jlearn2.0

There are many reasons for using technology for Jewish learning. These include, but are not limited to the ability to:

• customize individual learning experiences
• create enriched learning by supporting an array of different learning modalities
• provide adaptive strategies and scaffolding techniques to help learners overcome barriers to learning, especially those with special learning needs
• engage students in complex projects
• provide access to resources that are not locally or easily available, in addition to those that are
• provide opportunities for learners to strengthen their Jewish content knowledge, skills, and abilities
• provide professional development opportunities for educators to further develop their content knowledge, teaching techniques, and reflective learning to support their personal and professional growth and that of their students.

Resources have been developed to help educational stakeholders make the case for the integration of technology for learning. Among these are: ETAN: EdTechActionNetwork which is sponsored by CoSN and ISTE and ISTE’s own Advocacy Toolkit which includes success stories, templates, and starter kits that target specific audiences (see under Advocacy). The publication, Technology in Schools: What the Research Says produced by Cisco Systems and Metiri Group, provides a good review of different tools and what current research implies about their use. The Lookstein Center’s Jewish Education Leadership issue on technology(Spring 2003)includes the article, “Teachers’ Use of Computers in the North American Day School: A Research Study,” by Shalom Berger, as well as the review, “Digest of Literature on the Impact of the Computer in Instruction” by Stanley Peerless, Esther Feldman, and Chana German. And Jonathan Woocher of JESNA takes a big picture approach to the use of technologies for Jewish learning in his article, ”Jewish Education in the Age of Google,” published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Where you would like to see the field of Jewish educational technology in the next few years?

• Do you believe educational technology can transform Jewish learning? If so, how? If not, why not?
• Ideally, what would you like to see happen in the next five years regarding Jewish education and technology? What would it take to get there?
• If you could redesign Jewish education what would it look like?

We invite you to share your experiences. How do you integrate educational technology into your practice? What are some of the challenges you have experienced?

• What are some of your experiences with technology for learning? How do you use it for Jewish education?
• What have you found to be most beneficial in using educational technology?
• What have you found to be barriers or challenges?
• What are essential elements for successfully incorporating educational technology into your work?

The Avi Chai Foundation is offering up to $10,000 to support new and innovative ways to apply technology to enhancing the teaching of Judaic studies in day schools. The deadline for proposals is Thursday, November 30, 2006. For more information, see Avi Chai Educational Technology.

To play with a new idea or tool or resource is to understand it in a different way. It is a means of becoming familiar with it from the outside in and the inside out and to imagine new ways of working with it. How, then, do we encourage educators to play with digital resources? What are some impediments to experimentation? Time, access to resources, and anxiety of the new are a few challenges that teachers often face. Teachers generally consider themselves “digital immigrants” in relation to their students, who tap into different technologies more naturally as “digital natives.” However, many teachers are already familiar with these technologies. They use them for business tasks, communicating, managing their personal lives, socializing, and for leisure and recreational purposes as do their students. In some cases, educators are even ahead of their students in terms of comfort levels and the transparent use of these technologies. What is less clear to both teachers and students is how to include these tools into one’s repertoire for learning.

How does the use of educational technologies become a more normative part of addressing instructional challenges? What are educational appropriate ways to incorporate new technologies of every day life into learning? These tools include podcasts, websites, blogs, wikis, video, VoIP such as Skype, PDAs, social networking systems (think Facebook or MySpace), resource organizer and sharing sites such as del.icio.us and flickr, and yes, even cell phones. How might they be used to support a school’s curricular vision, and not merely serve as “bells and whistles” or distractions from the goals of learning? Should they be used at all? Early adopters are already playing around with these resources. What can we learn from them? How can we provide educators with opportunities to play with these tools, become more familiar with them, understand the capacities and limitations of these tools, and take risks and experiment? Creating a space for play is not limited to the use of technologies. Teachers need opportunities to step back, think, and toy around with ideas, tools, curriculum, etc. Where do they find these opportunities – preservice, inservice, on their own? Is there a culture of play for educators in our institutions, arenas to incubate ideas, try them out, refine them, share, and collaborate?

What are some ideas you have been playing around with regarding the use of digital technologies for learning? What would it take to implement them? If you have incorporated them into your teaching repertoire, what have you learned from them?

This site is a work in progress. It is an experiment, an opportunity to use a particular technology to share ideas and resources for Jewish learning. Its emphasis is on integrating digital technologies into learning and teaching to enhance lifelong Jewish learning. This includes school settings as well as other educational venues, and learning for all ages.

It is our hope that stakeholders in Jewish education will partner in the development of this site. We turn to you to share experiences, ideas, resources, and questions to help build a community around common interests and to further the field. If you have other ideas or materials for possible submission, please be in touch with us at jlearn2.0 Welcome to the conversation!

jlearn2.0 was developed to provide a space for educators and other key stakeholders to explore resources and issues related to the integration of digital technologies for lifelong Jewish learning.

jlearn2.0 is a project of etheoreal, a consultancy specializing in professional development and educational technology, with a focus on integrating theory and practice. The site is published by Caren Levine, principal consultant at etheoreal.