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eBibleTeacher Archive
Monthly News Archive Page For 2000
UPDATE RECORD 2000
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - DECEMBER 2000
- THIS MONTH - New PowerPoint Sermons, New PowerPoint "How-To" tips page, Top sites for Religious PowerPoint material, Subscribe for monthly updates, Children's Sunday School Material open now!, "Christmas Quiz" now available, Church Technology Seminar at Carbondale Illinois in March 2001, New Images of ancient baptistries and a whitewashed tomb.
WANTED: Photos of Bible Coins.
- SERMON PAGE UPDATED - Since we began the new PowerPoint sermon page we now have 8 free PowerPoint sermons by Tom Steed free for you to download! We have added "Your Marriage Can Be Great", "The Widow's Mite" and "Deuteronomy 6" to our sermon page in November with more to come in December. Click below to visit the PowerPoint sermon page:
- CHILDREN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL - eBibleTeacher is proud to open our new section of Kim Dailey's Sunday School material for teachers of children's classes. We are VERY excited about this addition. Although eBibleTeacher has been chiefly about the Sunday School since it's inception, it has mostly been for High School through Adult classes. The addition of Kim's material allows us to fill a great need. Click below to visit this new section. A lot of work went into getting this site ready. Let us know if you find any broken links!
- "CHRISTMAS QUIZ" - Some people celebrate this holiday season as the birth of Christ and some don't. Regardless of the way that you feel about it, there are a lot of people thinking about Christ's birth at this time. The "Christmas Quiz" is a way to try to get High School - Adults to go back and re-examine the birth of Christ from what the Bible has to say (or doesn't say) about it. I have used the PowerPoint version of this quiz in Sunday School in a kind of "Who Wants to Be A (Bible) Millionaire" kind of theme. Although the format of the quiz is different from the TV show, its a fun way to present it. Click below to visit the Christmas Quiz page:
- CHURCH TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR - The church of Christ in Carbondale Illinois will be hosting a church technology seminar in March of 2001. The seminar is tentatively set for Saturday, March 17th. The seminar will include classes about using the computer to teach and preach the Bible. I will be teaching an all day seminar about using PowerPoint to teach the Bible. Tom Steed - author of our free PowerPoint based sermon series will be teaching classes. Ben Steed of Heartlight will be talking about the Internet. We will have other classes as well and will be demonstrating digital projectors, PC to TV converters, etc. etc. etc. There will be a nominal charge to cover materials and lunch. Plan now to attend! Carbondale is located in Southern Illinois and is about 3.5 hours from Nashville, TN, 4 hours from Memphis TN, 2 hours from St. Louis, 5 hours from Chicago and 2.5 hours from Evansville, Indiana. We hope to see you there!
Click below for more information:
- NEW IMAGES - New images being added this month are baptistries from ancient churches and an ancient whitewashed tomb which reminds us of Jesus' description of the hypocritical pharisees in Matthew 23:27.
- TOP POWERPOINT WEB SITES - I have been working hard to find the top pages on the Internet for people using PowerPoint in Bible teaching. The truth is that good sites are hard to find. The sites below are great! If you are serious about using PowerPoint then make sure that you visit these pages. My top sites are are the following:
POWERPOINTSERMONS.COM: The webmaster of this site is a skilled graphics artist and it really shows. This site allows you to sign up for Powerpoint tips mailings and this group will convert your sermons to PowerPoint for you.
BIBLEPOINT: The webmaster of chalkpoint is a graphics artist that has been applying his skills to making PowerPoint sermon and Sunday School material. You can buy premade PowerPoint Bible material here.
TIM EASON'S CHURCHMEDIA.NET. This site is a a great site for ideas, discussion groups, buying church oriented graphics material and for getting your technical questions answered. Tim is the best!
The webmasters of the above pages come from different denominational backgrounds. Whether or not you agree with the religious teachings on the above pages I am confident that you will learn a lot from their techniques. I think that you will agree with me that they are the best at what they do.
- NEW POWERPOINT TIPS & TRAINING - Last month we added the page about best tips for preparing PowerPoint based presentations. This month we add the second PowerPoint tips page for Preachers and Teachers. These tips are specifically written for people that teach the Bible. PowerPoint can add several hours to your class or sermon prep time. This month's new page is how to save time when making PowerPoint shows.:
Next month look for new pages on "Best Tips to Use While Presenting" and more.
- SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES - This month we add an online subscription. The eBibleTeacher.com website has over 80 Megabytes of material and 70 pages. New images, PowerPoint sermons and articles are added each month. It is difficult to keep up with what is new. Click on the subscribe button to send us an email to sign up for our monthly electronic bulletin. Once a month we will send you a list of the new free graphics, PowerPoint sermons and other things that have been added.
- WANTED: We want some photos of coins used in the Bible. We need a "widow's mite", "Denarius", "Shekel", etc. These MUST be photos directly from the owners of the coins. We can't use scanned-in photos from books or other copyrighted material. We need photos directly from owners of the coins and are asking the owners to donate the photos to the public domain for everyone to use around the world for sermons and Sunday School material. Send
me an email to arrange transfer of the photos. THANKS!
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! More free PowerPoint sermons! More best PowerPoint tips pages!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - NOVEMBER 2000
- THIS MONTH - New site search engine, New PowerPoint Sermon, New PowerPoint background image, New PowerPoint "How-To" tips page, Tim Eason's ChurchMedia.net site, Agreement reached on Children's Sunday School Material, 60,000 copies of Bible Class Atlas now distributed, EBibleTeacher reaches 48,000 pageviews in the month of October!
