jlearn2.0

We are pleased to welcome guest blogger, Sue Loubser, Director of Technology at Greenfield Hebrew Academy, Atlanta, Georgia, who shares the story behind the development of their students’ new app for droid.

About a month ago, as students in the fourth grade Jewish Studies class were learning about blessings over food, a student raised his hand and asked Mrs. Buckman: “Is there any app for reciting berachot? If there isn’t, we should make one.”

The class spoke to the GHA tech department. They investigated and found out, that at the time, there was no free app for berachot.

Kitah Dalet went to work to create one.

They created a list of over 150 foods. They researched which foods grew on trees and which grew on green-stemmed plants. They learned which ones were grain products and which were manufactured in other ways. They researched the science online and learned the Jewish laws from mishnayot and from the halachot that relate to beracha categories.

Once they learned the appropriate blessings, they recorded them digitally. Meanwhile, the GHA technology department worked on the programming part of making the app. Students and teachers converged, and out of their collaborative efforts was born a beracha app for the Android platform.

After the initial upload to the Market Place, a few enhancements were added. In addition to seeing the name of the beracha, and having the option to hear it, the Hebrew transliteration and the English translation for each blessing were added. Next, an option to allow users to enter additional foods and their relevant blessings to the food database was added.

News about the students’ project has been tweeted on Twitter, discussed on Facebook, picked up in faraway places like the Avi Chai Foundation in New York and downloaded by someone in Austria.

If you have an Android phone, click here, download this free app, use it, join Kitah Dalet in reciting your next bracha, and see what authentic learning looks like in Jewish Studies class.

It’s a great week for Jewish education and innovation!

Applications for the new Darim Online Social Media Boot Camp for Educators (2011-2012) are now open! Learn more… and apply!!

The short of it:

The program will support innovative Jewish educators in using social media effectively in their work, and assist their organizations in evolving models for success in the digital age.

A Little More About the Program

Darim is seeking to mentor up to 10 Jewish educational organizations, represented by 3-5 person teams, that are engaged in innovation and risk taking and which serve North American Jews. These teams will participate in a year long professional development and coaching experience to advance their work.

The program includes:

• Participation in Darim’s series of monthly skill-building webinars which includes Darim’s overall Learning Network for Educators (teachers, directors of education, rabbis, lay leaders, and others interested in Jewish education);
• Private coaching and consulting with Darim consultants to address strategic and tactical goals, and to help design, implement, and refine a technology-supported project. Teams from each organization will meet with a coach approximately twice a month over the academic year, with additional communications as needed;
• Connection with other members of the Social Media Boot Camp, to learn from each others’ experience and projects through an online community and webinar-based sharing;
• Membership to Darim Online and access to its other Learning Network events and resources.

The long of it, including eligibility, program structure, and a link to the application form, can be found here.  The deadline for applications is Monday, May 2, 2011.

Got a great, innovative,  social media-y Jewish education idea? What are you waiting for?

The Social Media Boot Camp for Educators program is made possible through a generous grant by The Covenant Foundation.

Congratulations to the nine recipients of the 2011-2012 Jewish New Media Innovation Fund Award!

The Fund, a partnership of the the Jim Joseph, Righteous Persons, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family foundations, will provide $500,000 in grants and technical support  to 9 digital media projects selected from among over 300 submissions.  We are excited to follow these projects as they develop!

Projects include:

• A digital platform for exploring historical dimensions of Jewish music and culture;
• An interactive, customizable Haggadah creator;
• A parenting website targeting the vast spectrum of Jewish families, with local online communities and an interactive Jewish baby name bank;
• Online cartoon videos teaching people how to lead Jewish rituals and holidays in their homes;
• A digital TED-style dialogue about G-d;
• A mobile application that places Jewish campus life directly in the palm of your hands;
• An online community that translates traditional Jewish liturgy into modern vernacular;
• A mobile application that empowers individuals to learn weekly Torah and Haftorah portions; and
• An intelligent data management system that uses predictive analytics to connect young Jews to programs and opportunities based on expressed personal interests.

