On The Rhoads

Here’s our October 2009 Prayer Letter.

I’d love to do acting some day. But it would have to be a role that I could relate to and really wanted to do. I don’t think I could be fake if I wanted to. My wife especially, can take one look at me and know what I’m thinking.

We’ll I have had some good confirmation that I’m in the right place here at MAF. First, Susan and I were asked to do our presentation for the Ministry Partnership Seminar a couple of weeks ago. That’s where the new missionaries learn how we do fund raising.

We updated our presentation to reflect the fact that I’ve been here doing real work for more than 6 months now. We received very positive feedback on our presentation. People said it was obvious we were excited about what we’re doing.

Then just last week, our director and some other guys on our team were in town for meetings. Two or three people said they appreciated my passion.

I just now got done with a meeting with a guy who is going to be representing us and helping educational institutions in the Arab world to do distance education. I got to tell him about my current project and about my vision for using cell phones for mobile learning. And I realize how excited I really am about this work.

It’s fantastic to have the actual work I’m doing matter for the Kingdom. But please pray that I’ll continue to grow in my passion for Christ Himself.

MAF Learning Technology is excited to announce the production release of DEScribe Editor, gold version. DEScribe is a desktop editor that makes e-learning course creation easy. Courses written in DEScribe can be exported and run on a variety of e-learning platforms. The gold version initially exports to MAFLT DEViewer and, soon after, Moodle.

Features include simple creation of a course TOC (table of contents), uncomplicated image and style importing, a straightforward plug-in toolbox, and painless project workspace sharing with teammates. These features, along with a customizable GUI work environment (available in several languages) enables subject matter experts to create courses directly. If they know how to use a word processor, they already know how to use DEScribe. This streamlining of required operator skills dramatically lowers the overhead of e-learning curriculum development.

For more information, please visit the MAF-LT DEScribe forum.

You can download it here.

Mission Aviation Fellowship-Learning Technologies Division (MAF-LT) http://www.maflt.org/index.html announces the release of another exciting Distance Education software tool. Portable Moodle makes the world’s most popular Internet course management system, Moodle, available to the word’s 1 billion people who have access to computers, but not the Internet.

Portable Moodle puts an entire course onto any portable media such as a CD-ROM, hard disk drive, or USB memory stick. Educators may now offer curriculum on media that students can plug into any computer anywhere – at home, at a friend’s, or in an Internet café. Portable Moodle immediately transports the student into a full-featured classroom offering course outlines, lesson text, pictures and diagrams, exams, and supplemental reference material as well. If appropriate to the venue, the student may also communicate with the instructor and classmates via email (if available) or regular postal service.

MAF-LT developed Portable Moodle to equip national church leaders, missionaries and international mission organizations with a tool to make the wide range of online, biblical, Distance Education material available to people without Internet connections. While MAF-LT developed this tool primarily to expand the reach of Christian education, it may also be used for the extensive variety of community development courses such as rural doctor training and community health promotion.

MAF-LT spent two years developing this tool to advance God’s Kingdom. Currently available in English, pending releases will soon offer Portable Moodle in Spanish, Russian and French. Portable Moodle may be downloaded at no cost from. Tax-deductible donations to cover course development and continuing support will be thankfully accepted. For more information, go to the Portable Moodle forum.

MAF Learning Technology is excited to announce the release of DEScribe Editor, beta version. DEScribe is a desktop editor that makes e-learning course creation easy. Courses written in DEScribe can be exported and run on a variety of e-learning platforms. This beta version initially exports to MAFLT DEViewer and, soon after, Moodle. Other platform targets will be available in the production, gold version.

Features include simple creation of a course TOC (table of contents), uncomplicated image and style importing, a straightforward plug-in toolbox, and painless project workspace sharing with teammates. These features, along with a customizable GUI work environment (available in several languages) enables subject matter experts to create courses directly. If they know how to use a word processor, they already know how to use DEScribe. This streamlining of required operator skills dramatically lowers the overhead of e-learning curriculum development.

The DEScribe beta release will be tested by a select group of users before release to the public in order to ensure the highest quality product.