jlearn2.0

Wordle.net is a nifty tool for making designs out of words and adding some fun to graphics. Check it out! And here’s another nifty tool that I picked up at the CAJE Bloggers Café: Gate2Home, a virtual keyboard for languages including…Hebrew. Need quick access to a Hebrew font on any computer with an Internet connection? This is a place to go. But wait, there’s more… type up text in Gate2Home, then copy it and paste it into Wordle. Tweak, copy, insert, have fun! Warning: it’s a bit addictive!

Give a shout with suggestions for other fun tools to share!

Ok, taking a page from Langwitches and others, what were some of your favorite resources, tools, educational concepts from the past (secular) year? What was it about these resources that you found compelling? Feel free to include resources you might have developed. Shameless plugs encouraged in a menschy kind of way.

VoiceThread is a digital storytelling tool that allows users to create and share multimedia audio-video presentations. Students, teachers, and families are using this nifty tool to tell their stories and share ideas. Here’s an example of how an Israeli class at Maaganim School at Kibbutz Maagan Michael used VoiceThread to practice Hebrew and English language skills (thanks to Reuven Werber for bringing this to my attention!):

Hebrew/English for Kids

Two more formal Hebrew language learning programs are being offered. Hebrewulpan.com is based on the Jewish Agencys’ Ulpan methods. The other course is an Aleph Bet beginners’ Hebrew class taught by Kat Coronet in Second Life, at the Second Life Synagogue’s Hebrew school. If you are interested in running a Jewish educational course or discussion in Second Life, contact Beth Odets inworld (or drop me a note and I will pass it along to her).

To learn more about Jewish life in Second Life, read the latest issue of 2Life Magazine, “Virtual Reality – the Hanukah Issue - and don’t miss Hanukah candle lighting in Second Life, in addition to lighting in “Real Life.”

If you are interested in Jewish education and virtual environments, see my article, “Jewish Learning on the MUVE: The 3D Web, A New Frontier in the 21st Century Landscape,” over at CAJE’s Jewish Education News (an earlier version of the article was posted on jlearn2.0). Check out the entire issue on The 21st Century Jewish Learner and the 21st Century Jewish Educator, including “Jewish Education in the World of Web 2.0” by Brian Amkraut, who presented a keynote at last summer’s CAJE on the topic.

One of the challenges of sorting through information on the web is accessing it in a way that is organized and efficient. Many webites and blogs, this one included, use syndication feeds like RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) or Atom to send updated material to one central site. These central sites are called aggregators, newsreaders, or feed readers and include Bloglines, Google Reader, and Netvibes.

Let’s say you look at five or six different websites on a regular basis. Instead of clicking on each site to view new information, you can set up a free account on an aggregator, through which you can subscribe to your favorite sites. In this way, you need only log onto one place to view new content.

To learn more, take a look at the slideshow, The New Information Pipeline about RSS feeds created by Dave Jakes for his recent presentation at the CUE 2007 conference. In addition to being informative, the slideshow is a nice example of how educators and students can create presentations and make them accessible online using sites such as Slideshare and Picasa.

Also see Jakes’ site for a compilation articles, educator guides, and resources on creative ways to use feeds for learning at www.jakesonline.org/rss.htm, especially Quentin D’Souza’s Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators, A Guide to RSS and More, and Will Richardson’s RSS Guide for Educators.

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

EDC’s Center for Children and Technology created a website for teachers and students to help promote digital literacy. The interactive website, Digital Literacy: Skills for the 21st Century – Digital Literacy Toolkit, includes online tutorials and activities that emphasize the different uses of media and their powers of persuasion. The site focuses on the grammar of sounds, images, and animation for learners who are both consumers and producers. The site is particularly useful for the critical analysis of videos, propaganda, and digital communications. It is also a good primer for aspiring producers of digital media.

The site represents just one of the many projects and reports that the organization produces based on educational research and development. CCT investigates the roles that technology can play in improving teaching and learning within children’s classrooms, schools and communities. They also design and develop technology applications that support engaged, active learning and student-centered teaching practices.

Jeff Utecht is an educator who publishes two blogs: U Tech Tips and The Thinking Stick. Jeff created general tutorials on the use of flickr and del.icio.us for the educational community. These tutorials are available from his blogs under “screencasts.” He also posted the tutorials on YouTube:

Using flickr
Using del.icio.us

The segments were created in March 2006 and each runs approximately 8 minutes. Although new features have been added to these tools, the clips remain good introductions.

In addition to providing content, these tutorials are examples of how tools like YouTube can be used for professional development.