WANTED: Photos of Bible Coins.
- NEW SITE SEARCH ENGINE - This site has over 65MB of information and images. A new search engine has been added. You can search the whole site or you can just search among the images. Each image has its own list of keywords associated with it and many have scripture references. simply put your search words in to find what you need. Click below to visit the site search engine page:
- SERMON PAGE UPDATED - Since we began the new PowerPoint sermon page we now have 5 PowerPoint sermons by Tom Steed free for you to download! We plan to add at least three more in the month of November. Click below to visit the PowerPoint sermon page:
- NEW BACKGROUND IMAGE - We have a couple of new images for you this month from the beautiful "Bald Knob Cross" site:
- TIM EASON'S CHURCHMEDIA.NET SITE - During the last few weeks, I have made a lot of visits to Tim Eason's ChurchMedia.net site. If you are serious about using media in the church then you should too! If anyone were to ask me who I thought was the top person for equipping people to use electronic media I would have to say it was Tim Eason. Tim literally travels world wide teaching people how to use media effectively. Tim has training tutorials, articles, graphics, videos, reviews and more on his site. Make sure that you visit his web page and sign up for his discussion boards and his newsletter. They are the best!
- CHILDREN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL - eBibleTeacher has reached an agreement with Kim Dailey to host her Sunday School Resources material on this site! We are very excited about this. Kim has dozens of lessons, activities, graphics and other material for Sunday School teachers that work with children. Since the inception of eBibleTeacher, many people have come to the site hoping to find material for children. Over the next couple of months we will be taking action to make Kim's material availble to you via eBibleTeacher. In the meantime, you can visit her existing site at:
- NEW POWERPOINT TIPS & TRAINING - This month I add a new page of tips and guides for Preacher's and Teachers who use PowerPoint to present their lessons. Do you want to learn how to use PowerPoint well? Do you want your presentations to have a professional appearance and keep interest? Learn how to avoid the most common mistakes. Click below for the best tips for using PowerPoint in sermons and the Sunday School:
Next month look for pages on "Best Ways to Save Prep Time", "Best Tips to Use While Presenting" and more.
- BIBLE CLASS ATLAS NOW AT 60,000+ COPIES: This month the ZDNet freeware download site reported that over 51,000 copies of our PowerPoint based Bible Class Atlas had been downloaded. There have also been over 5,000 downloads directly from this eBibleTeacher site and Fowler reports sending out over 9,000 copies as free graphics add-ons to their SongShow Plus disk. This brings the known total distributed copies to well over 60,000. I never imagined it would be like this! Click below to get your copy.
- eBibleTeacher GROWS TO OVER 48,000 PAGEVIEWS: eBibleTeacher pages viewed by users in June was at 21,000 and during the month of October there were 48,000 pageviews. Sessions grew from 5,500 per month in June to over 10,500 in October. I am very surprised at the growthrate of this specialty site. God has chosen to bless us. Thanks for your continued support and for spreading the word.
SESSIONS(VISITORS) PAGEVIEWS HITS
JUNE 5,500 21,000 64,000
AUGUST 7,900 35,000 110,000
OCTOBER 10,500 48,000 156,000
Part of the growth seems to be due to eBibleTeacher's fairly high rank in several major search engines for our keywords combined with PowerPoint. Search on the keyword combinations "PowerPoint Sunday School" or "PowerPoint Sermons" and eBibleTeacher seems to be coming up on the first page of many search engines. Only about 1/3 of the visitors ever come to the eBibleTeacher home page. Based on our best information, most go from the search engines straight to the page that they are most interested in.
- WANTED: We want some photos of coins used in the Bible. We need a "widow's mite", "Denarius", "Shekel", etc. These MUST be photos directly from the owners of the coins. We can't use scanned-in photos from books or other copyrighted material. We need photos directly from owners of the coins and are asking the owners to donate the photos to the public domain for everyone to use around the world for sermons and Sunday School material. Send
me an email to arrange transfer of the photos. THANKS!
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! More free PowerPoint sermons! More best PowerPoint tips pages!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - OCTOBER 2000
- THIS MONTH - Fourteen new images, new Qumran graphics page, four new PowerPoint sermons, 3 new worship software packages, new Sunday School web sites identified and more!
- WEEKLY SERMON PAGE UPDATED - Since we began the new PowerPoint sermon page we now have 4 PowerPoint sermons by Dr. Steed free for you to download! Click below to visit the PowerPoint sermon page:
- 14 NEW IMAGES - We have fourteen new images scattered about on our graphics pages - a Sea of Galilee fishing boat, the "Gates of Hell", Isis idol, Nike idol, Temple of Pan, Pottery, another Western Wall image and a variety of images from Qumran. These images are scattered among our pages. We also have a new Qumran image page where you can see photos from the site made famous by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Click on the first link for the general image page and on the second link to visit the new Qumran page:
- SUNDAY SCHOOL WEBSITES - Last month we listed three Sunday School websites. This month we add two more. These sites offer little PowerPoint material but they have lots of other great resources.
