Designed primarily for teenagers, The Church's Story is a study tool about the denomination's history, organization and beliefs. One area features various time periods to explore: the early church, medieval times, Reformation times, early American Presbyterianism, and contemporary Presbyterians (see graphic below on the right). The other main area to explore covers Presbyterian Worship, Mission, Social Issues, Church Government, and Beliefs.

Each of the above mentioned areas has a teen host --a still picture of a teen and a voice-over" briefly describing that area. After the narration, the user is left to browse text and the occasional picture (far too occasional) about the subject matter in that area. Some of the text includes "hypertext." When you click on certain highlighted words the program jumps to more on that subject.

The CD has a nice activities section (opening screen pictured left), including some quizzes, to help reinfore what students have learned. Why the content areas of the CD weren't as engaging, creative and graphically interesting as activities section is a matter of both mystery and money I suppose.

 

Students navigate the pages and areas using buttons on an always present control panel. I found the navigation to be confusing at times. There is some music, some interesting graphics, pictures of folks like John Knox, but no animation, slideshows or video clips. The text one encounters on various subjects is somewhat brief and well written (as you would expect). Rather than a piece of dazzling multimedia however, the feel, look and content of this CD is more along the lines of "database" or "book on CD." The graphics shown on this page represent two of the all too few interesting design components in the CD. Whether you like it or not, "design" and "look" and "feel" are important parts of educational software. (Actually, this goes for all media, not just CD.)

Opinion: The Church's Story is a decent first effort but I question whether Confirmands will enjoy using the CD or be interested long enough to read and understand the content. By multimedia standards, The Church's Story CD is rather dull The content is theologically solid and well-written. The problem is they wanted to created a multimedia CD-ROM. The still pictures of youth with narrated voiceovers and the lack of animation or video is circa1994, not 1998. The lack of any video, few illustrations, and static graphics are particularly odd considering that the PCUSA has a vast horde of video and other visual media at their disposal.

The CD is too restrained. It needed to be more "hip" looking, sounding and feeling. This can be done without sacrificing content ---look at the Actual Reality CD for reference.

The CD lacks what I call "pull" or "direction." There is no logical path a student would follow, no story to be told. It's a lot like a database --which isn't bad, just not particularly helpful to students (and teachers) who may be inclined to "bail out" of material when it gets dull. The program is also rather impersonal. The chosen frozen teen characters do not express any real emotion or teen spirituality. The CD is informational rather than seeking to be transformational. Again, see Actual Reality for an example of a CD that does both quite well. It's the scripting, not just the multimedia elements.

The decision to make a multimedia prodct should have been accompanied with the proper financing to create a multimedia product kids would enjoy using. Afterall, that is the appeal of multimedia and software in the first place. This failure is not the fault of those who actually made the CD (several of whom I have met). They did the best with what resources they were given. The question is this: "Is half a CD better than none at all?" That depends on who's paying for it.

Recommendation: If you're a PCUSA'er like me, I think we owe it to our denomination to buy this CD (it's not bad)---but only if you promise to send them your own honest written review. They need to see that we want CD resources and what our expectations are. Those who worked on this CD have told me that the major stumbling block was lack of funding. They had to do it "in-house" with folks who had very little CD production experience (though solid writing credentials as the CD shows). The next project needs to be better funded. Tell them that. If you're going to buy the CD, look at it and shelve it, then I recommend you don't buy it.

Recommendation to the Denomination: Thank you for trying to provide us with CD-ROM resources. Next time, find the money to hire a professional multimedia producer. A better CD will cost you more money, but it will also probably get you a better program, more sales, and most importantly, --more students interested in the material. It also won't take three years to make. This first effort has some good stuff in it. Why not have a multimedia producer see what they can do with it and release it as version 2.0 ?
<><Neil MacQueen

May 1999 Update: This program has now been on the market for 11 months. All our phonecalls and emails about this CD pretty much agree with our assessment. Some churches have decided to use it anyway for lack of anything else on the subject. It is still my hope that we'll see a newer, better version of this program. Karen's comment below pretty much sums up what we've been hearing:

Dear Neil,

We've previewed the CD-ROM from the denomination (Presbyterian)
covering traditional communicants class info. We agree with your assessment.

Karen Schmidt, First Presbyterian Church of Willow Grove, PA