place will find a development path of its own.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
MailChimp Likes Me
My New MailChimp T-shirt
MailChimp likes me. I don’t know why. They sent me a t-shirt. I’m a big MailChimp fan, so they didn’t miss with their gift.
Cathy pointed out that several businesses I have used have sent me gifts. It started years ago with a Vonage t-shirt after I referred about ten others to their service. Then Google sent me a Christmas gift, and Chipotle gave me a t-shirt. I wonder how long this string will continue.
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, November 1st, 2010
QR Code
This is a QR code that points to the Ministry category posts on http://Hertzlers.com.
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone with a barcode scanning application that reads QR codes (like Google Goggles) you can point your phone at this one, and it should take you back to our site. I’m playing around with this to see if it would be a good thing to put on a business card. So far I’m thinking not; a little too geeky for now.
You can generate your own QR code of any website using a QR code generating service like Kaywa.
2 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Friday, October 29th, 2010
Kenyan Church in St. Louis!
Youth Group Performance
at Christ Covenant Church
Last Sunday my friend, Paul, introduced me to a Kenyan church in St. Louis, Christ Covenant Church. I was welcomed as an honored guest because my friend had set things up ahead of time, and I had an experience that I didn’t expect. For three hours I was transported from St. Louis to Kenya. At times during the service I caught myself trying to remember where I was; St. Louis, Orlando, or Nairobi? I heard more Swahili in this service than I did at Harvest Fellowship in Nairobi. Afterward we had chai and Kenyan donuts. What a great experience!
3 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
My World Is Free ($) – Is Yours?
Now that I am a parent of two older teenagers, I no longer consider myself a great parent (humility is always healthy). I did my job, but now I believe that a lot less was under my control in shaping their lives than I originally thought. One of those things is the way my kids view the world. While I am sure I helped shape some of their views, much of their views came by virtue of the world they live in – where anything valuable for them is free.
There are two categories of ‘teenager free.’ One is the set of things that come to them through the largess of parents. Mobile phones, use of a car, clothes, etc. This category really isn’t free, but it seems like that to them, and we know that someday they will realize how un-free those things are when they are providing them for their kids.
The second category really is free. These are the things like email, video calls, phone calls, music, video, TV, movies, etc. Legality aside, these things are truly available for free and provide true value and may never require payment by those who use them.
Now I find myself becoming dependent on these free things as well.
I have free home phone service (after the first year of payment) that gives me nationwide long distance. I have free voice mail, a free second number, and free transcription service for calls to my cell phone. I have a free secretary that writes down any reminder I tell her to. I have a smart phone (Android) with a slew of free applications on it and a PC loaded with free applications.
Money still goes out my door, so I am paying for plenty enough things in my life, but where my money goes has shifted lately.
I’m still trying to understand how this will affect the way my kids view the world. How do you think today’s free things affect how the next generation will think?
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
mLearning Class Is Going
Zarc Explains Something
To A Student Pastor
I got a new batch of pictures in today (posted on my Flickr.com photostream) of the mLearning Class. The students got Course #2 last week along with the rest of the training content we intended to deliver on-site in September. I am excited to see how things are going, and I am eager to do the work to improve future classes.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
A Trip to Rongai, Kenya
My Friends in Rongai
When I arrived in Kenya a couple weeks ago for the launch of our first mobile phone-based pastor training class, I spent a day with my colleague driving out to a distant village to see if our mLearning phones would work like we expected.
We drove up the Rift Valley, about 100 miles away from Nairobi, and found a small village called Rongai. We wanted to find a local pastor, show him a working model of our mLearning phone, and see if our idea made sense to him.
Along the way I had one of the most enjoyable travel experiences ever. We were walking down a road behind the main part of this town when I heard a little girl say, “Hello Sir, how are you?”
“I’m fine. And how are you?” I replied.
“Fine, thank you,” was her answer.
“May I take your picture?” was my next question.
I took her picture then showed it to her on the camera’s display. She pointed to it and laughed with a sweet, innocent little girl laugh. Then she called her sister over and asked me to take another. Then both of them laughed and pointed and called their other sisters over.
