The popular printed books with colorfully illustrated scripture stories are now available online: Book of Mormon Stories, Doctrine and Covenants Stories, Old Testament Stories, and New Testament Stories.
Each of the four books is available online in downloadable text, audio, and video formats. These are written on a basic reading level for children and are also a valuable resource for others who may not yet be familiar with the standard works. The Church has also released a video version (not animated) of the books on a new DVD set.
Consider getting the printed books or the DVD set as Christmas gifts for children.
How helpful is it to your family for the Church to provide the HTML, PDF, MP3, and downloadable video formats, in addition to the printed books and DVD formats?
Having church materials available in digital as well as in print is very valuable for me.
I especially like how you have the PDFs of the scripture stories divided up by chapter–it makes it much more manageable.
Have you considered using Macromedia FlashPaper? I think it would allow the user to take advantage of the full rich page layout and design without making them download anything to their computer.
Very helpful. Each medium is attractive to a specific audience for individual reasons. What an unprecedented age we live in!
It is VERY helpful for my kids to have these available in digital format. The Book of Mormon CD is what they do for computer time on Sundays and they have learned the scripture stories very well that way. I really wish there were similar CDs for the other books of scripture.
I was hoping these downloads would be equivalent to that CD, but I see that the audio does not correlate page for page with the illustrations and text. I would really love for that to be available, and I can’t imagine it would be too difficult since the illustrations and audio are already available.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the Book of Mormon CD. Thanks for all your work!
I love being able to download not only the PDFs, but the audio and video formats as well. They all work great on my iPod, and it sure beats hauling around the manuals!
To Gina comments:
I’m glad to hear your family is benefiting from the Book of Mormon CD-ROM. We did maintain this product as a 5th disc of the DVD set.
We are in the process of evaluating and prototyping how we could improve all these products. Your feedback is consistent with other learnings that are leading us toward a redesign of the four scripture products based more on the design of the CD, than straight play videos.
To Jacob’s comments,
Yes we are looking at how Flash and other technologies could help enhance the experience of delivery this content
I love being able to download the different formats. The videos are great for my iPod, which I connect to tvs/projectors, or just listen to the audio. Our kids like to just listen, too.
I found myself deleting all the music I don’t listen to anymore (and probably shouldn’t have listened to in the first place) so I can fit all these new church materials on my iPod.
I also really appreciate the download formats for the new nusery manual. Having direct links to the coloring pages was a fantastic idea! Gold stars all around!
Thanks for helping us fill our lives with things that are virtuous!
To Rob:
In support of Gina’s comments, (and apparently others as well), I’ve found myself hungering for the other reader products offered in the same format as the Book of Mormon CD-Rom. I gather my four boys around the computer each night prior to bed to read scriptures. We take turns controlling the progression of the story, including my four year old who easily controls the available functions. My favorite feature of the CD-Rom is the “Read Scripture” link at the bottom of each frame. Although the easier-read format of the readers is necessary for better story comprehension, being able to directly link to the corresponding scriptures allows me to introduce my children to the language of the scriptures. My kids also love the ability to select words that they don’t know or look interesting and click on them to hear the word spoken. I’m excited and will try to be patient while waiting for other reader products to be elevated to similar levels as provided in the Book of Mormon CD-Rom.
Since the release of Windows Vista and Windows 7, the current releases of scriptures are incompatible and will not run. May I suggest that to save on resource and developement time that is would be good to provide it in html format that could be read with a browser.