AVI CHAI Educational Technology

Learning On-Line

2012-11-19T20:04:00.001-05:00

Move fast – don’t be afraid of failure

Empower your dreamers – say “yes”

Develop a vision and tie it to your mission

Focus on areas of most importance

Think about connecting with others

Brad Rathberger

Director, Online School for Girls

cc licensed image shared by flickr user Derek Purdy

As happens time and time again, at a professional learning experience related to technology, I learned not as much about technology as about learning.

I’ve enrolled in Charting a Direction for Online Learning, a year long course designed for educators at independent schools. The course is sponsored by Online School for Girls, a learning organization serving a consortium of independent girls schools by assisting member schools to collaboratively develop blended learning experiences for their students. Most of the learning in this professional course occurs on-line, yet this past week I attended the first of two face to face sessions.

“Blended and online learning is as evolving of a field is there is in education. It is flipped on its head every six months or so,” shared Brad Rathberger, Director of Online School for Girls. We are beginning to recognize the potential to dramatically shift control of learning from teachers to students not as much through the technology as through the previously unimaginable potential for flexibility in the use of space and time made possible with technology.

Among the greatest moments of learning was the opportunity to hear from a number of students at School of the Holy Child. “We learn a lot about responsibility, academic integrity, learning to work with other people, and flexibility,” shared one of these very impressive high school seniors, reflecting on a course she was taking in multi-variable calculus. Participating in a college level math course, and interacting with some of the top female high school math students in the country, she interestingly didn’t reflect as much on math or technology, as on learning and growth, noting with maturity how she is less shy and more able to manage her time than she had been prior to her online learning experience.

While one cannot make generalizations about online and blended learning as there are so many approaches, evolving so rapidly, there are a number of broad models currently in use:

Rotation Model
Flex Model
Self-Blend Model
Enriched-Virtual Model

Rotation Model

Station Rotation Model

Students rotate through three broad types of activities in a continuous loop: individualized online instruction, teacher-led instruction, and collaborative activities and stations. This is the simplest blended learning model.
Alternatively, instead of one component of online learning there are two components, the individualized on-line instruction and the on-line assessments. Students rotate through four broad types of activities in a continuous loop: individualized online instruction, individualized online assessment, teacher-led instruction, and collaborative activities and stations.

Lab Rotation model

There is direct instruction for 3/4 of the day in math/science and literacy/social studies with teachers. There is a learning lab with on-line activities for the rest of the day, supervised by paraprofessionals.

Individual Rotation Model

There is a central computer lab along with numerous other learning settings, chosen depending on what a student might need; intervention, seminars, direct instruction, and group projects.

Flex Model

Students learn in a massive computer lab staffed by paraprofessionals for about half their day; and work with teachers in small groups for the other half. They come together for lunch and social activities.

Self-Blend Model

There is a physical place for students to come to learn in a collaborative environment when they choose to do so. Students can also work at home with their online teacher. They are not required to be in school.

Enriched Virtual Model

Students participate in supplemental on-line courses.

Independent mission-driven schools, not yet as fast moving or skilled at collaboration with other schools as we will need to become, must overcome a number of challenges, and capitalize on numerous strengths and opportunities, in order to design our own solutions for utilizing on-line and blended learning. If we are not proactive, as Brad Rathberger warns, we may find ourselves forced into solutions that do not reflect our missions.

As we move forward, what shall we consider in the move to blended learning options? How might we imagine anew possibilities for use of space, time, and financial resources? How might we assess the quality of on-line options? How might we support teachers to adapt and prepare for teaching and learning in a blended environment? How might we prepare our students? What cautions might we consider? What might inspire and enable us to dream?

Cross Posted on Sharing Our Blessings: www.sharingourblessings.wordpress.com by Shira Leibowitz

Lots of Small Sections and Efficiency Too? The Economic Case for Building Competency in Blended Classroom + Online Learning

2012-11-06T09:39:00.001-05:00

Guest post by Dr. Harry Bloom (hbloom1@yu.edu)

Few topics have engaged the Jewish media and Shabbos table more intensely than the day school “tuition crisis” which is jeopardizing the sustainability of our day schools by placing tremendous stress on family budgets on the one hand and on schools’ abilities to fund first rate programs on the other hand.

