Teaching with Computers?  In Sunday School? I don’t know. . .sounds like a waste of money to me!  The old steam heating system needs replacing!  The drafty, old windows need replaced! There is already a budget deficit.  Why can’t they just keep Sunday school the way it used to be.  It was good enough for me!  But we persevered. . .Did the homework . . .Laid the ground work. . .AND VOILA!    It works!

• We started with four computers.  We now have six.
   
• We started with an average of three kids each Sunday.  We now have six.  On computer Sundays there have been as many as twelve! 
   
• There are four teachers in the computer classroom that would have not set foot in any other venue— and three are men!  Miracles happen!  I have another man in the congregation that heard about our Galilee Flyer software and ASKED if he could help with the next class that used that software.  He happens to be a pilot! 
   
• The teachers comment on how wonderful it is to see the older kids assisting the younger kids with the software and the lesson material. 

That learning in happening is evident.  After two Sunday’s of Fluffy and God’s Amazing Christmas Adventure, one of the kids answered an Advent question posed by the pastor his Children’s Worship time—an answer that came from computer lab time!

Marilyn Freeman, Pilgrim United Church of Christ, Cuyahoga Falls, OH

"Crying Over Galilee Flyer"

How often as a Sunday School teacher have you agonized watching one of your young charges crying, clinging to Mom or Dad as they drop their child at your door for class?  And these poor children s miss half the class and half the fun adjusting to the surroundings.  In the meantime, you try to focus on the rest of your students, telling them stories of God and God’s love for them.  I have lived this scene many times over the years.  This year, however, I had a very different experience when our class lesson was taught through the use of computers and a computer game, Galilee Flyer.   Worship ended and in a flash our kids grabbed a snack from Fellowship Hall and raced to the Sunday School room ready to begin class!  The workshop leaders had to shoo them away, we weren’t ready to begin.  Once class started we quickly prayed and then we were off.  The kids were immediately engrossed in the game and learning.  We paired younger ones with older ones and watched the fun and learning progress.  When the hour was up I witnessed the most amazing scene.  As parents came to pick up their children the kids cried – they didn’t want to leave Sunday School!   When is the last time you had Sunday School students who cried at the thought of leaving the classroom?

Barb VanLoenen, Lab teacher at First Presbyterian Church, Hudson WI

From a small village in England....

‘Am I trying to bite more than I can chew?’ There I was, leading a service in the church where I had just been appointed and looking at the small congregation in front of me: not a single child in sight. No Sunday school teachers, no children’s activities.

In this little church of Spencers Wood - a small village in the south of England – I felt that we were trapped in an unbreakable vicious circle:  No children, no children workers, no children’s activities, no children…. There was only one thing to do: deliver a great and powerful prayer to God: ‘Oh Lord, what am I to do? Help!’

Well, I don’t know if it was God’s answer to my prayer, but in the middle of the night, it came to me: Computer games and activities! That’s the answer.  We should set up a few computers at the back of the church, get Peter, my wonderfully supportive husband who knows about computers, to run a computer based club for the kids during the church service. But, where could we get some really good Christian software?

We searched for fun, well designed games with attractive graphics and clear Christian teaching, and we found Sunday Software. Perfect. It offered the range of games that would enable us to meet all the needs of the children God will send us - from pre-readers to sophisticated teens. We purchased five games and tested them with a few kids and were impressed: the kids had fun while leaning about Jesus and the Bible. We were on a winner!

And so ByteSize was born. ...Five months later, twelve children aged between 4 and 11 enjoy ByteSize, and six of them have also formed a junior choir. The ten games that we have now bought give us a good mix of ability, variety and interest but we are looking (always!) for more computers and more games as the club is growing.

We have also just started running an hour’s tuition in the Vicarage after choir practice on Fridays, on how to play the games, and even more importantly the teaching in them. This is proving popular, so we are building up workbooks for each child, and are designing exercises (quizzes for instance) that they can complete while they do the games.

The biggest problem for us? Other local churches are hoping that we will come to them with our computers and games. Will ByteSize become MegaByte or even GigaByte? Watch this space!

Thank you Neil and all at Sunday Software for a great resource and for the fantastic Christian ministry that you do.

Peter Pearson, St Michaels Church, Spencers Wood, Reading, England

"Why I don’t dread the computer lab any more"

(Or how I became a computer carpet bag lady!)

