Idea for Mobile App Feature to Help Teachers Using iPad/Android Tablets

Kevin A. Purcell
Kevin A. Purcell Member Posts: 3,405 ✭✭✭
edited November 21 in English Forum

I teach from my iPad and had an idea for a feature I'd love to see added. It would not be an easy or simple thing, but it would be a huge benefit to people who teach from their tablets and want to do presentations.

To get an idea of what I'm hoping for, look at John Piper's Look at the Book

I wish there was a tool that would quickly and easy add text to a background suitable for presentation and then let us write on the screen like PIper does in these videos. There's an app that does this but it's extremely limited first by the number of translations available and by other limitations.

Things that would make it useful...

  1. Can quickly add text so it's not hard to create your presentation
  2. Can add text on the fly and even edit and type
  3. Drawing tools that let me use my Apple Pencil or another stylus.
  4. Can add graphics quickly from the tablet's photo gallery.
  5. Can present to an external display without showing things like the toolbar and the insertions of verses, quotes form books and graphics. They should just show up on the presentation screen.

I'd be willing to even pay for this added feature or for a new Logos app that had all of these features and you could share to this app from the regular Bible, FL apps.

Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
Brushy Mountain Baptist Association

www.kevinpurcell.org

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Comments

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,468

    Hi Kevin

    Interesting idea.

    Can you expand on what specifically makes this a "Faithlife app" as opposed to a general purpose teaching tool?

    Trying to understand how you see this integrating into the Logos environment.

  • James Taylor
    James Taylor Member Posts: 1,408 ✭✭✭

    it would be a huge benefit to people who teach from their tablets and want to do presentations.

    To get an idea of what I'm hoping for, look at John Piper's Look at the Book

    [Y]

    Logos 10  | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max

  • Kevin A. Purcell
    Kevin A. Purcell Member Posts: 3,405 ✭✭✭

    Can you expand on what specifically makes this a "Faithlife app" as opposed to a general purpose teaching tool?

    Trying to understand how you see this integrating into the Logos environment.

    The key is using the Biblical text or other content from other books in my Logos library. I can't do this if it's just a general purpose teaching tool.

    As i think about this, it could be integrated with the Sermon Editor to be used on mobile for presenting content from the Sermon Editor. I think they do that through Proclaim somewhat, but I want to be able to draw and mark up the slides like Piper does. Don't think you can do that in Proclaim at present. Maybe it would better fit as a proclaim tool, but I don't use Proclaim anymore. I do use Logos Bible every day.

    Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
    Brushy Mountain Baptist Association

    www.kevinpurcell.org

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,468

    The key is using the Biblical text or other content from other books in my Logos library. I can't do this if it's just a general purpose teaching tool.

    Thanks Kevin. That helps.

    As i think about this, it could be integrated with the Sermon Editor to be used on mobile for presenting content from the Sermon Editor.

    That could, theoretically, work but would need quite a bit of extension (and I know you recognise this in your original post).

    One thing that would need to be done is to allow modification of Sermon Documents in the mobile app (or a new variant of it) as opposed to its read-only function currently.

  • Bob Pritchett
    Bob Pritchett Member, Logos Employee Posts: 2,280

    Great idea, Kevin!

    I do know that some pastors put Logos into full screen mode and use the on-screen drawing to do something like this. (See https://www.logos.com/training/logos4/windows/draw)

    (On Windows, F11 for Reading View and then F8 for Drawing Mode; Escape keys gets you out of the mode.)

    We're planning to add drawing mode to the Proclaim remote; you could prepare slides with the Bible content you want and then draw on them with the remote.

    I also know some professors who use multiple highlighting palettes or visual filters, and then turn them on in succession to get a similar effect, though without the freehand drawing.

    We'll give some thought to improving this scenario. Thanks!

  • Kevin A. Purcell
    Kevin A. Purcell Member Posts: 3,405 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Bob. I didn't know that existed. I teach a few classes for a local college and may use that at some point.

    For preaching or teaching in my church I use an iPad mostly, but also have a Surface tablet and could use that with Windows. Here's a few problems with the above solution which would mean I wouldn't use this.

    1. I'd have to change the text size and also have too much clutter on screen that's distracting to the attendees
    2. No mouse wheel to change pen colors when you're using a tablet. Needs a right click or better, a button on toolbar to change colors.

    Thanks for responding and look forward to seeing what you come up with. I'm an impatient person by nature (need to work on that) so for now I'm using Logos Copy tool and copying to a Word doc and then create a PDF file out of that. I then import into a PDF tool on iPad or on Windows that lets me mark up the PDF.

    Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
    Brushy Mountain Baptist Association

    www.kevinpurcell.org

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,468

    I also know some professors who use multiple highlighting palettes or visual filters, and then turn them on in succession to get a similar effect, though without the freehand drawing.

    Hi Bob

    This reminded me of something I did when producing some videos working through the Sermon on the Mount. In this case - from around 65 seconds in - I was adding terms to a visual filter document (off screen) which then incrementally added highlights to the texts.

    Being able to draw / highlight on the screen during a presentation would have been really helpful here.