“Take another! Take another!” was all they said after that.
Then the silly poses and hysterical laughter started. I have never had so much fun with total strangers!
Hamming It Up in Rongai
After leaving these girls we finally found the local pastor. We showed him a working model of our mLearning phone and explained the idea to him. He quickly understood the concept, and it made sense to him.
Not only did it make sense to him, he asked how he could sign up for the class! He leads 12 congregations, and he has a lot of elders to train. Some of his elders are oral learners, meaning they don’t read, and he thought these phones would work for them as well since all the training material is video and all the phone navigation is done using icons and a touch screen.
We returned a few days later and gave him three complimentary mLearning phones; one for him and two for him to circulate among the elders in his various congregations.
Rev. Robert from Rongai (center),
Dr. Ngaruiya, my colleague, and me
Rongai has a warm place in my heart now.
Here are a few more photos from my trip.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Monday, September 6th, 2010
mLearning Class Launch
Studying on an mLearning phone
Our first mLearning class started today. It was a bit different than we anticipated, but it started.
The biggest challenge to overcome was the failure of the memory cards we brought with us that contained all the training material. All 50 memory cards were incapable of playing video after just a couple times, so we had to use the smaller memory cards that came with the phones. There were other challenges, too, but we found similar alternate solutions for them as well.
The students are all excited to begin studying this new course. None of the students owned a touch screen phone, so everyone was learning something new. A few felt instantly comfortable and were navigating phone applications like a pro right away, a few followed along with our training and picked things up quickly, and a few needed some additional help.
I think we have a winning solution, and I look forward to seeing how students respond after a couple months of studying this way. The final exam will be in November.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
How Does ‘Mobile Seminary’ Work?
Here’s a brief outline of how our mobile seminary courses will work. We have been calling it our ‘mLearning Project.’
1. Student reads, watches, and listens to a series of educational materials on their phone. (A smartphone like this.)
2. At the end of each piece of educational material (like a video) there is a short quiz that the student completes on their phone. This quiz can either assess the student’s learning or simply indicate the student’s progress through the material and their confidence in understanding it. The learning software running on their smartphone bundles their quiz response into a text message and sends it to the data server at the seminary. Quiz example: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident are you that you have understood the material in this section?” or “Which of the following answers is correct?”
3. The instructor is notified when new text messages arrive at the seminary data server, indicating student progress through the material and areas where the student may need extra guidance.
4. At any time the student can initiate a discussion with other students or with an instructor to ask questions or discuss a topic using their phone, either by text message or voice call.
5. At the end of the study period, students return to the seminary for an exam that assesses their overall learning of the course material.
6. Future classes can be downloaded at an Internet cafe or transferred from another student phone. Students can make tuition payments using the money transfer service that comes with their mobile phone service.
Download a more detailed mLearning Project Summary
2 Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
What ‘Virtually-Led Movements’ Means to Campus Crusade for Christ
CCC Internet Diagram
After three days of meeting and praying together with a handful of Campus Crusade’s Internet ministry leaders from around the world, we had made less progress than we had hoped for. We had wanted to write a description of what we are all working toward and map a clear path toward getting there, but making progress was slower than we expected. But right at the end of our time Simon, one of our leaders in Singapore, captured our progress with a simple diagram that illustrated the different aspects of how we are using the Internet to advance the gospel.
The diagram quickly circulated up the CCC leadership chain, and soon we had the opportunity to discuss the results of our meeting with the president of CCC, Steve Douglass. We asked him to consider designating an executive leader to help bring energy and clarity to all our various Internet initiatives.
All of this is just internal discussion within Campus Crusade, but the potential impact is great if we can get all our good ideas aligned with each other and working together well!
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry by Jerry
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
How academic accreditation impedes the spread of the gospel.
Let’s start with the good news. The Church of Jesus Christ is growing rapidly in many places of the world.
As a result, new pastors need theological education so they can lead their churches and stay on course with sound doctrine.