Click here for more information about the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund.  And check out Lisa Colton’s reflections on the impact of the process on the Jewish community,  Jewish New Media Innovation Fund Winners Go Beyond Those Awarded Funds.  No doubt there were many other wonderful submissions and we look forward to their continued contributions to the community!

2011-2012 Jewish New Media Innovation Fund Award Recipients

Mazal tov!

Idelsohn Society Digital Archive will create a series of 5 “digital box-sets” each exploring a different historical dimension of Jewish culture and music. Users will be able to stream music, read text, view videos and photos, add comments, share content via Facebook and Twitter, and add tags. This project will expand on the format and technology developed for the recently released archive entitled “Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations”. Award Recipient: Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation

Haggadot.com invites Jews of all backgrounds to find their place in the Passover conversation through the seder’s central text, the haggadah. Users can upload, exchange and personalize haggadot, gaining simultaneous access to classical texts and contemporary interpretations from their peers, creating more meaningful Passover seders and connective Jewish experiences. Award Recipient: Haggadot.com

Kveller.com is the first and only Jewish parenting website aimed at parents from across the Jewish religious spectrum, with special attention paid to interfaith families and the less-affiliated. From its popular Jewish Baby Name Bank to its prolific bloggers, Kveller has content reflecting all types of Jewish families: observant, interfaith, queer, divorced and more. It also connects parents to local organizations and events, including piloting online communities with calendars of events and lists of resources, as well as local Facebook groups. Award Recipient: My Jewish Learning

Moishe House Rocks is a series of digital cartoon videos aimed at empowering young leaders to feel confident and prepared to initiate and lead Jewish rituals in their homes and for their peers. Created in partnership with G-dcast, the package will consist of two complimentary virtual components: a three-minute cartoon video to introduce and explain a ritual element; and embedded karaoke-style prayers and tunes of the blessings and ceremonies prerecorded with words on the bottom. Videos will be created for Shabbat prayers and rituals, the Havdalah ceremony and Sukkot celebrations, among others. Award Recipients: Moishe House and G-dcast

The G-d Project is a social media platform dedicated to the Jewish experience of G-d and spirituality. In the spirit of NPR’s This American Life, this initiative compiles interviews with Jewish individuals and communities around the country about faith and anecdotes of everyday life. The G-d Project will stimulate dialogue about G-d through these micro-documentaries as well as online discussion boards, social media, and Ted Talks-style video presentations. Award Recipient: Punk Torah

The Jewniversity Mobile App offers a new model of Jewish community engagement that places access to Jewish life directly in the palm of your hands. Jewniversity is an application for mobile devices that will recommend particular Jewish life opportunities to college students based on their indicated interests; a calendar of Jewish activities and events on campuses; dynamic university profiles; and user-generated content. Award Recipient: Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life

UrbanSefer is harnessing the creativity and wit of young Jews around the U.S. to crowd-source translations of traditional Jewish liturgy into modern, slang-filled but broadly accurate vernacular. UrbanSefer’s first English-language product will be the UrbanHaggadah. Once translated, the books will be fully designed—in the full style of the Williamsburg hipster mixed with Williamsburg Chassidic—and published to a traditional book form as well as a downloadable eBook. Award Recipient: Morgan Friedman

PocketTorah empowers individuals to learn the weekly Torah and Haftorah through a powerful, pedagogically sound and free mobile app. It will allow access anywhere, at any time, on any mobile device or computer. The application will include: a trope training module; entire text of the Torah and Haftorah in Hebrew and translation; on-demand audio; tikkun view for reading with vowels; and a commentary module. Award Recipient: Media Midrash

The Jewish Journey Connector is a transformative initiative in the Jewish community that uses data mining and predictive analytics to link the silos of Jewish life. It seeks to do for the Jewish community what Amazon has done for books: suggesting options you might like based on prior purchase history and friends’ purchases, and offering loyalty rewards points and discount coupons in order to encourage re-use. Individuals will be able to navigate their own Jewish journey by getting connected with the right opportunities, programs, and people that meet their interests and life stage at the right point in time. Award Recipient: Measuring Success

This year’s ISTE Conference (formerly known as NECC) will be meeting June 26-29 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Once again, we will be facilitating a meet up of educators in Jewish settings – we’re going on our 11th year of meeting up at ISTE/NECC!

