Dear Christian friend,
Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord!
Thank you for your interest in these new interactive courses. Both courses, "School of Mission" and "Practical Ministries," are now finished in Russian and English.
You can try out the new interactive versions on the WWW, and also download them free, at:
www.agape-biblia.org/GetAll-E.htm
You can now download them in WinHelp (*.chm) format, which is more compact than zip archives. The English-language courses all use the World English Bible, which you can also download from the above link. The WinHelp files must all be in the same folder in your computer, C:\Program Files\AB-CD\Agape-Biblia. Also run the program Login---.exe (login.htm and other HTML files you need for studying the courses). Then just click on "Course02.chm" or "Course04.chm" etc. and they will run.
In order to set up a Bible school using these courses or develop your own courses, please read everything under "Information - All you need to know and all you want to ask" on the School of Mission homepage you see when the course starts up. Then contact Dr. Les Norman at DCI about opening your own Bible school using the School of Mission course. He will inform you in more detail about what you need to do in order to give examinations and issue Certificates of Completion.
To teach these courses to several students, you will need:
A. Someone (or some people, if you have many students -- maximum of about 12 students per instructor) who is/are first of all mature Christian(s), patient and good discussion leader(s) to serve as mentor/instructor. Only secondarily is it necessary to have average computer skills, he doesn't need to be a computer "guru." The mentor must promptly reply to all of the emails he receives from students: this is the most crucial factor for success in Internet teaching! Checking for incoming messages at least twice a day and replying immediately is absolutely essential. Don't wait until the next morning to reply, do it the same day.
If there are more than 8 students in a new course, decide if it is necessary to divide the course into two discussion groups: see "How to make 'login.htm' files" for details. Leading discussion groups together with a course is much more work, therefore avoid it if the course is not very big.
Also, the mentor must keep records of the lessons that students complete and the date they finish each semester, record the grades on each exam, and regularly back-up (save on RW/CD-ROM) his email files and other course records. If there aren't computers for all the students, he can simply print out each lesson from the WinHelp version of the course and use them for the weekly cell-group meetings. Face-to-face discipleship, when possible, is the most effective way!
B. He should know how to set up Windows logins and email accounts in an email program that supports multiple accounts for each student taking the course, if they are using your computer(s). You can have several students using one computer at different times during the week, when they have free time. In order to study "offline," he must install the course login file in the folder "My Documents/Agape-Biblia" for each student.
C. Students can also study "online": they can login as "guest" over the WWW and enroll to take our courses. This will let them use any email address, including "webmail" addresses like Yahoo and Hotmail. Then they will be able to participate in class discussions with other students during the week while at home, at work, at school, at a library or any Internet-cafe, and send their quiz answers in each lesson to their mentor/instructor by email.
D. If you have a LAN with Internet connection or if you have your own website, he should of course set up the logins and passwords for each student. He can use the plain HTML versions of our courses on the LAN. The HTML versions will access the English and Russian Bibles on our Agape-Biblia website, so your LAN administrator doesn't need to install the Bibles. Click HERE to learn how to install our courses on your site.
To run these lessons on your LAN or website, he should know how the sendmail program on a Unix web server can send the user's responses in our HTML forms. To do this, put **your** website name in "FormMail.pl" in C:\Agape-Biblia-web\cgi-bin\ in the line -
@referers = ('your-server.com','your-second-server.net');
... and in the Javascripts in C:\Agape-Biblia-web\plugins, in the lines -
document.write("<FORM LANG="\"ru\"" ACTION="\"http://www.your-server.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl\"" METHOD="POST">");
document.write("<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="\"missing_fields_redirect\"" VALUE="\"http://www.your-server.com/upravlen/reqd-flds.htm\"">");
document.write("<input type=hidden name=\"redirect\" value=\"http://www.your-server.com/plugins/sent-ok.htm\">");
Then upload "FormMail.pl" and the Javascripts to your server. (You must be able to use CGI scripts on your server.) Set the permissions on FormMail.pl to 755 on your server so it can be run by all users.
The "FormMail.pl" program requires that all messages sent from it go to an address that uses your website name, to eliminate the possibility of outsiders using your "FormMail.pl" to send spam. For example, if your website is "www.teach-all-nations.net", your "FormMail.pl" can only send email to addresses ending with "@teach-all-nations.net".