The pressure to reduce expenses and tuition levels is intense. Based on benchmarking analysis conducted by the YU School Partnership (YUSP) in approximately forty schools in five East Coast and Midwestern communities*, a prime source of potential efficiencies lies in making more productive use of faculty resources in our schools. After all, faculty members are the most valuable, highest cost element within our schools. A key challenge to productivity is thinly populated class sections. By “section” we meet a course offering such as 9^th grade honors Talmud or Advanced Hebrew language.

An examination of course offering and enrollment patterns at five high schools drawn from our benchmarking school sample illustrates the point. All of the schools are college preparatory in nature, all are co-ed. Enrollment ranges from about 100 to 300.

When the schools’ sections are arrayed from high to low in terms of enrollment, we see the following pattern.

Section Enrollment	School A	B	C	D	E	School Avg
Lower 1/3	6.5	7.2	4.1	7.0	6.5	6.2
Mid 1/3	13.1	10.8	9.2	14.2	13.1	12.1
high 1/3	19.5	16.4	17.9	21.6	18.9	18.9

In terms of the extent to which the schools’ are filling their enrollment capacity with capacity defined individually by each school, a picture of underutilized capacity in two thirds of the sections emerges.

The cost implications are significant since the cost of offering a section is basically fixed: teacher compensation and facilities costs.

Options to improve capacity utilization must obviously include offering fewer sections where this is possible. Schools often take the position that they need to offer a large range of sections to meet the needs of diverse learners and to be competitive in their marketplaces.

Another obvious solution is to fill seats in low capacity sections through enhanced recruitment and retention activities. This should obviously always be a priority. But in some markets the potential student populations are already saturated and retention is high.

Fortunately, another emerging powerful solution is for schools to build their competency in blended classroom instruction and online instruction to enable fewer, larger sections coincident with more individualized instruction and high quality student learning. In a blended classroom, teachers can utilize online resources in a variety of ways to complement their own teaching: to convey new concepts and/ or reinforce concepts taught in the classroom through structured exercises tailored to each individual student. Teachers can also utilize new learning management systems to monitor the precise degree of mastery of concepts by each student and group students with common learning needs in small groups so they learn together independently.

The range of online course offerings and curricular materials is proliferating. Open source learning management systems like Moodle enable faculty members to put their own blended curricula together . We are on the cusp of a golden opportunity to blend efficiency and higher quality learning experiences. Now is the time for active experimentation with blended learning by all schools.

The YUSP’s educational technology expert, Dr. Eliezer Jones (ejones1@yu.edu), is actively exploring all of the available options including commercial platforms and curricula, open source (free and ability to customize) learning platforms and curricula, as well as the creation of consortia that pool proven open source courseware and collaboratively develop affordable and high quality online curricula in general and Judaic studies. This fall, Dr. Jones will be facilitating an online certificate program for Jewish Day School educators in online/blended instruction and design in an effort to build schools’ capacity to implement these models effectively and efficiently. He is an available resource as part of the YUSP education team focused on 21st century learning in Jewish Day Schools. Interested parties can sign up at www.YUeLearning.org to follow YUSP's work in this area.

For additional information or to share your own experiences and thoughts about this topic feel free to contact Dr. Harry Bloom at hbloom1@yu.edu

High schools should also actively consider the creation of consortia of schools with similar educational aspirations and market and customer challenges. Having school 1 take the lead in subject A and school 2 in subject B is a way for schools to capitalize on scarce talent and resources while learning through active experimentation.

It is only through this kind of purposeful and collaborative experimentation that we will learn how to achieve the benefits of truly tailored instruction and learning and efficiency, both critical elements for sustainable, high quality day schools of the future. “If not now, when?”

*This work is generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation and federations and foundations and schools around the country

It was WOOFINGLY good!

2012-08-08T16:34:00.001-04:00

So – what was so great about ISTE?

As the Bearded Dog settles back into his usual kennel, having rinsed the final traces of San Diego sea-sand and sea-air from his hair (what is left of it) and his lungs, the question remains – what was so great about ISTE. What lessons will the dog apply this year, what skills gained and what knowledge acquired.

Arrff!

Without doubt, the best part of ISTE for the dog was the opportunity to meet then strangers who are now friends. As the dog always says – a stranger is simply a friend to be. And what are friends if not people of whom to take advantage? In a good way of course!

The dog considers himself to be very fortunate to have met and befriended so many wonderful people not only from the Avichai Contingency, but from the real world too. And – one of the best parts of ISTE, the “BoF” (Birds of a Feather) sessions allowed the dog to meet real people who are dealing with real Ed Tech challenges in real schools. (In the way that the dog imagines himself to be doing too!)