Please indicate your interest and share ideas for the meet up on the ISTE Conference ning site Birds of a Feather section here.

And be sure to register for the ISTE Conference by March 31 for the super early bird rates; if you haven’t booked your hotel yet, be aware that rooms go like hotcakes, so plan accordingly.  Details on the conference can be found here: http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011.

Stay tuned for updates about the meet up here and also via our discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/jewishednet

Hoping to see you in Philly!

Caren

We are pleased to welcome guest blogger, Howard Blas.

Note: This article was originally posted on Davar Acher, a collaborative blog of the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows.  Be sure to read Davar Acher to learn more from this talented community of practice who share insights about technology, best practices, ideas, thoughts and support.

Jewish Disability/ABILITY Awareness Month

February is Jewish Disability Awareness Month. Google these words and you will be pleased to get 53,300 hits! Nearly every link encourages readers (and organization and synagogues) to do such admirable things as start an inclusion committee, offer programs and events on disability awareness, and dedicate a Shabbat to inclusion and to the contributions of people with disabilities.

Through my work as the director of the Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah in New England, and as a teacher of Jewish Studies/bar and bat mitzvah for children and young adults with a range of special needs, I am very aware of Jews of all ages with disabilities. I am also aware of their sometimes amazing ABILITIES. Tikvah campers routinely lead birkat hamazon and Friday night davening for the entire camp, they put on a play, travel to Israel and participate in a weekly “Shabbos Is Calling” video conference. Campers take part in more than a dozen Special Olympics sports, some climb the Alpine Tower in seconds, and one camper (with Down Syndrome) even tutored a neurotypical peer for his bar mitzvah (many years later, that appreciative bar mitzvah student became a counselor in our Tikvah Program!).

Bar Mitzvah students with disabilities have delivered profound divrei torah, read the Torah and Haftarah, and lead the congregation in davening. Others moved the congregation by exhibiting their deep love of Judaism—unable to speak, they operated Power Point presentations, used a Dynavox Dynamo augmented communication device, or lovingly clutched the Torah; or they displayed a model of the portable Tabernacle which they had carefully constructed.

Jewish Disability Awareness Month is a time to acknowledge those with a range of both disabilities and abilities, and those who work as tireless advocates on their behalf. I would like to introduce a few people and organizations making a difference. There are truly hundreds of examples. Please add yours by commenting on the blog!

Richard Bernstein: a marathoner and Iron Man Triathlete, and a disability rights attorney in Detroit—who happens to be blind from birth

Aaron Rudolph: a former Tikvah camper and staff member who is one of many young adults with special needs hired by Walgreens to work in one of their many distribution centers (Walgreens is a company with an amazing policy of hiring adults with special needs). Aaron is an amazing worker!

Eytan Nisinzweig: also a former Tikvah camper, is a young man with autism who is a very talented piano player and a prolific artist of very engaging drawings. His family has taken his art work and put them on T-shirts and notecards—check out his impressive website!

Jodi Samuels: founded Jewish International Connection of New York (JICNY), a Jewish outreach program for international Jews living in the metropolitan New York City area. She has also been a tireless advocate for daughter, Caila, who has Down Syndrome. Jodi and her and her husband, Gavin, have worked hard to create Jewish educational opportunities for Caila and other children with special needs in Manhattan.

Jay Ruderman and the Ruderman Family Foundation have been helping people with special needs in the Boston area, and in Israel, and they have been making a tremendous impact in the world of Jewish special needs. Jay recently organized Advance, the first-ever international Jewish funders conference on special needs. As a result, 13 foundations have recently joined forces “to improve the treatment of people with disabilities in the Jewish community and to raise awareness of their needs” (see the recent article, “Jewish Philanthropists Help People with Disabilities” in the Jerusalem Post).

