The Seabourns

mlearning

You are connected

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Did you know? 
You are connected to the Mountain of Fire Celebration Centre, a recently planted church in the small village of 
Sensi, Kenya?

This is David
David Rogers who was completing his PhD and thought that his research could be used to advance missions in remote areas by training and discipling via a mobile phone. It was David
who shared an idea with Keith
Keith Seabourn who realized this was an important strategic direction and committed the Global Technology Office to lead Campus Crusade in this area. It was Keith
who asked Jerry
Jerry Hertzler to give leadership to helping get prototype mobile learning courses developed and implemented. It was Jerry
who worked with George
George Mamboleo the African leader of the Go North church planting program, who recognized that mLearning could deliver needed training for this project to plant 20,000 churches in Africa.
At the same time Mike
Mike Waid had joined Jerry’s mLearning team. Mike leads a Bible study group in Orlando in which there is a Kenyan banker
who is named Robinson
Robinson Mokua who is also helping plant churches in Kenya. He had helped Nahason Mayaka plant the Mountain of Fire Celebration Centre church. But Nahason lacked basic pastoral training. From Mike, Robinson learned about the Pastors Training in Leadership in a mobile phone which became possible in Kenya when coordinators were identified
who Kay
KaySeabourn and Mark and Karin trained to use mobile phones to train church planters in their country. Kay and I are able to participate in this chain
because of You
You and your prayers and gifts in response to God at work in and through you.

Kay and I thank you for the critical part you contribute to helping ministry happen around the world!

Kay in Africa

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Checking the list

  • 29 training topics written and prepared. Check!
  • 4000 pages of training materials printed and collated. Check!
  • 32 trainees from 11 countries traveling to the training locations. Check!
  • Visas. Tickets. Bags packed. Check! Check! Check!

Africa, here I come!

Keith drove me to the airport. Then he drove home. I, on the other hand, flew to Accra, Ghana as part of a training team. A few days later, we will fly to Nairobi, Kenya for a second round of training.

We are embarking on the next step in a massive, faith-stretching opportunity. Our Global Technology Team is partnering with the Go North project to train thousands of pastors and church planters to plant thousands of churches across the Sahara Belt of Africa by 2020.

Karin & Kay preparing training materials
Karin & Kay preparing training materials

The Go North strategy leaders expressed a need. How do we train thousands of pastors and church planters in thousands of towns and villages in a dozen countries? International Leadership University-Kenya had experience in life-transforming training, so they produced Pastors Training in Leadership. The Global Technology Office had an idea: use the most common communications device in Africa today — a mobile phone. Together we developed the solution to the need.

These next weeks will represent the culmination of 2 years of development, testing, planning, and praying. Mobile phone training using ILU-Kenya curriculum has been tested in several locations for 18 months. Pastors tell amazing stories of how their lives and their leadership have been transformed.

Some of the mLearning team
Some of the mLearning team

We will train 32 coordinators from 11 countries. In the next few months, 100 to 300 pastors and church planters in each country will be trained. In the following months, we prayerfully expect this training to spread to 20,000 pastors and church planters who will plant 50,000 churches across the Sahara Belt of Africa.

Right where Islam is spreading southward. Right where sectarian violence is growing. Right where people desperately want to know about God’s love and his release from shame and guilt.

So, how does a seasoned missionary and global traveler feel about this next adventure on her own? I am honored to be able to help these leaders learn a new method of training the pastors of their countries. I am excited to be back on the continent of Africa, a place that God has given me a special love for. I feel strange to be leaving Keith behind, but confident in traveling with good friends and co-laborers.

Read co-trainer Karin Tome’s thoughts here.

eLearning Infographic

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This infographic gives a good overview of the state of online learning. Our team at Campus Crusade for Christ is helping lead in going directly into a mobile phone with online learning. We call it mLearning, for mobile-phone enhanced learning.

(Click on the graphic below to see a larger version in your web browser.)

How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education
Via: OnlineEducation.net

mLearning Pilot Project has launched

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We are launched. The mLearning pilot project launched in Kenya with 33
students. Over the next 12 weeks, pastors and Campus Crusade staff will
learn more about following Christ as his disciples.

Our team’s goal is to learn about delivering discipleship training in a
mobile phone. After just 2 weeks, we’ve learned a lot! We’re hoping the
students learn too! Like most pilot projects, we had to make many
adjustments just to get started.

There were technical challenges to overcome, administrative matters to break
through, financial opportunities to trust God. Like NASA’s Space Shuttle, it
takes a huge amount of energy to get liftoff. The shuttle consumes 1.5
million pounds of fuel in it’s first 1 minute of flight. I don’t know how
much energy our team in Kenya expended, but we do have liftoff!

This project is a partnership between our Global Technology Office (GTO),
the Nairobi International School of Theology (NIST, International Leadership
University-Nairobi), an Orlando mega-church, and an unnamed
corporate/academic partner. We are using technology developed by a research
university for government and commercial purposes.

We thank so many of you who have prayed these past few weeks. So many
difficulties have been worked through or worked around.

Kay and I leave for Thailand this week. We’re helping lead the Operations
Leadership Connection, 80 global leaders coming together for training, vision
and fellowship. More about that project soon…

Please pray with us:

  • Visit our OLC prayer site. We will be posting prayer requests daily over the next 2 weeks.
  • Join Kay and I in praying that we will be “the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing”. [2 Corinthians 2:15]
Co-workers David Ngaruiya of NIST (left) and Jerry Hertzler of GTO (right)
meetin with Pastor Robert of Rongai, Kenya (center).
NIST staff learning to use the mobile phones.
50 mobile phones being prepared to carry the basics of the Christian life to students.

Academic Labor or Educational Capital

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We presented the mLearning project at a recent meeting of the heads of our schools of leadership around the world. Our development partner in the academic world made a very strong point, in a presentation of his, about the transition from academic labor to educational capital. His point is that under the older academic labor system, the cost of preparing a course was very low, but the cost of training thousands with that course was very high, based on a professor’s salary to teach students 25-50 at a time.

The newer model of educational capital reverses the this. The cost of preparing a course is high, but the cost of using the course to train thousands is very low.

At this conference, Dr. Richard Pratt shared that Third Millennium is finding this to be true. The cost of producing their courses is expensive on a per-minute basis for final course material. That means a 30 minute module will be very expensive to produce, but it is very cheap to distribute on the Internet or even by DVD.

Our mLearning Project in East Africa is a pilot project to address several questions. One major question is how good is good enough for a distance learning course? The goal is transforming lives, not only transferring knowledge or producing quality courseware.

We will be creating educational capital with a desire to transform lives at the lowest cost possible so that we can create large amounts of educational capital.