The dog considers himself to be “ok” with Moodle. But – as a result of ISTE, the dog has at least three real people – all of whom live in an imaginary world, with whom he can discuss Moodle questions, challenges and stumbling blocks. If ISTE provided nothing other than this – the dog would have left San Diego happily.

But what – like the Shamwow – there’s more!

The dog met many of the people who actually write – or wrote the books. Real live human beings who, up until then, existed only in the Dog’s cyber-imagination. Sir Ken Robinson (much better in the Dog’s imagination – BTW), Steve Hargadon, Karen Kator, Professor Michael Fullan, Dr Avraham Kadar (founder of Brainpop) and so many more…

ISTE offered the dog a chance to meet and interact with giants in their field.

Then, a highlight for the dog was the opportunity to participate in a real live panel on the last day of the conference.

The dog responded to a request from the Twitterverse and before you could say, “Fetch that juicy bone…” the dog had been invited to join a panel discussion around the idea of Social Media in Schools.

Arrrff! – The irony is that this very topic was reason that the Dog wanted to come to ISTE in the first place.

Led by Steve Hargadon of stevehargadon.com; Classroom 2.0; Twitter, Google+; Facebook etc fame, the panel offered its opinions on the use of Social Media in schools – and then faced questions from the audience.

The dog had a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

And learned that any one of us could be on the panel, could be on Twitter, Facebook, etc. The dog learned that, in fact – so many of the “experts” were and are ‘chalk-face’ teachers. Actually, perhaps the correct term is SmartBoard Face Teachers. But – whatever the term, teachers who stretched themselves just a little bit and began to create a cyber presence for themselves.

Inspiring stuff!

And so the challenge remains – the dog hopes to share his experiences with his colleagues, students, faculty and community and build shared learning networks of individuals who, like those at ISTE, stretched themselves a little – and gained so much more in return!

Arrrfff!

Perhaps Small Is The New Huge

2012-07-24T11:32:00.001-04:00

cc licensed image shared by flikr user pulihora

Forty two million new web pages were created last year and educational technology expert Adam Bellow recommended in a session at ISTE (Interational Symposium on Tech Education) trying just one. Perhaps small is the new huge.

Thinking small, or rather thinking focused, is an initially counterintuitive insight to have taken from a conference of the massive scope of ISTE. I went to San Diego, guided by numerous blog posts on how to avoid being overwhelmed by the immensity of the event: plan "must dos" in advance, leave time for serendipitous conversations, and wear comfortable shoes so as to be able to cover as much ground as possible at least literally if not figuratively.

Taking the advice seriously, I planned my ISTE strategy, making the deliberate decision to veer away from the "big names" of ed tech (although I couldn't resist learning at sessions with several ed tech leaders whose writings have guided me). Instead, I sought to connect mostly with by no means "small names" but with important voices not necessarily acclaimed; in the trenches teachers striving to make a positive difference in their schools by integrating technology to improve the quality of learning for their students. I was profoundly inspired by the array of talent among presenting teachers who are engaging students in blogging, electronic portfolios, collaborative writing, multimedia presentations, and global collaborations. I was similarly impressed by the tremendous ability and accomplishment of participants at the conference learning together. I found guidance and wisdom in areas of great interest to me.

I returned home and reflected, intending to make some initial decisions on how I might bring my learning at ISTE back to my school, wondering whether I as a principal might potentially teach courses in which students create and collaborate through blogging and electronic portfolios. Instead of rushing forward with plans, I gave myself permission to slow down and with the more relaxed pace of summer, allow learnings at ISTE to unfold and take shape in my mind without deadline. As the days and weeks passed, and the blog posts I intended to write about my experiences at ISTE swam in my head without making their way quickly into writing, I kept hearing the conversation beneath the conversation at ISTE - the passion of teachers, the gratitude toward principals who nurture and support teachers' passions, and the frustration with principals who do not as effectively nurture and support teachers' passions as effectively as they might.