- KODAK DROPS PORTABLE PROJECTORS - We are sorry to hear that Kodak has announced that they are getting out of the portable video projector market. This is just one month after we gave them a great review! We have a Kodak projector and we love it. What does dropping Kodak dropping this projector line mean to us? Well . . . the good news is that Kodak is a big company and shouldn't be going out of business so we should be able to to continue to get support for some time from them. Also, like many manufacturers, the main projector was really made by another company and all Kodak did was add their own software and label on the projector. Most of our Kodak V600 was actually manufactured by Vivitek and they are continuing to manufacture portable projectors so we should be able to get support from them also. We are sorry to get this news but we thought you should know. On the positive side. Knowing what we have said above, you should be able to get some great deals on the remaining stock of Kodak projectors!
- WORSHIP SOFTWARE REVIEWS - One of our hottest pages the last couple of months is the webpage of worship software. Worship software is designed to show worship song lyrics, announcements and sermon material on the big screen. Most of these programs come with the words to several hundred songs preloaded. We have found 3 more worship software companies in the last month and have added them to our worship software page:
- LINKS PAGE UPDATES - Last month we reorganized our links page. This month we add a section on magazines with articles on Multimedia for churches.
UPDATES: We have made a LOT of webpage upgrades this month- especially on the graphics pages. Please email us if you find any problems or broken links. THANKS!
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! More free PowerPoint sermons! New search engine for our graphics pages being added soon!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - SEPTEMBER 2000
- THIS MONTH - New sermon page, Over 20 new graphics and PowerPoint templates, Bible Atlas tops 50,000 downloads, Spanish version of Bible Atlas released, Image library reorganized for growth.
- NEW WEEKLY SERMON PAGE ADDED - Dr. Tom Steed has agreed to release his weekly PowerPoint based sermon material for download on eBibleTeacher.com. As time permits, we generally anticipate releasing one sermon per week with notes! We have been wanting to offer more sermon material for some time. Click on the link below to visit this page:
- SERMON AND SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL NEEDED - We are glad to offer the PowerPoint sermon material by Tom Steed. Most of the PowerPoint material on this site is from the owner, Terry Taylor. We are looking for PowerPoint lessons that people are willing to share with others. Material must meet all copyright laws to be shared or sold. If you have material, please send us an email. If you would like us to do a critical review then let us know. We regularly review people's material and offer suggestions on how to improve it. Maybe yours can be used as an example for others. Contact us before mailing large email attachments.
- 20+ NEW GRAPHICS! - This month we are pleased to add over 20+ new graphics including lots of images from Jerusalem. Most of the images are courtesy of Jerry Culbertson. Jerry recently returned from an archaeology dig in Israel and offered us his images. Jerry also recently received his doctorate in Ministry with an emphasis on homiletics (Preaching). He previously preached for a church of Christ in Missouri and is looking for a new position as pulpit minister. If you know of a position please contact him at jerryc52@midwest.net
This month, we have reorganized our graphics pages. This is done to make the images easier to find and is for preparing for a new search feature. In the next month or so we plan to set up an image search system. Type in a keyword and the search engine will tell you all the images that fit that keyword. Check back to see when the search feature becomes available.
This month we continue to add to our PowerPoint backgrounds and templates. Click on the link below to go to the backgrounds page:
- BIBLE ATLAS - Our PowerPoint Bible Atlas program has had over 50,000 downloads. This month we release a Spanish version. We have had several requests for this. Thanks to Juan Carlos Salazar for providing this translation. You can get your free copy of the Atlas program by clicking on the link below:
- SUNDAY SCHOOL WEBSITES - If you are looking for Sunday School material information then we recommend that you check out these websites: Neil MacQueen's site at http://www.sundaysoftware.com for reviews of sunday school software and teaching material. We also recommend the Sunday school site at: http://sschool.com/. If you are working with children then you definitely should go to Sarah Keith's site at:
www.ChristianCrafters.Com "Home of The Sunday School Teacher's Network". Sarah's specialty is sending out a weekly newsletter of ideas for children's Sunday School. It is great! These three sites offer little PowerPoint material but they have lots of other resources.
- SPECIAL DEALS - "The Projector Place" is selling Kodak 1000 Lumen video projectors for less than $2600! Our church recently bought one and we are thrilled with it. The company also tells me that they have a limited supply of 6000 lumen overhead projectors at $349. These projectors have a list price of over $1000. If you are really on a limited budget then some churches have been buying such overhead projectors and then going to ebay.com and picking up a used LCD panel for a couple of hundred dollars. You will be using old technology but it is a fairly inexpensive way to get started. Be forewarned! Old LCD panels won't perform as well as new digital projectors but it is a way to do it. Whatever you do, make sure that you use a high powered overhead. A standard overhead projector just won't be bright enough.
- LINK PAGE UPDATE - Our links page was getting so large that we had to split it up. Now our worship software is on a separate page and we have split out a separate page of links to 40 digital projector manufacturers.
- WORSHIP SOFTWARE REVIEWS - One of our hottest pages the last couple of months is the webpage of worship software. Worship software is designed to show worship song lyrics, announcements and sermon material on the big screen. Most of these programs come with the words to several hundred songs preloaded.
UPDATES: We have made a LOT of webpage upgrades this month- especially on the graphics pages. Please email us if you find any problems or broken links. THANKS!
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! A review of IrfanView graphic software.
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - JULY 2000
- THIS MONTH - Tom Steed's PowerPoint based sermon, Even more Worship song display software, new Powerpoint backgrounds, Bible Atlas tops 40,000 downloads, New "Trust the Christian" order policy, 3 More discussion groups added for video/data projectors, PC to TV converters and general technical issues..
