Wednesday, July 04, 2007

PodBible: An experiment in MP3ing the Good Book

Tonight I got to meet Tim Bulkeley face-to-face. He is organizing a virtual theology colloquium while I am here in NZ on religion and authority which I am really looking forward. While chatting and getting acquainted I heard the story behind one of his many interesting projects, in this case the 'PodBible' project. In 2005 Tim gathered some 300 Kiwi volunteers who read portions of the Bible in shifts and over a weekend and provided a live streaming web cast of the whole Bible. The readings were also recorded and became the basis of the PodBible. The number of people downloading this recording continues to increase with the most frequent downloads coming from first the USA, then China and thirdly New Zealand. From antecedents he has been able to learn that reason for some of the Chinese downloads is due to users using the recordings to practice their English.

The PodBible recording is now being broken down into chapter segments, each being followed by recorded reflective "Think", "Share" & "Do" questions. The intentions is to provide a way for people to listen to the Bible over a year period through these podcasts.

1 comment:

Tim said...

Sounds interesting. Do you know if any publications will come out of this colloquium?