I had come to ISTE with the essential question "how can I as a principal more effectively support teachers in my school to improve learning?" I wondered whether in answer to that essential question, the greatest insights might come not from the content of sessions, but rather from the emotions and longings teachers expressed quietly between the lines and beneath the content of sessions. I imagined what teachers at my school might present at a conference like ISTE and recognized a plethora of possibilities: using interactive white boards interactively in kindergarten and first grade, ipads as assistive technology for special education students, social media with training wheels: edmodo as a tool to introduce elementary school students to on-line creative collaboration, engaging families and students in learning through engaging teacher web pages, from voice threads to voki: giving voice to student voice, and flipping the classroom for the tech tentative teacher. The potential for creating a platform for teachers to share and to shine was sounding more and more compelling.

Paradoxically, perhaps the greatest gift I received at the ISTE mega conference was a new set of lenses through which to look at professional learning; focusing on small as the new huge. Forty two million new web pages were created last year. Even the most tech tentative among us can try just one. Perhaps that humble beginning will make a potent difference. Perhaps, just perhaps, small is the new huge.

Cross Posted on sharingourblessings.wordpress.com

ISTE2012 IS OVER - NOW WHAT?

2012-07-08T16:05:00.001-04:00

So, it has been over a week since I've returned from the best experience to kick start my summer: the ISTE12 conference. Thanks to the generosity of the Avichai Foundation, I got to spend 4 glorious days in sunny San Diego, learning all about education in the 21st century. In my previous blog post, I reflected on the "wow" effect this conference had on me. In this blog post, after being back for over a week, I choose to focus on the take aways and lessons learned from this conference. First and foremost, I think that the success of this conference is in the opportunity it gives educators to network and learn from each other. In planning for the conference, I was so focused on choosing and re-choosing the sessions. As great as those were, I think I learned the most from the people I had the privilege to interact with and have discussions with, and most importantly, will continue to remain in touch with. I got a chance to meet and learn from some gurus in the field, and I'm so grateful for that. But, meeting educators from all over North America, connecting and learning from them, being able to continue these connections beyond the conference, is invaluable. Second, I was re-introduced to twitter. I had an account that I signed up for a long time ago. I was not really using that account much. When at ISTE, you kind of have to tweet, just like the saying goes "when in Rome...". Everyone was blogging and tweeting. So did I. Every session mentioned twitter (at some point), and I kind of got into it. The truth is that I really got back into it, and I haven't stopped ever since. I'm so impressed with the wealth of information that can be found on twitter,that I'm embarrassed that I haven't kept on top of my tweeting in the past while. As a matter of fact, I've been following so many new hash tags and been so involved in new discussions, that it feels as if ISTE never ended. And then there is what comes next, which is sharing. I've taken so many notes and learned about so many apps, initiatives, ideas and projects, that I am bursting at the seams. I am trying different things, setting up initiatives for the fall, trying to bring forward different suggestions and idea to my team, wanting to implement some of the wonderful things I've learned about. That is what proves that ISTE was indeed worthwhile, if the takeaways from it can or would be implemented, if it was inspiring enough to be taken further. I'm excited about the possibilities and am determined to take it further. Yes, it is kind of overwhelming... So many notes have been taken at the conference, so many ideas and apps have been introduced. Trying to implement it all is simply impossible. But, I'm lucky to work with an amazing team of educators, who are used to me getting excited over new initiatives that have to with technology. They are "on board" with me, willing to try it out and implement it with my support. What will be implemented at Associated Hebrew Schools this fall? Well, we intend to experiment with QR codes. This was a big take away for me. I saw some great examples of using those in educational settings, and the away that the codes make teaching come to life and that is certainly one thing that we will implement in the fall. Also, our school has purchased several iPads this summer that will be deployed in September. Many of the sessions I took gave me tips, tricks and ideas of how to deploy and use those iPads successfully, not to mention a huge list of apps I would like to explore. A very exciting thing to look forward to. A third initiative that has been brewing in me since coming back from ISTE has to do with student blogging. I've attended several sessions outlining the success of allowing students to blog, the way different educators have implemented student blogging in their classroom. I've even learned about the flat classroom project where blogging connected children from across the globe. I intend to pursue this with my colleagues and take it further into the implementation stage. Lastly, I would like to further my colleagues and my learning through our PLCs (I believe that it is PLCs in Canada and PLN in the US). Sharing knowledge and ideas, learning and reflection can all be done through these wonderful networks and communities. Whether in school, on line, or otherwise, I look forward to sharing and continuing my learning and experimentation with technology in the classroom to promote student engagement and success. Once again, thanks Avichai for all that you've done to get me to ISTE. Todda Rabba! Wishing everyone a great summer, Avital Aharon Associated Hebrew Schools Toronto, Canada

ISTE 2012: Large-Picture Take Aways

2012-07-06T16:12:00.001-04:00

The learning that took place at the ISTE Conference (at least for me), took place everywhere: in the exhibition hall, the various sessions, the lobbies, outdoor patios, meeting rooms and shuttle bus, not to mention our Avi Chai sessions each evening. There are a lot of great teachers and administrators out there and I found myself trying to absorb as much as possible throughout.

