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Jacob Richman is the creator of a number of online Jewish directories / resource centers, including Jewish Hotsites, the J Site – Jewish Education and Entertainment, and most recently, his blog, Good News From Israel.

In his recent article, “Case History of A Jewish Website,” published by CAJE’s Jewish Education News, Jacob offers several recommendations to those planning to develop their own online resource centers or directories:

1. “Keep It Simple, Sam” (KISS)
   If you need a computer degree to figure out how to use the site, people will visit once but never again.
2. Cover the topic thoroughly
   If you publicized that your website has great resources for Hanukkah, make an effort that there really are great resources for Hanukkah on your site. Two songs and one page about the miracle does not cut it (in my opinion).
3. Keep the bells and whistles to a minimum
   Many people like to put cool things on the front page of the website to dazzle the visitors. If you expect the visitor to return often, some of the cool things may become a nuisance. If your website plays a song or music on the home page, you may want to consider placing a stop or silence button in an easy to find place on the page.
4. All pages on your site should load quickly
   If your home page does not load within 20 seconds, there is a very good chance that your potential visitors will abandon the visit and go to another site.
5. Keep ads low-key
   If you advertise products or services on your site, try to keep them low-key. Pop-up banners or “in your face” advertising has the potential to turn away visitors.
6. Listen to your visitors
   Somewhere on your website you should provide contact information for feedback about the site. This can be a simple e-mail or, to protect you from spam, an e-mail form on your website. Read all feedback and respond to it. Consider the feedback and make changes to your site if repeated feedback points to specific problems or suggestions.

   Excerpted from: “Case History of A Jewish Website” by Jacob Richman, published online at www.caje.org/learn/Winter07/jen-winter07.asp and www.jr.co.il/articles/jacob/index.html

This advice is useful for websites that are open to the public, as well as those with a more targeted audience. It’s worth remembering that one of the most used resource sites in the world, Google, is also one of the cleanest aesthetically. Do you have other words of wisdom to share based on your experiences as producer or consumer of this type of content?

For some holiday flickr fun, check out this digital greeting card and its associated site:

MatzoGami slideshow (note: it plays slightly out of sequence)
MatzoGami site on flickr

Photos attributed to P&L Personality Plugin.

Looking for resources on Passover? Click on over to New Jewish Education, where Saul Kaiserman recommends a number of educational sites for Pesach. See especially the Jewish Agency for Israel’s online resource center, which houses materials in English, French, German, Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish.

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!

Interactive whiteboards, such as SMARTboards, are becoming increasingly popular among Jewish schools and other educational organizations. The white board surface is basically a very large mouse pad that tracks touch movement. Content is projected onto the whiteboard from a computer monitor. What makes these whiteboards interactive is the ability to drag, type, annotate, highlight, save material, and otherwise manipulate it using a special set of pens, or one’s finger as the mouse. SMARTBoard provides Notebook software which includes content area templates and allows users to create material specifically for the whiteboard.

Whiteboards can be used for general and Judaic studies. Any software applications, including Judaic and Hebrew language software that run on a computer can be used with a whiteboard. In general, these interactive whiteboards have the ability to convert handwritten text into digital text for Latin-based alphabets only. However, Hebrew and other non-Latin-based languages can be saved as images.

Do you have resources that you would like to share with other schools or educational organizations? We are piloting a project at jlearn2.0 to help collect and disseminate lessons designed for Jewish educational settings, particularly those developed for electronic whiteboards. We are using the jlearn2.0 wiki to house this information for the time being. If you have developed resources for Jewish educational settings and would like to share them with colleagues, please feel free to post them to the jlearn2.0 wiki. Be in touch with us if you have trouble posting. We anticipate that most people will be posting files that use Notebook software.

When you post, we ask that you include the name of the project and information about the suggested grade level, subject area, a brief description of the activity included intended learning outcomes and recommended usage, and your contact information. Please also include your name or the person to whom the material should be attributed. By posting online, you acknowledge that you own the rights to the material.

In addition, take a look at these web-based white boards and play around with them. They can be used for online collaborative projects, note taking, and brainstorming:

Imagination Cubed: www.imaginationcubed.com
skrbl: www.skrbl.com

Here’s an idea that integrates digital learning skills and Hebrew language.

Students and educators can develop digital slideshows with narration using Photo Story 3 for Windows, a free application from Microsoft that is popular with educators and relatively easy to use.

Students can create a multimedia presentation on specific topics or compose fictional stories and import photos or other graphics to illustrate them. Students can also record the report or story narrative in English or Hebrew (or any other language). Another idea is to have older students create and publish digital story books for younger students to read with audio assistance. Narration can be recorded directly into Photo Story 3 or imported as an audio file. For more textured narration, audio files can be mixed on audio editors such as Audacity or GarageBand to include multiple tracks. The slide show can reside on a computer, the school’s intranet, or on a website like YouTube or Next Vista for Learning, a video sharing site designed specifically for educators and students.

Also take a look at PrimaryAccess, an interesting tool for educators and students to create digital movies that emphasize historical narrative.

jlearn2.0 is planning a series of articles on blogs, podcasts, and videocasts for Jewish education. Please help us identify resources that you use and/or developed. Specifically:

What are your favorite blogs related to Jewish education? Do you or your Jewish educational setting use blogs and if so, how? Examples of blog use include, but are obviously not limited to, the following: as a tool for communicating with constituents/ colleagues; as a medium for instruction and student work; as an elearning tool for professional development, etc. Similarly, do you use, download, or produce podcasts or videocasts for Jewish education. If so, please describe these resources.

Feel free to post your responses as comments or email jlearn2.0 directly. Thank you!

Below are a few responses from educators on how they integrate technology into their work and the tools they use:

• Research, editing, and organization skills using Word and Kidspiration
• Family history and research using Timeliner
• Excel to create charts
• Word in Hebrew for word processing
• DavkaWriter Hebrew word processing
• PhotoStory for presentation skills and narrated slide shows
• PowerPoint for presentation skills
• Photoshop to work with images
• Schoolnotes.com to organize links for teachers in different subject areas
• netTrekker search engine for schools which provide access to preselected websites reviewed by educators for educators
• Discovery Education’s unitedstreaming video and online teacher resources
• Smartboards
• Webquests and online scavenger hunts for curriculum integration and research
• Internet search skills
• Web pages and communication tools to communicate with parents, students, and teachers
• Hebrew and English keyboard skills
• Ariot cd produced by TaL AM to practice Hebrew letters and language arts
• Student recordings to practice Hebrew speaking
• Computer games to reinforce Hebrew language and Jewish studies
• Student-created movie clips related to material learned in class
• Recording prayer tunes and songs for students to download to their iPods
• Online Jewish texts such as the Bible
• Software for studying Judaic texts
• Dissemination and evaluation of resources for teachers
• Instant messaging with a peer in Israel to learn more about the country
• Online courses
• Web-based educational management system
• Assisting teachers in selecting appropriate resources and tools
• Professional development of faculty for technology integration, including workshops, demonstrations, and one on one mentoring
• Administrative related projects
• Facilitate home-school technology compatibility
• Home-based family learning projects

How else are you using educational technology in your educational settings (or beyond…)?