Reelabilities Film Festival is a film festival, held throughout New York area, dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities. If you are in NY from February 3-8, 2011, join me at the festival!

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Howard Blas has served for ten years as the director of the Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah in New England.  The overnight camp program serves adolescents and young adults with special needs.

Howard also serves as a teacher of Jewish Studies and bar/bat mitzvah to students with a range of special needs and “special circumstances.”  Howard’s graduate studies in social work, special education, and family therapy, and his more than 20 years teaching students for bar and bat mitzvah have taught him the importance of working with each student and family in a very unique, individualized manner.

Howard writes regularly for many Jewish publications, including the Connecticut Jewish Ledger, the Jerusalem Report, and the various Jerusalem Post children’s magazines.  His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Time Out New York and various parenting publications.  Howard has recently published several journal articles on disabilities and camping.

Howard is one of fourteen Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows, through the Lookstein Center at Bar Ilan University, a program to teach educators and Jewish community professionals to develop online communities of practice.

We are pleased to welcome guest blogger, Debbie Harris, and to share her tribute to the great Jewish educator, Debbie Friedman, z”l.  Deb Harris is the technology coordinator at the Sager Solomon Schechter Middle School in Northbrook, IL and teaches religious school at Lakeside Congregation for Reform Judaism.

Note: This article was originally posted on Deb Harris’ blog, MuseForJews.  Be sure to read Deb’s blog for her regular musings on Jewish education, educational technology, and life.

Lessons From Debbie

There’s so much in the blogosphere right now about Jewish education – how to change it, how to improve it, how to invigorate it, how to re-vision it…

Of course this is not what I’ve been thinking about this week. I’ve been thinking about our dear Debbie Friedman z”l. Having known her for almost 40 years, I thought a lot about what it was like to be part of the “early Debbie” years, before all the records (and they were records), before Carnegie Hall, before the music was widely accepted. Back in the day when she couldn’t get into Hebrew Union College, let alone teach there.

She, too, changed, improved, invigorated and re-visioned. Synagogue music will never ever be the same.

Can we do for Jewish education what she and those who followed her did for Jewish music? Are there lessons we can learn from Debbie? I think so.

Here are a few I can come up with. Any more you can think of?

1. Make it relevant. Her music spoke to us because it sounded like what we were already listening to and loving. Is Jewish education relevant to our students? Does it speak their language? Use the tools they’re used to using? My synagogue bought a set of used Apple iBooks and I brought them out for my kids to use the other day. They beamed. These are old, old laptops, but the kids were as excited as if they were brand new. Is there anything I’m going to do with those laptops that I couldn’t do some other way? Maybe not, but it’s where the kids are NOW.

2. Make it engaging. We, of course, wanted to be there. The melodies were intoxicating. Debbie, undoubtedly, was intoxicating as well. She had a vibrant, exciting, huge personality. We joked about Debbie groupies. How engaging is Jewish education today? We can’t all be Debbie Friedmans, but are we attracting exciting, huge personalities and are we giving the space to be who they are?

3. Take some risks. I remember vividly the day that our cantor stormed out of the sanctuary because he and Sing Unto God just weren’t going to get along. Who won? But it was a huge risk. Singing those melodies in the sanctuary – pushing the organ out of the way to make room for the drums – had to piss lots of people off. I’m sure the synagogue lost a donor or two in the process. But certainly it was a risk that paid off.

4. Involve the kids. In 1973, those of us in Debbie’s youth group felt like we were in the inner circle. We heard songs before they were songs. She played with melodies during our song sessions. I know people who still have the scribbled sheets of lyrics composed during late-night sessions at camp and on retreats. Some of those things never became famous and never made it onto albums. We didn’t care. Everything was special because we were part of it. Her song Laugh At All My Dreams was composed for my graduating class. To this day, I can’t hear it without remembering that incredible time that we spent together. Lesson learned: involve the kids from the beginning.

