Tech Tuesday: online Bible study in real time

In this edition of Tech Tuesday, we have a question about how to do an online Bible study in real-time:

Our Young Adults’ pastor would like to have an online interactive Bible Study for our local young adults which will also allow our out of town university/college students to participate in real time.

Are other churches doing this and if so what are they using and how is it working for them?

Also, our network IT support is not comfortable with wireless access to our internet connection without expensive firewalls in place. His suggestion was to consider one of the portable modems offered by companies like Rogers for internet access. Does anyone have feedback on this idea?

Thanks for your help with this. Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

I've participated once or twice in an online Bible study in real time by using a chat room at a Christian website. The thing about that experience is that everything was short text messages, and everyone was virtual and couldn't see each other. I'm guess the person asking the question wants a better experience than that -- perhaps with audio and/or video too. I know there are web technologies out there that makes this possible, and even for free, but I haven't tried them.

What have you tried, and how well did it work?

To have your question featured in a future edition, please submit your Tech Tuesday question by email to dj.chuang@leadnet.org

-- DJ Chuang, Director @ Leadership Network

Comments

[Chris S.]

I would suggest using a service such as GoToMeeting.com or WebEx.com

Personally, I have used GoToMeeting.com when my wife was taking an online grad class. In the class they had to work on projects in groups, I set up weekly meetings for the group, everyone logs in and they can all see exactly what is going on on the leaders computer screen in real time and they can interact via conference call or online text chat.

[Steve K]

GoToMeeting is a reasonable option, but look at Yugma and DimDim, both have free versions available. In fact, DimDim is open source and you can set up your own server.

Our church (and many businesses) has a similar situation - but they have added a separate wireless network for 'guest' use, keeping them isolated from the remainder of the network. Basically, you set up the additional wireless on a different subnet than your regular network. Not difficult for someone fairly network savvy.