The Jewish Educators Network met at NECC 2008 in San Antonio This is the eighth year that this group has been meeting and we are grateful to our friends at NECC for including the network as part of its Birds of a Feather sessions. This year the group was facilitated by Phil Liff-Grieff, Associate Executive Director, Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Los Angeles.

Sixteen participants convened together including representatives from: American Hebrew Academy, Greensboro, NC; Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto; Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, Chicago; B’nai Menahem, Austin; Bureau of Jewish Education, Los Angeles; Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, Rockville, MD; Donna Klein Jewish Academy, Boca Raton; Eleanor Kolitz Academy, San Antonio; JPPS-Bialik, Montreal; Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn; Ner Consulting Group; Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, NJ; The Heschel School, NY; and, Touro College, NY.

The discussion centered around professional challenges, sharing resources, and strategies for working together.

Challenges included the following:

  • dual curriculum- teachers complain that there is too much to teach during the day; one can’t put time into technology projects
  • integration of tech into the curriculum
  • vailability of Judaic software for Mac schools
  • time and the cultural divide/adoption issues (older, Israeli faculty not eager to accept technology)
  • it is hard to find Hebrew language resources
  • money!! (and teachers adopting technology)
  • training
  • paucity of good Judaic software
  • need to share curricular resources (smart board lessons, etc.)
  • teacher attitudes (Judaic teachers)- tech is just not important
  • we are still having the same discussion that we had 20 years ago
  • the rigid nature of some of the Hebrew curricula – they don’t allow for the addition of creative tech-based enhancements

Participants shared some of their most useful resources:

Strategies for working together include:

  • Share what we are using, what we like and why
  • Google groups
  • Resource wiki- focused page
    • Judaic resources (software, web apps, etc. divided by subject)
    • where/how to access funds
    • interschool collaboration (and actual pairing)
      • tools for collaboration
      • pairing of schools across N. America
      • resources/best practices for tech use in Israel Partnerships
    • best practices- lesson plan sharing (like CAJE used to do- you submit one lesson in order to get access to the lesson bank)
      • teacher-developed materials and lessons
      • Judaic adaptations of existing open source resources
        best practices- tools for enhanced teacher adoption of ed tech
    • links to distance learning opportunities

Next Steps:

  1. Distribute session notes and post them (done)
  2. Put the google group, jewish educators network and wiki, chaitech, in place (done)
  3. Participate (ongoing contributions and facilitation)

A few additional points were raised:

• It’s important to include religious (congregational/complementary) schools
• Touro is interested in working with educators in the area of ed tech
• Who trains the trainers?
• How do we find funds? Involve parents in funding discrete tech projects or program components

Many thanks to Phil and to all of you who attended for your continuing contributions.

Next year in DC!