- POWER POINT SAMPLE - Click on the link below to see Tom Steed's Sermon from Ephesians chapter 3. See some great images to illustrate the lesson. Note that this is a 4MB file for PowerPoint users.
- WORSHIP SONG DISPLAY SOFTWARE - Last month I had 11 worship song software packages. This month two more are added including a free one. Click on the link below for reviews and links to worship song display software:
- DISCUSSION GROUPS - I get questions from people each month. Now, instead of answering them individually I will answer them publically for all to see. You are invited to submit your questions to the boards. You are also invited to share your own opinion and answers to the questions. There are a lot of very knowledgeable and talented people who visit this web site. I would be glad for you to share your expertise with others.
The new discussion boards added are:
VIDEO PROJECTION HARDWARE
PC TO TV CONVERTERS
SOFTWARE FOR CHURCH MULTIMEDIA
GENERAL QUESTIONS
- NEW POWERPOINT BACKGROUNDS - The free PowerPoint backgrounds page continues to be one of the hottest pages on the website. Joshual Miller has contributed so many backgrounds that I have had to split his graphics onto two pages. One page is religious backgrounds and the other is abstract. Both pages have some awesome new images. You just have to try using the cross on the blue background. It is great! These new images are even better than the last. Make sure you look at both pages!
- NEW "TRUST THE CHRISTIAN" ORDER POLICY - I can hardly imagine why anyone would visit this page on purpose unless they are a Christian. People have been very good and honest with me in ordering material that I sell to develop and support the site. Based on this, I have instituted an new order policy that will make things go smoother and faster for everyone. If you want to buy one of the CD's then simply send me an email about what you want and I will mail you the disk with a bill. I will trust you to either return the disk or send payment. Even after sending payment I will give you a 90 day money-back guarantee. See the order page for details.
- POWERPOINT TRAINING - I continue to look for people who are willing to share their PowerPoint Sunday school and sermon literature, Click to visit the download page and see our review of Stan Crowley‘s excellent material on Mark. This continues to be a hot page so I am leaving it up. It is a great way to learn how to do your own show. Now if I can just get Stan to let me put all his PowerPoint shows on one CD so they don't take so long to download . . . . .
- BIBLE CLASS ATLAS - Each month I keep thinking that I will quite talking about our free Bible Class Atlas and then something happens. Most of the downloads of the free atlas come from ZDNet. In July, ZDNet decided to make it one of their "Free Downloads of the Day". This resulted in 10,000 downloads in one day! The total downloads since September of 1999 now tops 43,000. Click on the link below to get your copy of the latest version:
- TIP OF THE MONTH - Instead of just one tip of the month, now you can get several by visiting the discussion boards. See the Multimedia software discussion board for tips on what are the most legible fonts to use in a presentation, how to convert the Bible Class Atlas to Corel Presentations and how to use the maps in your web pages. More information is added each week!
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! Tips on how to start graphic based teaching using overhead projectors and your software.
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - JUNE 2000
- THIS MONTH - More Worship song display software, new Powerpoint backgrounds, Projection Solutions sponsors Bible Atlas, Worship software discussion group added.
- WORSHIP SONG DISPLAY SOFTWARE - Last month, I listed 6 different software programs for displaying songs during worship services. Tommy Dickison showed me 5 more. Visit the Worship software page to see 11 song display software packages that are NOT Powerpoint.
Some of these programs are simply spectacular. One of the great things is that many of the companies producing such software will allow you to download a free demo version. Click on the link below for reviews and links to worship song display software:
- DISCUSSION GROUPS - Over the next few weeks I will replace the Technical Questions and Answers page with a set of discussion groups. I get questions from people each month and occasionally I try to put some of the best questions on the Q&A page. This can be quite a chore. Now I plan to simply ask people to post their questions on the discussion board. I will do my best to answer the questions there and everyone else can listen in. You are invited to submit your questions to the boards. You are also invited to share your own opinion and answers to the questions. There are a lot of very knowledgeable and talented people who visit this web site. I would be glad for you to share your expertise with others.
The new discussion boards will be:
VIDEO PROJECTION HARDWARE
PC TO TV CONVERTERS
SOFTWARE FOR CHURCH MULTIMEDIA
GENERAL QUESTIONS
This month I will start with the software discussion board and will add the other boards in a few weeks.
I would like to give a special invite to users to comment on their experience with church song lyric display software for worship. Which worship software are you using and why did you choose it? What do you think is good and bad about this software? Visit the link below to make your experience and opinion known.
- NEW POWERPOINT BACKGROUNDS - The PowerPoint background page has proven much more popular than ever expected.
This month we feature the graphic work of Joshua Miller. Joshua is an aspiring graphic artist who makes his own backgrounds for his church's song displays in PowerPoint. Joshua is sharing 11 of his creations with you for free. All we ask is that you leave the credits of his name and the eBibleTeacher.com webpage at the bottom of the background. Click on the link below to visit the backgrounds page where his work has been added. Thanks Josh!
- POWERPOINT TRAINING - I continue to look for people who are willing to share their PowerPoint Sunday school and sermon literature, Click to visit the download page and see our review of Stan Crowley‘s excellent material on Mark. It is a great way to learn how to do your own show.