I suppose I should pick a more positive, gung-ho title. But I have to admit, I used to dread teaching in the computer lab for Sunday school.

Please, give me anything else – arts, music, drama, kitchen, even games – anything but computers. That’s how I used to think of it. Managing a class and dealing with which computers had sound that worked, which was connected to the printer…was just too stressful.

Until I went remote -- and brought in my portable computer-lab-in-a-bag! (The small Sunday school in our country church had no computers, so I kind of didn’t have a choice.)

So yep, I took in my top of the line Mac laptop and little Lexmark colour inkjet printer in a Mary Poppins-style flowered carpet bag. If you’re seeing a computer carpet bag lady, you have the right idea. In fact, I had two bags – a second padded computer bag for my laptop.

But I loved it. I always had enough gas to run the programs. When we used Esther from ‘Awesome Bible Stories’ from Sunday Software, the kids were ecstatic to have the story menu move around to the target story so fast.

I found my screen got less gunky when I jacked in a second keyboard. That put the screen out of arms reach for the small ones. A wireless mouse as well brought everything closer to them.

Somehow computer days grew like a bad weed. I had to bring the computer to drama workshops as well, because the computer’s built-in camera was the only piece of equipment I had for recording and editing a movie with sound.

And then I had to bring in the computer for Sunday school show off days. We would get so excited about how our Samson movie turned out that we just had to organize a screening with cookies and drinks after church. The laptop’s 15-inch screen isn’t that much smaller than the tv. So we just plunked the computer up on the tv trolley and pushed play! We showed our Sunday school year-end slideshow this way too. It was so neat to see the kids crowding around the screen looking for themselves in the pictures.

Even more interesting, having a computer-lab-in-a-bag created possibilities for sharing beyond the four walls of our church. Instead of pulling our hair out trying to help families in the exploding subdivisions to our east find our little church, what if we took our church to them? We did some really fun dreaming and planning for a Saturday morning out-program, using portable computers, thinking about to talking the mega supermarket in the target area about lending us some space for a children’s program for a couple of hours. (Not off the ground yet, but lots of fun to brainstorm.)

But I digress much. I’ve been won over, I’m converted to computers in the Sunday school classroom, meaning I actually like teaching in the computer lab now. The computer lab is a lively point of intersection between the stories and message of the Good Book, and the world our kids live in.

One request please – give us ‘old people’ the right tools to keep up with the kids!

Submitted by Lisa-Dawn McKenzie, Georgetown Ontario
 

In January 2007 we did our third ever computer workshop around Joseph. Due to our hardware, we had to connect my staff laptop to a video projector and had our classes go through the game together. Since each class only had 1-3 students they each got to take turns controlling, but for the most part our teacher did that. In spite of all these "setbacks" this was the most popular workshop of the series and every week the students were begging their parents to stay so they could play to the end. The teacher who had to stick around for an extra hour anyways always accommodated and one week I walked downstairs to find not only the students of the week, but four teenagers who often don't come to church hanging out with them in the room!

The following month our pastor shared that they were out eating dinner and that her youngest son started talking about Joseph's jealous brothers and the details of the dreams that the baker and "other guy" had. (Obviously I didn't get to play the game!) Our pastor was stunned that her 1st grade son remembered such details and I was glad I didn't let my desires for perfection get in the way.

Submitted by Jeri Higgins, Christian Education Director, Federated Church of Green Lake

Our fifth graders are often a hard sell in Children's Sunday School. They are familiar with the story content. They can analyze the meaning of parables. They quickly memorize scripture verses. One particular student, Matt, is especially bright and was quickly bored by traditional teaching methods. He even came into the computer lab and rattled off the entire story and it's meaning in the first three minutes of the day. He said to the teacher, "Well I know the story, so I guess I'll just sit here and be bored for the rest of the hour." Only then did Matt find out that we had a brand new game in the lab - Interactive Parables. He watched and listened as the teacher demonstrated the commands and control buttons. As his interest was peeked, he opened the game and started casually trying to navigate through it. Within five minutes Matt was so enthralled with the game, he was glued to the screen for the entire hour. When it was time for the class to leave, Matt was still eagerly playing the game with determination to win the parable. When the teacher finally convinced Matt he had to quit playing to go to church, he ran to the sanctuary and asked the Children's Minister to please get him a copy of the game to take home because he wouldn't be able to sleep that night without winning! Talk about a turn around in attitude and interest level.