That being said, the experience was also overwhelming, especially when I stopped to think about the work ahead and the feeling that no matter how pro-active we are, the risk of treading water or falling behind the eight ball looms heavily in my thoughts. How can our school, or any school, implement all of the tools, applications or educational approaches that were presented at ISTE? How can I possibly follow and learn something from all of my new twitter connections? How many of the various tools presented in the exhibition hall can any one school adopt, even if budget were not an issue (which it is)?

Then came my AHA moment…provided by a wide variety of my ISTE “teachers.”

§ Take away one or two terrific ideas, tools or implementation ideas from any given session or discussion.

§ Don’t worry about the tweets you miss. Rather, be excited to learn new ideas from the tweets you were able to read and process. Whatever you DO read and learn is more than you would have discovered only a few days ago.

§ Share, share, share. Do you have a great idea that worked in your school? Don’t be proprietary…why shouldn’t students everywhere be able to benefit from your spark? I met a young Spanish teacher who decided that she could not teach 11 year old kids using a 13 year old textbook. So she created her own online textbook using weebly, which anyone can view and/or use. Take a look at this: http://spanishtechbook.weebly.com/

§ Don’t be afraid of failure…your own and those of your teachers. That’s how you learn.

§ Put the education process in the hands of your students…let them own it.

So what am I going to do this summer to prepare for the 2012-13 school year as a result of participating in the ISTE Conference?

First and foremost, I am going to develop a number of action plans for the upcoming school year, focusing on:

1) Establishing a resource wiki or site for our teachers suggesting various web tools and providing links to some of the wonderful projects and tools I learned about at ISTE. I look forward to having teachers add their resources to the reference site as well as feedback from others who have tried new approaches or tools.

2) Outlining a course of professional development for our faculty for the 2012-13 academic year. The plan will include a combination of peer mentoring, online professional development, as well as discussions, demonstrations and presentations on curriculum development and technology integration.

3) Widening my own personal learning network – this was one of the main messages I took away from the ISTE Conference. In order to grow professionally and impact the learning culture at our school, I must expand my PLN and learn from the experience of others. I am awed by the quantity and quality of dedicated education professionals who are willing to share their ideas, knowledge and skills with anyone. I intend to take advantage of their openness and smarts (and in turn share my newly acquired knowledge with colleagues at our school). I will encourage our faculty members to establish and/or widen their own PLNs for the same purpose.

4) I will investigate the concept and implementation options of blended learning to see if and how our students can benefit from this educational model, both in their secular and Judaic studies.

This is a great beginning and I am excited and grateful for the opportunity provided by the Avi Chai Foundation. I hope that other members of our faculty and administration will be able to attend ISTE in future years.

Controlling the Technology Curriculum

2012-07-04T20:10:00.000-04:00

Controlling the Technology Curriculum

“The war between the digital natives and the digital immigrants is over, and the natives won.” (Marc Prensky in opening ISTE keynote). The statement points to technologies promise for student empowerment. Yet, just as in earlier eras when learning centers, project-based learning and differentiated instruction held such possibility, there is always a pull in the opposite direction.

Prensky got it right in the imagery of a “battle”. Those of us who believe in constructivist learning, need to leverage technology for this purpose. Alan November's workshops were all about this - empowering our students to construct their own knowledge. The other guys (top down educators) who were quite apparent in many of the packaged education technology solutions presented in the exhibition hall will use technology for their ends - skill based learning sells. To be sure, there is a role for skill based learning - but a limited one - one that is in the service of higher order thinking. But the natives will move on taking their learning outside of the classroom as they do now if school use of technologically reduces to skill-based learning only.