- PARAGON SPONSORS BIBLE CLASS ATLAS - There have now been over 20,000 downloads of our free 40 map Bible Class Atlas PowerPoint show from ZDNet. This month, Paragon, a video equipment vendor has picked up the sponsorship of this software. Their sponsorship allows you to get a copy of this program for free! Click on the link below to get your copy of the latest version:
- TIP OF THE MONTH - If you are like me, you generally just follow your PowerPoint slide show in the order that you made the slides. On occasion, however, you may find that you need to jump ahead or skip back a few slides during the presentation. The best way to skip around in your presentation when using PowerPoint is to simply click on the RIGHT mouse button instead of the left button. This will give you a menu of all kinds of things to do during the show including a full index of all your slides.
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics! More discussion boards.
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - MAY 2000"
- THIS MONTH: Worship song display software, Bible Atlas makes top 10, new free images, new CDROMs.
WORSHIP SONG DISPLAY SOFTWARE: If your church is still displaying its songs by using PowerPoint then it needs to stop! PowerPoint has been the software of choice for many churches in displaying song lyrics on the big screen. Churches would simply type in the song lyrics for display. There are now a variety of software programs specifically written for this purpose. Most come with hundreds of song lyrics already entered. All come with easier controls and special features for use in church. Some of these programs are simply spectacular. One of the great things is that many of the companies producing such software will allow you to download a free demo version. We list 6 song display software products in our new Worship Software Review page. Click on the link below for reviews and links to worship song display software:
POWERPOINT TRAINING:
I continue to look for people who are willing to share their PowerPoint Sunday school and sermon literature, Click to visit the download page and see our review of Stan Crowley‘s excellent material on Mark. It is a great way to learn how to do your own show.
NEW IMAGES
Check the new images from our collection of Bible measurement illustrations - Cubit, Bible Weights and Noah’s Ark.
SOFTWARE NOW ON CD: In the past we always distributed our software on floppy disk. Some packages went out with 15 disks at a time. Beginning this month, we now distribute our software on CDRom. This is a lot easier for us and for you. We can still send the software on floppy by special request. In general, CD distributed software will include some extras such as the free Microsoft PowerPoint viewer.
- BIBLE CLASS ATLAS MAKES TOP TEN: There have now been over 17,000 downloads of our free 40 map Bible Class Atlas PowerPoint show from ZDNet. Normally, we average over 100 downloads per day but recently have seen downloads surge to over 400 per day. ZDNet carries nearly 300 shareware and freeware Bible programs. This month, Bible Class Atlas made the top ten most popular Bible programs on that site. We have also had over 2,000 downloads from our own site. Click on the link below to get the latest version:
TIP OF THE MONTH - Many teachers like to run multiple programs at one time when teaching the Sunday school. Personally, I run both my PowerPoint presentation and my Bible software concurrently. The fastest and easiest way to switch between programs is to use the Windows keyboard shortcut of holding down the alt key and then pressing the tab key. This key combination will display the active applications and you just keep hitting the tab key until you get the application that you want. Release the keys and the new application comes to the front. I use this handy shortcut in nearly every presentation that I make.
REPEAT TIP OF THE MONTH - "WHO WANTS TO BE A BIBLEAIRE?"
(This tip was so good that I couldn't resist listing it again.) One of the hottest shows in the United States is "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" Tom Steed plays off of this idea by making a PowerPoint show that he uses to ask question in his Sunday school class. Deb High has a non-electronic version of this idea and came up with the name "Bibleaire". You can read about her idea at the Sunday School page maintained by ChristianCrafters.com.
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - APRIL 2000"
BULLETIN: Due to the Christian Computing Magazine Convention, the next update will not be until May 15th. There will be plenty of info to share after that!
- THIS MONTH: PowerPoint Training with Stan Crowley, New free images, Fowler sponsors Bible Class Atlas, "Do You Want To Be A Bibleaire?".
POWERPOINT TRAINING:
I am always looking for preachers and Sunday School teachers who are making their own PowerPoint based teaching material. I am very pleased this month to release a sample lesson from Stan Crowley. This month, you get a detailed review of Stan’s introduction to the New Testament book of Mark. Click to visit the download page and see our review. This is a great way to learn how to make your lessons better and you get a free copy of a great introductory lesson to the book of Mark. (Download is up but review not available until 4/7/2000).
- NEW IMAGES: Check our images pages for great new images from Tom Childers of the Capernaum synagogue, Garden tomb, Dead Sea Scrolls Cave, Medigo Valley, Roman theatre.
NEW BACKGROUND IMAGES: Due to the high popularity of the PowerPoint background images, new images were added on March 15th. No new images in April. I am looking for Bible related backgrounds that anyone is willing to donate to the public domain.
Click on the link below to go straight to the new background images page:
- FOWLER INC PICKS UP BIBLE CLASS ATLAS: The spread of Bible Class Atlas continues to amaze us. There are now nearly 14,000 known downloads. As of the beginning of April, we are seeing over 100 downloads per day from the ZDNet site. The new version is 2.1 and it has several enhancements over the original version.
Over 80% of the material on this website is free. Games and Sunday School sets are sold sets to support the site. Still, expenses run up and new ideas and equipment need to be funded. Fowler Inc, a major supplier of video equipment to churches, has picked up sponsorship of the next 5,000 downloads of Bible Class Atlas. Their support allows you to download this software for free. In return, they get some great advertisement. If your company would like to advertise on this site or with our software just contact us via email.
