Mobile Ministry Magazine

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend weekly Bible study with a new piece of technology. A Palm LifeDrive that has been donated was getting a workout to ensure that it worked fine and I used Bible study as the event to test it out. The goals were to see how well it would work with a keyboard for writing notes, how would I be able to deal with using it for a Bible, and how it worked alongside my Treo (the Treo playing the Bible and the LifeDrive playing the notes device).

When I got to the coffeehouse - we hold our Bible study in a coffeehouse - I pulled out the LifeDrive (LD) and set it up with my Palm Universal Wireless keyboard. Connecting to the infrared keyboard was easy (I synced the driver to the LD before I went to the study). Throughout the study, the keyboard and LD stayed responsive to one another.

After that, it was just a matter of answering a few questions about the "new device that I [am] carrying now" and all was underway.

Some Positives
Having a larger screen that what was on my Treo was a big benefit. Also, with the device not being a phone, I did not have to worry about SMS/calls interrupting my reading or writing of notes.

The screen was bright and easy to read in the coffeehouse setting, and the size of the buttons made it easy to switch from the browser to the memo pad easily.

And Some Negatives
While the keyboard did work well, the LD does not come with the ability to turn the device on its side and see a landscape view. This made typing a little less natural.

The browser on the LD was not up to snuff for viewing eBible or YouVersion. It was able to view ZBible.mobi just fine, but ZBible is just a simple site for reading; it does not offer an ability to bookmark, write/save notes, and share them. This is one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about better Bible readers.

I fired up the browser to get the LD online with the coffeehouse Wi-Fi which was pretty simple. However, because of the screen and power settings, this was something that I would have to repeat a few times during the study. Unfortunately, the LD does not have a setting where you can stay connected to a wireless access point even after the screen has turned off (this might need a software update, which has yet to be installed).

Overall
I did this experiment on one end to see how a two device solution would work for Bible studies. Obviously, this is not something that all people can do (cost), but there are benefits that can be had when a small handheld or mini-notebook device can be used in the mist of a Bible study. The ability to write and share notes is a big thing; but more than that, one can use online resources to look up information that would further enhance the conversation (we were studying the book of Exodus, so there's a lot that we could pull).

The other reason I did this was to see how a change in computing would effect me. I'm used to a one device solution, however I am looking at getting an N810 Internet Tablet and would be more apt to use it (and its larger screen/more capabilities) to be a catalyst in learning and sharing the Word. I see a lot of possiblities here, and many of which that can be shared by a lot of non-smartphone-carrying users.

Now how about you. Do you use a mobile device of some kind when you attend Bible studies? What are some of the benefits that you have seen? What are some areas that can be improved? Let's here how devices aide your study :)

Labels: Bible, community, internet tablet, mobile, N800, tech