Bible Study

Bible Software in the Classroom

Computers in The Classroom

There's a post on the Logos Blog about Logos in the Classroom. Actually it's a commercial for a 15 minute talk by Senior VP Dale Pritchett, which itself is basically a commercial aimed at Seminary professors to convince them to replace their single classroom textbooks with the full Logos Digital Library. If you have the 15 minutes you should listen. If you only have about 7, do a quick read of the PDF transcript.
I have two simple observations to make.

Upgrade the audio please

The audio is probably over compressed. It's either that or the audio is the result of several takes and a bad patch job. Dale comes into various sentences sounding completely different and it seems with different breathing patterns; almost as if they've taken two or more clips and sliced and diced them into one speech. The only reason I mention this is because I found it annoying to listen to. I'm tempted to say it's over compressed because I've experienced the same phenomena with other Logos media. Michael Heiser's excellent lecture "The concept of the Godhead in the Old Testament" was plagued in it's Camtasia format with horrible over compression that introduced all sorts of nasty audio artifacts into the speech. It's worth downloading the MP3 on that one instead of listening to the stream.

Yes, But...

I agree wholeheartedly with the principle message of Mr. Pritchett's speech. But I also see a problem

Logos Bible Software

I'm disappointed... I was hoping to attend Camp Logos II this year, but can't go due to time conflicts... Still, I am learning quite a bit by writing for and teaching the NoVA Logos Users group, plus my own personal bible studies using the software...

I find it just amazing how deep into an original language study I can go, without actually knowing the languages, yet be confident I am learning... (You can see some of what I have learned and taught in the tutorials posted here: ( http://groups.google.com/group/logos-connections-springfield-va-usa/web/... ) It even may encourage me to learn them... :) [Oops, just noticed the links on the other site aren't all working... I will contact the Group manager and try to get things updated this week...]

For those interested in influencing Logos Libronix 4.0, please visit the newsgroups over at news.logos.com (you will need a newsreader like Outlook Express) and browse around. The owners and creators of Logos are always asking for input on various areas over there and they listen!

Logos Website: http://www.logos.com

God Bless...

John

John's Comments on Logos Libronix, Fair Use, and Copyrights

The text below comes from the attached paper I wrote to answer when I was asked about using Logos Libronix for creating Bible Studies legally... Feel free to comment as this is just my take on the subject...

...

Just to start off, the thoughts in this paper are just for general, unofficial guidance. The definitions I have giving are solely my own, unless I have cited a source. For legal guidance, please contact a lawyer. Also, I am speaking from a United States point of view. Depending on the country you are in, these guidelines may not apply.

During one of the Libronix classes I taught, one of the users asked if it was legal to use Logos Libronix to create a bible study. This is an excellent question to write about because the answer is not straight forward, and it is commonly ignored. I thought about just typing this up on my blog, (http://www.stilltruth.com/blog/normanjd), but realized a paper might be more useful…

The resources in Libronix (and other libraries, whether physical or digital) fall in two categories: Copyrighted and Public Domain.

Public Domain resources are free for anyone to copy and distribute without asking for permission. These consist of works that either the authors have rescinded all rights to, or expired copyrighted works. Most Libronix user created content that has been posted to the Internet would be considered in the Public Domain. Examples (some taken from Wikipedia in March of 2008) would be:

Personal Book Builder (PBB) files
User created Timelines
Graphical Queries
Original Text of the Bible
Works created and first published before January 1, 1923, or at least 95 years before January 1 of the current year, whichever is later*