jlearn2.0

Thanks to Beth Kanter over at Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media for highlighting resources on The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy, especially Maya Norton’s post To My Readers: Avoiding Plagiarism, Understanding the Creative Commons License. And be sure to take a look at Getting the Message Across with YouTube: Taking Your Nonprofit to the Next Level.

Educators are using blogs as a means to develop reading, writing, and information and communication technology (ICT) literacies. Blogs also provide a forum for collaboration, information gathering, knowledge building, and publishing.

Below are a few examples of how blogs can be integrated into Jewish educational settings:

• Students in a writing class use blogs as their personal notebooks to share with their teacher for feedback on content and writing skills. The teacher and other students in their writing groups provide comments to help the authors refine, clarify, and strengthen their ideas. The blog preserves a running commentary as the work is created. Students also use images, original videos and podcasts to help tell their stories and to develop visual literacy and communications skills.
• A Jewish history class creates a “you are there” blog in which they write from the perspective of famous personalities or from a specific historical period.
• Learners in a North American class collaborate with Israeli counterparts to compare and contrast their everyday lives. Learners interview their grandparents and other older adults about their experiences growing up Jewish at a particular time or place. These interviews are edited and presented as video clips or audiocasts. Students track their families’ immigration patterns on Google Earth and link it to their blog.
• Jewish family educators post weekly guides related to the Torah portion for family discussions around the dinner table. Families build on this material, sharing their insights and related family customs with each other online.
• Congregational school students use a blog to continue their work on class social action projects even though they are not in the school building.
• A Hebrew language class practices their oral and written skills by producing podcasts and accompanying written materials in Hebrew. They exchange messages with native Hebrew speakers, discuss topics of mutual interest, and share photographs related to these topics through Flickr.
• Administrators post weekly updates about school events. Teachers use the blog to remind students and their families about homework assignments and keep them abreast of class projects.
• A beginning teacher in a day school keeps a blog journal that he shares with his mentor. The teacher journals about challenges he is facing in his new position. Each week he chooses a particular area to develop. His mentor reacts to his postings by providing feedback and perspective based on her own experiences. The teacher posts video clips of this work to his blog and reflects on what he had planned and what occurred in practice. Similarly, his mentor can post video clips that demonstrate alternate methodologies.

Feel free to share your own ideas!

How are educators thinking about blogs?

Blogs are generally considered to be online journals. In terms of format, they are made up of entries that are organized chronologically, the most recent listed first, and can be further indexed by topic. Blogs often include a mixture of text content, audio, photographs, videos, and links to other sites. Blog culture encourages reader comments, cross-references to other blogs, and opportunities for collaborative publishing. A blog’s relative ease of use provides a publishing forum for anyone with an Internet connection and the patience to learn a new medium.

Educators are experimenting with the use of blogs in their work and have coined the term “edublogs.” Many of these projects use the traditional concept of blogs in highly creative ways.

Below are ways to think about genres of blogs in education. Please note that it is not clear that all of these types of blogs currently exist for Jewish education. However, with your assistance, we will try and identify examples of the variety of Jewish education blogs on the jlearn2.0 wiki (jlearn20.wikispaces.com; see under “Jewish Education Blogs.” Or add your blog suggestion in the comment section at the bottom of this post or email us at jlearn2.0. More about wikis in future posts).

General for Educational Stakeholders

Blogs about Jewish education – these sites tend to offer information, resources, policy, advocacy, and commentary related to aspects of Jewish education.

Personal voices – independent voices examining issues related to Jewish education; sometimes articles related to Jewish education are posted on individuals’ blogs that address a wide range of topics on Jewish culture.

Educator Blogs

Teacher journals – online diaries describing personal experiences and commentary by educators; these are often projects initiated by individuals and not under school auspices.

Administrator journals – online diaries that share perspectives and experiences of school administrators; these are often personal journals and not under school auspices.

Professional development – sites that provide “just in time” and individualized learning opportunities; blogs that support reflective practice through journaling, feedback, etc.

Communities of practice – sites devoted to specific issues related to the profession; collaborative spaces to share and refine ideas

Student Blogs

Student journals – online entries describing personal experiences and observations by students; these might be self-initiated diaries or related to school projects.

Curricular Resources

Online resource centers – access to curricular resources, annotated links to content and pedagogy, repository for original resources.

Learning Blogs

Student learning – curriculum-related blogs created for, and often by, students to engage with learning through writing, information and communication technology (ICT) skills, podcasts, videocasts, map tools, multimedia presentations and projects, etc.

Digital portfolios – blogs developed for assessing learning including presentation of work, revisions, critiques, and personal reflections.

Community

School collaborations – online space for classroom projects, including those that are inter-class, inter-school, and international.

Mentorships – shared collaborative space for online mentorships, including student-mentor and teacher- mentor relationships.

Travel journals – reports from travelers around the world, interacting with readers who share their experiences virtually.

Social action blogs – sites that promote Jewish social action and related projects.

School Blogs

Schools and other institutions of higher learning – school communications shared by the administration, teachers, parents, and students (school news, homework, assignments, important bulletins, messages from the head of school and rabbi, etc.)

Organization / Institution Affiliated Blogs

Organizations – blogs associated with institutions and organizations; these sites are often developed in conjunction with their organizational websites and offer additional, more regularly updated information and resources of interest to their membership.

Conference Blogs

Conferences – official and unofficial reports and insights related to conference events by organizers and participants.

Do other categories come to mind? How do you use blogs in your work?

Administrators and teachers should be reminded that appropriate security measures need to be taken to assure student safety and privacy. For example, blogs can be kept private with only pre-identified members granted permission to read or post comments. A simple way to protect the student is to have them use a pen name for any work that is publicly accessible. The school community should be aware of the school’s acceptable use policies and should develop appropriate rules of netiquette.

New Jewish Education, a blog by Saul Kaiserman, offers commentary on and resources for Jewish education.

In a recent posting, “’Do-it-Yourself’ Jewish Education gaining momentum?” dated January 5, 2007, Saul muses on how Internet-based initiatives can empower and guide individuals toward resources for meaningful Jewish learning and community interactions. He cites the work of Douglas Rushkoff (“open-source-Judaism”) and Daniel Sieradski (”Jew-It-Yourself”).

In addition, Saul notes several wiki projects with Jewish content including the Wikisource Open Mishna Project with text in English and Hebrew (as well as other languages), and JHEN: the Jewish Home Educational Network for Jewish homeschoolers.

Saul also describes resources about Israel that can be found on Flickr in his post, “Two quick web resources for teaching Israel” dated November 24, 2006, and listed under “technology.”

For more about the movement toward “do-it-yourself-Judaism” and the role of the community, see Jonathan Woocher’s article, “Jewish Education in the Age of Google.” In it, Jon discusses the use of the Internet for Jewish education as both a tool and a metaphor for how individuals and the community approach Jewish learning. The article is published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and was previously cited in jlearn2.0 under “Advocacy.”

Check them out!