Esther Kustanowitz’s JTA Article: Good for the Jews? Are educators prepared to use technology?
Esther Kustanowitz of JTA blogging, MyUrbanKvetch, PresenTense, and Jewish Week fame, recently posted on the need for Jewish education to embrace new media for learning:
What CAJE’s next conference needs — and really what the whole Jewish non-profit world could benefit from — is a systemwide technology overhaul from an equipment and a human resources/skills perspective. What CAJE did was a tremendous stride forward, expressing the hope and trust that if they built it, the educators would come to use it and populate it with fresh content. But educators, both formal and informal, require the tools and the skills to reach students who live their lives online even more than I do. If those students are listening to MP3 players, let them listen to Jewish educational podcasts and music in addition to the soundtrack from “High School Musical.” If they are reading blogs, let them be Jewish blogs. If they are using e-mail, expand their use to a joint wiki with another school to cross-pollinate ideas and experiences and build a stronger Jewish people.
As usual, Esther writes thoughtfully and passionately about the topic. Take a look at the full article on JTA and be sure to read the article that Esther co-authored with Ariel Beery in the recent issue of CAJE’s JEN, Jewish Education News, “Information Nation: Expanding Education’s Frontier to Find ‘Generation Tech.‘”
August 25th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Great article. We need more and constant reminder of many of these points.
There are many, many aspects to the integration of technology into Jewish Ed. The collaborative tools of Web 2.0 and the knowledge sites which are mentioned are important aspects which can be used to advantage by many students.
Since Jewish learning is a foundational pillar of our tradition, we must promote all aspects of the net which can enable or support this learning.
We’ve got more tools and texts available to us via the net than any other generation of Jewish educators and learners, ever. We need teachers who are able to demonstrate how these texts and tools can be part of Jewish learning. The longer we ignore the needs and skills of digital natives in our classrooms, the less relevant the net will be in their Jewish lives.