The ISTE conference was transformative for me in that it gave me the time, space and connections to reflect about these "big" technology issues. In the past, I would have sent only my technology teacher to a conference like this. Thank you Avi Chai for having the wisdom of sending a Head of School. I now can engage (and already have) my whole staff to think carefully about our technology goals for our students. I can envision a future and build capacity in the school to set us up for best practices in this area. This week, I sent an email to my parent body and my staff explaining Alan November's lesson about searching for credible sources on the internet. Although it is summer, I received more responses to that note than I have to most blogs and emails that I sent throughout the year to our community.

A few more thank yous are in order: Thank you for bringing the day schools together - it was always comforting to see and to chat with colleagues in what could have been a very overwhelming, impersonal experience. Thank you for orchestrating complicated food needs. Finally, thank you for making me into a tweeter, albeit a timid tweeter, but a tweeter nonetheless.

Twitter Comes to Life at ISTE

2012-07-03T16:32:00.001-04:00

I have written in the past about the importance that I attach to the social network Twitter, but the true importance of it was driven home to me on several occasions during last weeks conference of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I knew going in that there would be many people there that I knew about via Twitter, perhaps because I follow them or perhaps because they are "Twitter rock stars". However, my own personal "Twitter moments" at the conference made the event something that it would not otherwise have been.

To wit:

1) No sooner had I boarded my plane Sunday morning and settled into my seat than the woman across from me asked me if I was going to ISTE. Turns out it was Dr. Shira Leibowitz (@shiraleibowitz), Principal of Solomon Schechter in Westchester, NY, an avid and respected tweep, both in Jewish and general education circles. Finally putting faces to the avatars, we had some fruitful discussions, occasionally joined by Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), founder of #jedchat and Assistant Principal at DRS-HALB on Long Island.

2) While waiting to enter the opening keynote, I finally met in person Debby Jacoby (@debbyj18) of the BJE in San Francisco, someone with whom I have been corresponding all year - to the point that we have already collaborated on several projects. I should note that that last statement is not strange in the twitterverse - several presentations at ISTE were co-run by people who considered themselves colleagues and friends yet had never met before coming to San Diego.

3) I walked into the conference on Monday morning and noticed a semi-familiar looking individual sitting on the floor (which is common at ISTE) perusing his daily schedule for the day. Taking a chance, I said, "Mr. Amidon?" - and Tyler Amidon (@mramidon), who I had only corresponded with via #edchat, looked up, recognized my Twitter name written on my badge, and wound up following me to the first session of the day. We would attend several other sessions together during the course of the conference, and have continued our dialogue in the week since. As he tweeted to me following the conference: "Chatting now will be that much richer now that I've shaken your hand!!"

4) I attended a panel session about flipped learning moderated by Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergman. During the session, I was tweeting notes and questions that I had about what was being discussed. Common practice is to do this mainly for those who cannot be in the session but want to follow it anyway (multitasking is very vibrant at ISTE). After I tweeted one question about something one of the panelists said, I glanced down and saw that he had tweeted me back an answer. This back-and-forth continued for a moment or two, and in the meantime others noticed the discussion and jumped in.

Now for the cool part. No sooner did the panel end when the person sitting in front of me turned around and asked if I was Rabbi Ross (my Twitter handle). When I replied yes, he introduced himself as the person who had just tweeted me a question, and we began speaking about creating online materials for Judaic Studies classes. As we made our way towards the door, someone else stopped me, and it turned out that she had also been following the tweets and suddenly we had a very rich conversation among five or six people about some new ideas in the Jewish classroom.

5) Of course, part of the way that I choose the sessions that I attended - out of several hundred choices - was by seeing which twitter heroes I wanted to hear from for more than 140 characters. As such, I had the pleasure of hearing Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) discuss his successes at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) speak about wikis and the flat classroom, and George Couros (@gcouros) and Patrick Larkin (@patrickmlarkin) discuss visionary leadership and digital citizenship.

What is common in all of these anecdotes, and probably thousands of others that people could tell from ISTE, is that they highlighted the fact that Twitter is just a tool, but a very effective one. While I have learned much from so many people in snippet-length tweets, the most important thing to come out of all of that is the basis for real human interactions and relationships. Having interacted with people via Twitter, I knew to seek them out to learn more from them. I agree that networking with people in a blind fashion is missing something, but there is no question that it can certainly be a step to greater things.