Submitted by Becca Jones, Minister to Preschool and Children, First Baptist Church of Augusta GA

Currently I am going solo in a newly established computer lab, which is a risky venture given the meagre extent of my computer knowledge (I’m still pondering why a rigid bit of plastic is called a “floppy”!).   The congregation is sceptical about this being the way to learn Scripture, but have been generous in their donation of superseded computers. The children find it intriguing to be using such slow museum pieces, but are great teachers, not only of the technology itself, but also in sharing themselves in this new relevant way.  My confidence is growing lesson by lesson, particularly with the support of your monthly email.  (Many thanks).

I had found the voiced option on “The Play and Learn Children’s Bible” CD very useful to even out the ability differences between our fluent readers and our many non-English speaking students, and had very successfully used it with our 6 to 8 year olds.  Indeed, it was only the fact that there was a voiced story option which convinced the teacher of the 3 to 5 year olds to let these very young ones have a turn with me in the lab.

Among the students in this Beginners class is a little refugee boy who, to save any embarrassment, is thoughtfully introduced by all his classmates, as the one “who can’t talk”.  As a long retired educational psychologist I have been intrigued, and saddened, at the result of trauma on this lad’s language skills, and have attempted to discourage such enthusiastic labeling by his family and church community.  But after a 2 year acquaintance and never any sounds, the nonverbal expectation had become fixed. But not any more. 

We were all excitedly catching fish in the story “Jesus goes fishing”.  Every one wanted another turn, and the excited cries of  “More, More” were compelling.  Trying to organize the rabble (I did not heed the expert advice to have a helper!!), I was not immediately aware whose voice had joined in the cry for “More, More”.  But it remained the most insistent and continued after the others had become quiet.  “More, More”.  The little refugee boy had communicated verbally, and, thankfully, I was the only one who saw it as extraordinary.  The excited class was too busy organizing whose turn it was to catch fish.

Praise the Lord that there are many Scripture lessons in which an appropriate response is “More, More”.  And who knows what other learning there is for this lad with this exciting tool and what other teachers may now be interested in this creative methodology.

Submitted by Pamela Jones, Seaton, South Australia.

My favorite station in my rotation Sunday school is always computer. We have a smallish program, with never more than 20 kids in grades K-5. I love that no matter what we are studying, the children are always eager to rush to their computer chairs and get started! Their favorites are Bongo Loves the Bible and The Life of Christ, although Cal and Marty have their fan club as well. Kids who have never met each other share a computer and get to know one another while learning about Christ. They are in their element with technology, and the differences between the children disappear when they work together on computers.

The best thing about computer Bible learning, however, is the significant improvement in recall and understanding they all have after learning a Bible story from computer lab! Every penny we have spent on technology has been well-spent. I have been blessed to see 6 of my students be baptized this year alone!

James and Daniel are twin brothers who come every other week to Shepherd's Cove. They have it rough because their parents are divorced and custody issues cause them to miss a lot of church. Unfortunately, they have had to miss some of our best fellowship activities, art projects, and drama productions because they were out of town visiting their mom. The only station that they can participate in fully when they are missing church is computer. They have a computer at home, so when I know they will miss a really good lesson I copy the instructions for them and send a CD-Rom home with them. It is amazing how driven they are to learn on their own. They knew the Beatitudes inside and out after taking home Galilee Flyer one weekend. They also passed (with perfect scores!) twice as many quizzes in the Life of Christ as my kids who were at church that day. James and Daniel are growing in Christ because of the fun they have learning with computer programs. It keeps them excited about Jesus and connected to our church even when they are not with us physically.

Thanks Neil for all you guys do! We wouldn't have a computer lab without Sunday software!

Angela Lewter, Decatur-Trinity Christian Church, Bartlett TN

Ken and Phyllis Green, 1st Presbyterian, Arlington Hts. IL

What makes using computers exciting are the stories that about kids using them. One child actually would get up and walk out of class if he got bored before or if he stayed would be a total distraction most of the time. Now, he gets there early and stays late and his relationship has definitely gotten closer to me which also helps with the teaching part. He comes in and talks with me before anyone else is in the classroom while I am setting up the computer equipment. (I bring my own two computers and set them up before class each time.)

Thanks for putting in the time to develop these programs. They are definitely worth the time you put into them. The suggestions on your Web site has also been helpful.

Submitted by Polly Scott, Greensboro NC

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