Internet and mobile phone technology now creates the means to distribute this critical training to the pastors who need it at the time they need it most.
But here’s the problem. Most new pastors and many new churches don’t want training that has not been certified by a regionally recognized accreditation board. In North America, The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) is the recognized authority for accreditation of theological schools. Not many churches will hire a pastor who did not graduate from an ATS accredited school.
Accreditation boards have not yet caught up to where Internet and mobile phone technology has brought us. They are still regional, and they focus on certifying particular institutions. Educational institutions are the INPUTS of education. They are not the desired outcomes.
As a result of how the current accreditation system works, each educational institution develops their own curriculum and courses. Most of the time they produce all their own class material as well. Then they pay highly educated professors to distribute that training in a very expensive environment. Air conditioning, buildings, libraries, heat, dorms, etc. all cost a lot of money. Tuition rarely covers the entire expense of a student’s education. Foundations, governments, or other sources of income help most schools offset this loss.
What if we created an outcome-based accreditation system that focused on an individual’s educational OUTCOMES? If we did this, we wouldn’t have to focus on certifying particular institutions. Instead we would focus on whether a student possesses the academic outcomes required for a certain field of knowledge. This would allow each student to acquire the education they need without all the high cost of acquiring it in the traditional way (at a school).
Back to pastors. If each seminary continues producing all their own educational material and distributing it to students in the expensive environment of school campuses, we will never be able to train all the new pastors who are ready right now to lead new churches.
If we can switch to an individually focused outcome-based accreditation system, then we can use the leverage of Internet and mobile phone technology to distribute educational training at a rate and at a price that can keep up with Church growth.
With a new accreditation system we can see a more rapid spread of the gospel!
This is one of the major shifts we hope to accomplish with our mLearning Project. Yes, it’s ambitious.
No Comments » - Posted in Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
MailChimp
Four characters in the wrong place caused my website not to display photos properly. This has been going on for at least six months, but I never spent the time to find the problem.
This month I emailed our prayer letter using a cool service called MailChimp.com, and it motivated me to create a subscription page. That drew my attention back to the fact that photos on our site weren’t working properly, so I finally found and removed the cause of the problem, those four characters.
If you see the MailChimp logo below, you know problem is fixed.
5 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, March 29th, 2010
A Look at BBC’s Open University
“The challenge today is how to educate a generation of people into a world that we, at present, only dimly imagine. … What we do know is that it will be different, and it will be difficult.” – Lord Puttnam
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Academic Labor vs. Educational Capital
Keith Seabourn recently articulated some profound thoughts about the transition going on in education today.
Our development partner in the academic world makes a very strong point, in a presentation of his, about a transition from academic labor to educational capital. His point is that under the older academic labor system, the cost of preparing a course was very low, but the cost of training thousands with that course was very high, based on a professor’s salary to teach students 25-50 at a time.
The newer model of educational capital reverses this. The cost of preparing a course is high, but the cost of using the course to train thousands is very low.
At a recent conference, Dr. Richard Pratt shared that Third Millennium Ministries is finding this to be true. The cost of producing their courses is expensive on a per-minute basis for final course material. That means a 30 minute module will be very expensive to produce, but it is very cheap to distribute on the Internet.
Our mLearning Project in East Africa has many parts. One addresses the question “how good is good enough” for a distance learning course. We hope to learn what level of course material quality is necessary to see lives transformed.
No Comments » - Posted in Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
The Ministry Team I Work With
Watch this description of what my group in Campus Crusade for Christ in Orlando does.
No Comments » - Posted in Ministry by Jerry
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
How God Brought Things Together
Internet access during my trip to Kenya last week did not allow me upload videos about the trip as it happened. Now that I am home, I thought I’d share this story about how God brought things together during my time there.
No Comments » - Posted in GTO,Ministry,mLearning Project by Jerry
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Berj Khalifa Drive By – Dubai, UAE
I had a 24 hour layover in Dubai, so I met my friend Colin and saw some of the city. We drove by the world’s tallest building, the Berj Khalifa, even though it was closed to visitors at the time.