(Cross-posted on jewishedd.blogspot.com)

Twitter Comes to Life at ISTE

2012-07-03T16:32:00.000-04:00

To wit:

(Cross-posted on jewishedd.blogspot.com)

2012-07-03T12:01:00.000-04:00

The digital experience is all the rage now and people talk about there being two kinds of populations of users: a) digital natives – mostly the younger generation who have grown up with technology and the internet and who have organically lived with it as part of their day-to-day experience. They know and understand how to use it and how it works. And, b) digital immigrants – mostly those of the “older generations” ; those of us who came to it later in our lives as it became more prevalent in society and daily usage.

I am a digital immigrant. In fact, I just recently got off the boat!

While, there is clearly a huge reality gap between learning about technology and being a real immigrant to a country, I can’t help but think about my parents’ immigrant experience as a metaphor. Like my parents who arrived on these shores in the previous generation and were strangers in America, I too sometimes feel like a stranger in this new world of technology. I’m trying to learn the language (I know some words and phrases to get me by) , I’m navigating the social and cultural ways of this new society, and I’m trying to figure out how I fit in. Thanks to the Avi Chai foundation I had an opportunity to chip away at that last week at the ISTE conference in San Diego.

My school is going through a similar experience. That is, we are a young institution only now entering this new world of technology. We’re just learning the new language and finding our way in this new world. We’re beginning to seriously explore how we can use technology to support the kind of teaching and learning that we do in our school. I know there are many other schools out there who share this reality. Schools who have watched technology and the digital workplace explode but who haven’t yet fully joined in, either because they weren’t prepared or didn’t have the staff members or leadership ready to invest in this new language and life style.

At my school we understand that the time has come. None of us can any longer afford to sit on the side lines and watch our students live digital lives without both joining them and stepping in to guide them.

I came to ISTE this week with many questions and walk away having answered some and generated others. The good news is that I’m slowly finding my way around this new world and learning to ask more pointed questions, and beginning to recognize the questions I still need to ask and conversations that I still need to have. I’ve shared many of these thoughts with my fellow ISTE participants last week over dinner and many offered suggestions. To those of you out there in the blogosphere: I welcome your input as well. I’m hoping to learn from many of you.

The operative question for me, at this point, is how do I help my staff come along on this immigrant journey with me and my leadership team colleagues. My school is a young institution, thankfully already with a culture of active learning, differentiation, and reflection. At faculty meetings and in professional conversations we’re already talking about how to structure our classrooms and design our curricula and programs in ways that engage students according to their needs, offer kids choice in their learning, and involve collaboration and authentic audiences. Our teachers are already “guides on the side” (as opposed to the “sage on the stage”) and direct their students through constructivist exercises, inquiry and projects. But, for the most part, we don’t fully understand technology nor are we yet taking advantage of the very real potential that technology has to extend our kids’ learning experience. Yes, we have a handful of Smartboards and a library of laptops, but we use them in pretty limited ways. A few teachers know how to use the Smartboard and our laptops are used mostly for word processing and searching the internet. I walk away from ISTE with the recognition that technology can support , enhance and extend the kind of active learning that we already do in our school. But how do I help my staff (and myself) get there?

We are a small school and don’t yet have the budget for an Educational Technology Coordinator to introduce and lead our motivated staff through this “immigrant experience.” I’m still working through how I, an immigrant myself, can lead my colleagues through this new experience. I’m looking to you, fellow educators already familiar with, and committed to, technology and the active learning it supports, to guide me in integrating it more into my school and helping my teachers maximize this active learning. I welcome your input and look forward to hearing what has worked for you.

Gary Pretsfelder

Head, Elementary School

Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan

Words of Woofdom from the Bearded Dog

2012-07-01T13:42:00.001-04:00

Originally posted Monday 25 June. Sadly - never appeared on this blog - sucked into the Bermuda Microsoft Triangle.... rescued only by the kindness of the mermaids.

Arff! Me hearties - the dog is back in action.

Here in sunny San Diego in a balmy air-conditioned room, enjoying the wonders of ISTE 12.

Arrrrr - wonders indeed. The Dog wonders how a board that has more than 20 000 people at one convention could allow a key note full of product placments and advertising!!

The dog was not amused.

But - the dog believes in looking on the bright side!

He is very greatful to Avi Chai for bringing him out to the West Coast where he just cannot sign the many report cards waiting on his desk.

And arrrrrr - when the dog smells the sea, he perks up and his tail has been known to wag!

ISTE, the sea, happy doggy!

Lessons from ISTE and the Supreme Court Ruling: Why it's more important to get it right than to get it first.

2012-06-29T13:05:00.000-04:00

The following post by Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is cross-posted on TechRav.blogspot.com.