5. It’s okay to tear it all down. Today, it’s not at all unusual to hear a Debbie Friedman melody sung in the same service as older tunes. They live comfortably with one another and everyone is comfortable (well, maybe not everyone, but many). Back in the day, though, we were bold. We tore it all apart and started from scratch. I remember sitting in the youth lounge trying to figure out a new way to do a responsive reading, to reinterpret the Aleynu (only we called it the Adoration at the time. Let us adore (let us adore) the ever-living God (the ever-living God). You remember, right?). Debbie and her music encouraged us to rethink all of it. Nothing was, you should pardon the expression, sacred. Let’s do that with Jewish education. Declare nothing is sacred and go from there.

Comments? Please chime in

[W]e’ve observed that class and student blogging success is strongly related to the teacher’s abilities.   The greater we support and increase a teacher’s skills, the better they are able to support their students use of web 2.0 technologies.  – Teacher Challenge: About

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You cannot get students to blog. Period. You cannot convince a single student to invest themselves into a long-term blogging journey if the educator is trying to convince them to participate with simple “carrot and stick” motivators. Students should instead enter into a conversation that encourages them and reassures them that their personal investment is worth the effort. This conversation should be moderated by a learning companion, by a mentor who is an active blogger, who is completely convinced of the significance of long-term sustained personal narrative as an end in itself, as an incredibly important tool that guides and shapes oneself over time, through transitional events, through courses and programs and seminars and conferences.

Such a mentor would model the journey, model the processes, and model both the serious sense-making activities and the rehearsing and play-building and celebrating. Students need to experience the mentor’s blogging firsthand if they are to be convinced that the blogging journey that starts with a first step is worth embarking on at all.   – Glenn Groulx,  Facilitator, Blogging in Professional Networks: Nov 8-26, 2010 , on SCoPE

Have you wanted to start a blog but weren’t sure how? Do you have a blog, but want to raise it to the next level? Are you an educator who wants to model the blogging experience for your students… or use blogging for your own reflective work? Here are two resources that are sure to get you going – one new, one not so new but both have lots to offer!

30 Day Challenge to Kick Start Your Blog

Take the 30 Day Challenge to Kick Start Your Blog hosted by Edublogs*.  The first activity kicks off on Monday, January 10, followed by a new activity every day for the next, well, 30 days.  The Challenge will walk you through getting started on a blog, writing effective posts, commenting, widgets, building readership, and more.

Each day the Challenge will publish Beginners Activities, Advanced Activities, and Discussion Questions.  The Activities provide detailed “how-tos” along with easy to follow visual tutorials.

Access the Challenge the way you prefer: visit the site daily, add it to your RSS feed, or subscribe for daily updates.

Stay tuned for their upcoming challenges – this year is going to fly by!:

• 30 days to get your students blogging (this will also get you ready for their Student Blogging Challenge in March)
• 30 days to a whole new PLN (personal learning network)
• 30 days to use the best of the web’s free resources
• 30 days to ensuring privacy and student safety on the web
• 30 days to increased parent involvement

And be sure to check out Sue Waters’ blog, The Edublogger, for regular tips and techniques on blogging and other social media resources.

*Although Edublogs sponsors this Challenge and supports many terrific features for classroom blogging, feel free to use the blogging platform of your choice to participate; fyi, Edublogs runs on WordPress.  And you don’t have to be an educator to join in!

SCoPE: Blogging in Professional Networks

SCoPE is a personal favorite site for professional learning.  Wonderfully facilitated by Sylvia Currie and hosted by BC Campus, SCoPE is an open, online community for people interested in educational research and practice.  Last November,  Glenn Groulx facilitated a seminar on Blogging in Professional Networks.  The 3 week session focused on:

• strategies for gathering information from various online sources
• organizing these sources within blog posts, and
• connecting with experts and peers by engaging in way-making activities to explore, find and connect with others.

One of the great things about SCoPE seminars is the door is always open to continued conversation… so feel free to read the postings – and contribute!  And be sure to review previous and future seminars and join in.

What are some of your favorite blogging resources? What inspires you?