To get YOUR free copy of Bible Class Atlas, click on the link below:
1400 POWERPOINT SLIDES
Looking for a bargain in a set of PowerPoint based Sunday School literature? Visit our Sunday School lesson page. You can order 1400 PowerPoint slides and over 100 pages of printable teachers notes for $41 delivered (U.S). That is less than 3 cents a slide. People who make their own shows know what a bargain that is. Click below to visit the ordering page:
TIP OF THE MONTH - "WHO WANTS TO BE A BIBLEAIRE?"
One of the hottest shows in the United States is "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" Tom Steed of the Carbondale Church of Christ has played off of this idea to spice up his Sunday School class. He puts his class questions up on the screen for everyone to see, gets a volunteer from the class and starts asking them questions. They can call on other members for help and do things similar to the TV shows. It is easy to use PowerPoint or Corel Presentations software to support the theme. This certainly isn’t something that you want to do every Sunday but it is well suited for a change of pace. Deb High has a non-electronic version of this idea and came up with the name "Bibleaire". You can read about her idea at the Sunday School page maintained by ChristianCrafters.com.
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - MARCH 2000"
- THIS MONTH: New Bible Class Atlas version 2.03 released!, More PowerPoint background images.
- BIBLE CLASS ATLAS UPDATE: There have been over 12,000 downloads of our PowerPoint based Bible Class Atlas since its release in September. This month, new version 2.1 is released from this website. This new version requires PowerPoint 97 or 2000 to run. In the new version, the index is hotlinked in the presentation mode. Also, many maps have had graphics improved and two new blank maps have been added for you to edit. To get your copy, click on the link below:
- NEW ONLINE VERSION OF BIBLE ATLAS: This month we release the online version of Bible Class Atlas. This version allows people who do not have PowerPoint to use the atlas. Users can even copy the images directly from this version into their own documents. Because of the nature of the compressed images, they are not quite as good of quality of the regular PowerPoint version and even though compressed, the images take a long time to download so be patient.
NEW BACKGROUND IMAGES: Due to the high popularity of the PowerPoint background images, new images were added on March 15th.
Click on the link below to go straight to the new background images page:
- TIP OF THE MONTH:
One common mistake of beginners is to type everything in the text in all caps. The truth is that studies show that although capital letters are larger than small case letters that it is easier for people to read text in small case letters. The reason for this is that many people recognize most common words by shape rather than by reading each individual letter. Most people don’t stop to examine each individual letter of a word unless the word is new to them. Take the word "the" for an example. In this word the letter "e" is short and round. The letter "h" is tall and the letter "t" is midsized. Most people recognize the word "the" by its shape rather than by reading each individual letter. When you put the word "the" in all capitals then the word has an entirely different shape and every letter is the same height. The end result is that for most people the word "the" is more easily read than the word "THE". The one thing that capitals do is to provide emphasis. To many people, putting a word or sentence in all capitals is like shouting. The bottom line is to use all caps sparingly. DON’T PUT ALL THE TEXT ON YOUR SLIDES IN ALL CAPS. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING AND IT IS HARDER TO READ. You can use all caps for you titles and your main points but try not to use them all the time.
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - FEBRUARY 2001
- THIS MONTH - PowerPoint & Internet Seminar on March 17th, New free images of Crown of Thorns, 12 new Masada images, New image sites, Two more Worship software Packages, New tips page, Churchmedia discussion group, eBibleTeacher grows!, MEGAPACK grows to 1900+ PowerPoint slides!, Subscribe to eBibleTeacher news.
- CHURCH TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR - Our biggest news this month continues to be our Technology Seminar being held at the church of Christ in Carbondale, IL. The seminar will include classes about using the computer to teach and preach the Bible. I will be teaching an all day seminar about using PowerPoint. Tom Steed - author of our free PowerPoint based sermon series, will be teaching classes for preachers. Ben Steed of Heartlight will be talking about the Internet. We will have other classes as well and will be demonstrating digital projectors, PC to TV converters, etc. etc. etc. The cost is $15 for those who preregister or $20 for those who register on the day of the event. Plan now to attend! Carbondale is located in Southern Illinois and is about 3.5 hours from Nashville, TN, 4 hours from Memphis TN, 2 hours from St. Louis, 5 hours from Chicago and 2.5 hours from Evansville, Indiana. We hope to see you there!