You can easily set up an address such as "joe-instructor@teach-all-nations.net" for each instructor, but how do you send students' discussion question answers to all the students in a course? Use the "Forwarding" option at your website: forward the email addressed to "School-of-Mission-classAA@teach-all-nations.net" to each student, e.g. "student1@hotmail.com", "student2@yahoo.com", etc.
Here is what the directory structure should look like on a LAN or a website, for the School of Mission and/or Practical Ministries courses to work correctly:
(root*)\audio
(root*)\img
(root*)\plugins\pract-ministries
(root*)\plugins\WorldChristian
(root*)\plugins\[other courses]
(root*)\upravlen
*The name "root" can be whatever you want for the HTML versions of the English courses. The starting file for School of Mission is "index02.htm" which must be in the "root" directory. Likewise, other English courses must have their "index??.htm" file in the "root" directory. The World English Bible, the Russian Agape-Biblia and other WinHelp (*.chm) files should all be located in this "root" directory for downloading.
Then your administrator should click on "How to make 'login.htm' files". There he will learn how to create the encrypted "login.htm" file and the "ClassAA/GroupA" and similar files (in ..\plugins\[coursename]) that contain the email list addresses he has created for the "course", "group", "instr" and "regist" variables. Then for students who have their own computer: make these "login.htm" and "ClassAA/GroupA" files plus "*-sched.htm" (see below) into a self-installing zip file (Login---.exe) that will install by default into the user's "My Documents\plugins\[coursename]" directory. Please email me if you need the FreeExtractor program that will make self-installing zip files. Last, upload these Login---.exe files to your website so "offline" students can download them.
If you are running our courses on your LAN or website, you should modify three files in ..\plugins\[course-name]: "DownldSM.htm" and "contactinfo.htm" with the information necessary for your organization and your website, and the file "*-sched.htm" in advance of each semester you should change the lessons and dates for the new semester. The "*" in "*-sched.htm" must be the same as the Class/Group filename without the extension, for example "guestadr-sched.htm" is for the guest login "guestadr.htm", "clsaagra-sched.htm" is for ClassAA/GroupA "clsaagra.htm", etc. This method lets you have students in different semesters, with each class of students having their own schedule.
To add new students to courses (do reverse to delete):
If you have a website or use a Mac, please go to our server to download a zip file of our courses. Then you can manage your user logins and passwords, and customize four other files to show your Bible school or church name, your website, your email address and the email addresses used for the course, and your course schedule.
If you want to handle multiple users on one computer, on a LAN or on a Web server, please read the info under "How to make 'login.htm' files". It runs the small JavaScript program "loginupdt.htm" that creates the encrypted "login.htm" file and tells you how to set up user profiles and mailing lists.
Next, here are the other files you should customize:
guestadr.htm
guestadr-sched.htm
contactinfo.htm
DownldSM.htm (or DownldPM.htm)
In "guestadr.htm" the only thing to do is replace the email address there with yours in -
var regist = "registrar@your-server.com";
That way, new registrations will come to you. When you create new login files for registered students using filenames such as "clsaagra.htm" or "clsabgra.htm", replace the dummy email addresses in the fields "group", "course" and "instr" with real email addresses for the discussion group, full class and instructor in the given course.
In "guestadr-sched.htm" you should set up the schedule each new semester. I try to do this right after the end of the old semester, so that visitors to the website can see in advance when the new semester will occur and how long it lasts.
In "contactinfo.htm" you place your email addresses and website URL in the appropriate places.
In "DownldSM.htm" (or "DownldPM.htm") you place your website URL where it says "copy and paste...".
The donation for mentoring, grading exams and issuing Certificates of Completion should be very moderate, something that is affordable for most people in your culture, and yet an amount that shows the student is willing to make a commitment to take the course and finish it. In the West we ask for a donation of $50 per semester. In Russia we ask for the equivalent of about $10 per semester. These donations should be used to help support the person(s) serving as mentor-instructor: "The laborer is worthy of his hire."
Your fellow-servant,
Robert Hosken
editor of English version
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Free Russian hypertext Bible: http://www.agape-biblia.org