Click below for more information:
- NEW IMAGES - New images being added this month include a crown of thorns like those described as put on Christ at the crucifixion on our New Testament images page and 12 more Masada site images. We also have a "half scroll" image on our PowerPoint Bible Theme backgrounds page and on our PowerPoint Templates page. The half scroll background and template is great for using in Old Testament studies PowerPoint shows. Click below to go to these pages:
- MORE WORSHIP SOFTWARE - Just what is "Worship Software"? Worship software is software designed to be used during worship services to display songs, scriptures, announcements and sermon points. Previously we have identified some 18 different products and this month we have identified two more. Unlike the rest of them, one of these new packages is designed to actually display song musical notes. Click below to visit our worship software site:
- NEW POWERPOINT TIPS PAGE - We have just finished our latest PowerPoint tips page. This month we add a page about the top tips to use WHILE you are presenting. Previously, we added the top tips for preparation and saving time. This month's tips are about neat features of PowerPoint that you use while presenting. We cover such things as jumping to the first and last slides, blanking out the display, etc. Some of these tips include ideas we use every week. Click below to visit our tip pages:
- GREAT BACKGROUND IMAGES - We have discovered some new great images pages for people looking for graphics to use with digital projectors. Try out these new sites. They have some really great images. Click below to visit these sites:
- GREAT DISCUSSION BOARDS - Where do I go to make sure that I keep up with what is happening? I signed up for the discussion boards at Churchmedia.net. The discussion groups on Churchmedia.net are some of the best places to go to keep up with the latest word in church technology. It is the discussions of those groups that helped us find the neat background pages described above. (By the way, you can get buy hundreds of background images at the ChurchMedia site.) Click below to find out how to sign up for the Churchmedia community discussion groups. When you get there, click on "Community":
- NEW CHILDREN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL SITE - As we find great websites for Sunday School teachers then we try to bring them to your attention. This month we are featuring "Kid's Sunday School". Like most sites, you will probably find some great stuff and some material that you disagree with on this site but we do think that you will find it worth your time to visit it if you teach children. Click below to visit:
- eBibleTeacher GROWS!: January was an extraordinary month for us here at eBibleTeacher.com. Our web statistics show better than a 40% growth over the previous month. We recorded over 14,000 visitors and they averaged some 5 pages viewed per visit resulting in over 70,000 page views! This is apparently due to our ranking in a variety of large search engines. Are you looking for a place to advertise? The payments we get from advertisers help keep our costs low.
Email mefor details. Rates are low! Thanks for supporting eBibleTeacher.com
- NEW OLD NEWS! - The news below isn't really new but it is important and if you haven't been to our site in the last few months then you will want to make sure that you check these things out!
- POWERPOINT SERMON PAGE - Eight free PowerPoint sermons by Tom Steed free for you to download! Tom Steed has been teaching in Korea for several weeks in January so we won't be adding more sermons until mid february. Click below to visit the PowerPoint sermon page:
- CHILDREN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL - Kim Dailey's pages of free material for children's Sunday School were added in December. Make sure you check this great resource and tell your teachers! There are over 100 web pages of material!
- MEGAPACK GROWS TO 1900+ SLIDES - Our Megapack PowerPoint set includes the Sunday School literature for the books of Romans and Acts as well as the Christian Personal Growth set, the Bible Class Atlas and misc slides. This month we add a free preview of our upcoming "World of the Bible" set (over 400 slides!), the "Christmas Quiz" and some samples of Dr. Steed's PowerPoint sermons. This brings our collection to over 1900 slides and over 150 printable pages of teacher's notes. This is ALL of our PowerPoint material on one CDRom for $39. That's about 2 cents per slide! Anyone who has made their own PowerPoint shows knows that is quite a bargain. (If you already own MegaPack then contact us about special pricing for an update.) Click below to find out more:
- SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES - In December we added an online subscription. The eBibleTeacher.com website has over 80 Megabytes of material and 170 pages. New images, PowerPoint sermons and articles are added each month. It is difficult to keep up with what is new. Click on the subscribe button to send us an email this will sign you up for our free monthly electronic bulletin. Once a month we will send you a list of the new free graphics, PowerPoint sermons and other things that have been added.
- NEXT MONTH: More free graphics including coin images! More free PowerPoint sermons! More best PowerPoint tips pages!
"HOT NEWS AND TIPS - JANUARY 2000"
- THIS MONTH: New Web Page server for faster service, updated webpages, photos from Gary Bennett and more!
- NEW WEB PAGE SERVER: All 40+ pages of this site have been reworked and uploaded to a new computer server. The impact on you is faster web page and image loading. Many pages have been retuned to make them load faster. As you can tell, the new URL is "EBibleTeacher.com" This is a LOT easier to remember than our old site address. Maker sure that you change your bookmark listing in your favorites list on your browser, we will leave the old site up for a few months while everyone changes over and then the old address will go away. If you put a link on your web page make sure that you update that also.
- HELP!: Converting to the new homepage has required the updating of hundreds of links and images. If you find a bad link or other problem please
e-mail me. THANKS!
- FREE IMAGES PAGE UPDATE: The biggest changes of the website are on the free images pages. The free image pages now include "Quicklinks" that allow experienced users to quickly get to the free images that they want to download. Since these pages usually require the most loading time, many hours have been spent tuning these pages to make them load faster for you.
- SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS UPDATE: The Sunday School Lessons page now has free previews of the Spiritual Development Series set and the Romans set. You can now see and download the first lessons of these sets (over 50 free slides).
- NEW IMAGES FROM GARY BENNETT: This month EBibleTeacher is very pleased to release the free images taken by Gary Bennett. One of our favorites is his photo of the "Pilate Inscription" display from the HolyLand on our "New Testament Things" page. This image shows the inscription to Pontius Pilate and is one of the archealogical records of an important person mentioned in the New Testament. We have also added Gary's image of a synagogue Mose's Seat to this page. Theres a another ancient tomb picture, the traditional location of the feeding of the 5,000 and Herod’s aqueduct on our "New Testament Places" pages. I have added my own picture of a Bible on the "Other Images" page and a mock-up of brickmaking equipment such as the Israelite slaves used in Egypt to the Eureka Springs images page. Go to the Free Graphics Page for links to these images.
- BIBLE CLASS ATLAS UPDATE: There have been over 9,000 downloads of our PowerPoint based Bible Class Atlas since its release in September. To get your copy, see below:
To go directly to our download page for Bible Class Atlas click on the link below. The ZDNet site above has a zipped version, our site also has an upzipped version:
- TIPS OF THE MONTH:
BEGINNERS TIP: One very common mistake of beginners is not leaving enough space around their text and graphics. Resist the temptation to cram too much text on the screen. Leaving space around your text and images creates a "framing" effect. Leaving free space around your images helps your slide just like a good frame helps enhance a portrait.
EXPERIENCED USER TIP: Do you have a neat photo or other image that you would like to use as a background for a slide? Usually, the biggest problem with finding an image that is suitable as a slide background is getting one that is either all dark colors or one that is all light colors. The reason that backgrounds are usually preferred as all dark or all light is so that your text will show up on the screen. There are a couple of ways to achieve this effect. First insert a graphic and then right click on the image. In the box that pops up select "format image" or "format object". In this menu, select the "picture" tab. On the picture tab you can either select "color" and then "watercolor" for automatically washing the photo to a light color or experiment with various combinations of the contrast and brightness settings. An alternate method is to simply select "Format" from the top of the screen, then "background" then the down tab under the background fill. Select "Fill Effects" then picture to make your image the default background for you slide show. This alternate method doesn’t allow you to brighten or darken the image. You have to do that in a separate image editing software program.
- NEXT MONTH: More photos from Gary Bennett. Additional samples of our Sunday School lessons and more.
UPDATE RECORD
CHECK HERE TO SEE WHAT WAS UPDATED IN 2000.
12/8/00 Widow's Mite, Deut 6 and Make Your Marriage Great PowerPoint sermons. Top PowerPoint sites, PowerPoint time saving tips page, ancient baptistry images, email subscription, Kim Dailey children's Sunday School material, Christmas quiz.
11/10/00 Site search engine added, 1 sermon, Bald Knob Cross, Tim Eason's Site, Kim Dailey agreement announced, Best PowerPoint Tips page. 60,000+ Atlas downloads.
10/10/00 14 new graphics from Israel - Isis, Nike, Gates of Hell, Pan Temple, fishing boat, New Qumran graphics page, 3 more sunday school pages, 17 worship software packages listed
9/10/00 Steed's Sermon Page, 20 new graphics from Israel, Spanish Bible Maps, Sunday School web pages.
8/10/00 Free Corel Presentations 9 announced. 3 Free Animated PowerPoint templates added. Tom Steed's Eph 3 sermon, Bible Atlas Maps PowerPoint 4.0 version added.
7/18/00 More Miller's backgrounds, more worship software lists added, video/date projector, PC to TV converter and general discussion boards added, 40,000 atlas downloads reached.
6/13/00 Miller's backgrounds, worship software discussion board, Paragon sponsors Atlas. 20,000 atlas downloads reached.
5/13/00 cubit, noah's ark size and Bible weights graphics, worship software page added, CDROMs started.
4/3/00 Dead Sea Scroll cave, synagogue, garden tomb closeup, medigo valley, roman theatre, review of Crowley presentation, "Bibleaire" idea.
3/15/00 PowerPoint backgrounds of 3 bibles & a pyramid & scroll.
3/7/00 Version 2.03 of Bible Class Atlas. New Bible backgrounds.
2/14/00 New PowerPoint backgrounds page with wheat, sinia mountains and camels, camel, wheat, sermon on the mount site, wine/olive press, loaves/fishes tile, mikva, Jordan river, Paul's 2nd & 3rd Missionary journeys, 7 churches of Asia - Revelation.
1/13/00 Converted to new website. All webpages updated. Pilate rock photo, tomb, feeding 5000 location, Herod's aqueduct, Moses Seat, Bible, brickmaking.
12/12/99/99 13 more great Tabernacle photos, review of Xenos CDRom.
11/6/99/99 Update to Bible Class Atlas, photos of pyramids, western wall, Sinai mountains and Jerusalem model. New Q/A about "jaggie" fonts
10/24/99/99 Announced new home address of "www.EBibleTeacher.com"
10/11/99/99 Added Eureka Springs daily Israelite scene graphics of threshing floor, loom, carpenter's shop, bread oven, Lord's Supper and scenes of Jesus' birth, Fowler advertisement, new Bible Tic Tac Toe, slide show sample pages.
9/20/99 Added 35 Map Bible Atlas to Graphics page. Review of SongShow Plus, Morris Cromer photos of temple model, Pyramids, Camel, Jordan River, Olive Tree, Palm Tree, Roman Soldier & Sinai Mountains. Walt McIndoo’s photos of Jericho Road, Sycamore Tree,Garden of Gethsemane, Egyptian Sphinx,Temple Mount.
8/30/99 Replaced voting button for Awesome Christian Sites.
8/7/99 Added Tabernacle photos (ark, laver, tables, menorah etc.) from Eureka Springs on Graphics page, added link to Heartlight for sermon and devotional illustrations. News to use review of new Fowler multimedia guide. Added pewtop stand to how-to page.
FOR A LIST OF ITEMS PRIOR TO AUGUST 99, VISIT OUR 1999 NEWS ARCHIVE PAGE.
"Power
Point" is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corp. All copyrights
are acknowledged. "This product/publication includes images from Corel
Images 1,000,000 which are protected by copyright laws of the U.S. Canada
and elsewhere. Used under license."
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