I try to stay away from politics when blogging. Unless something in the news directly impacts on technology in Jewish education (like the Asifa), I shy away from commenting. It's not my role to pontificate about that latest current events and I don't think people care much about where I stand on political issues. However, I think there is a tremendous lesson about the role of technology in education to be culled from the news reporting surrounding the recent Supreme Court decision on the national health care plan.

Both CNN and FoxNews got it wrong. In their initial reporting after the decision was delivered at 10AM yesterday, they both headlined that the Supreme court had struck down the law. CNN ran the wrong headline for 6 long minutes before correcting itself and declaring that the court had actually upheld the law. How could they both be so wrong?

In a report on NPR addressing this question, Brian Stelter of the New York Times made a point that was both obvious and profound. They didn't read. In their rush to get the news first, both networks read the first few paragraphs of the ruling in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts wrote that the health care legislation could not be upheld using the Commerce Clause and ran with the headline that the Supreme Court had struck down the health care law. They failed to read the next few paragraphs in which Justice Roberts declared the law to be constitutional since its fines could be considered a tax and not a penalty.

The politics of this ruling is not something for me to comment on. However, the lesson for the role of attentive reading in our technological age is profound. How many of us are so quick to blog and tweet that we fail to read attentively and listen carefully?

This point was the source of a great deal of debate at an Avi Chai sponsored dinner at this week's ISTE technology conference. One educator posed the question that with so much tweeting going throughout the lectures, how many of us fail to listen carefully enough to understand what is really being said. I countered that with a back channel of dozens or hundreds tweeting about what was being said at the workshop, the effect deepened the conversation and made each lesson more interactive. However, I can see both sides of this debate. Yes, live tweeting a lesson or news event can make a discussion more interactive but is this at the expense of more active listening and reflection?

Many researchers have made similar points. In the book iDisorder, Larry Rosen discusses the similarity between technology users and various psychological disorders. For example, the behavior of many people during a lecture with many windows open on their laptop while they simultaneously take notes, tweet, and instant message closely mimics the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. In the Shallows which I have blogged about in the past, Nicholas Carr argues that technology is discouraging attentive, careful reading since we read much more superficially online, jumping from hyperlinked page to page.

I believe that this desire to get things fast whether in the news or on Twitter mitigates against comprehension of complex text requiring higher-order thinking whether it be supreme court rulings or Talmudic debates. This should give us pause when embracing technology in education. While tweeting and other real-time technology tools can add interaction to a class, is this at the expense of depth and thoughtfulness? Other technology tools which can encourage reflection like blogging and asynchronous online discussion should be considered to encourage this type of thinking. Or perhaps sometimes we should just turn off the technology and practice deep reading and attentive listening. Time to pause and reflect are vitally important for our students (and for us). It's more important to get it right than to get it first.

From Facilitator to Activator

2012-06-29T11:56:00.000-04:00

cc licensed image shared by flickr user The Darling Librarian

The definition of a motion leader is one who motivates the unmotivated in a way that the unmotivated then thank them for, Michael Fullan, ISTE Conference, 2012, Session Title: Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy and Change Knowledge

I came to ISTE (International Symposium on Tech Education) with one essential question: how can I, as a principal, support teachers in my school to improve learning? Perhaps attending an educational technology conference I should have shown more interest in the technology. And, I’ll admit, I was wowed by much of the technology. More significantly, I was moved by the focus on learning.

I gained more than I ever expected, experiencing a shift in a paradigm I had embraced and that has shaped my leadership in recent years. In the very first session I attended Monday morning, Michael Fullan, in true motion leader style, motivated me (ok I was already motivated, but supported me) to shift my perspectives on the role of teacher and by extension the role of principal from facilitator of learning to activator of learning.

Quoting John Hattie, Michael Fullan relayed that there is a .17 effect size on student learning when teachers act as facilitators of learning through problem based learning, simulations and gaming, and individualized instruction. Alternatively, there is a .84 effect size on student learning when teachers serve as activators of learning through offering feedback, accessing thinking, supporting challenging goals, and monitoring learning. It does not take extensive training in statistical analysis to find this research compelling.

I know, we love problem based learning, simulations and gaming, and individualized instruction. And, Michael Fullan did offer appropriate caution in our interpretation of Hattie’s findings, positing that gaming, for example, as currently utilized may not yet be effective but that skilled teachers may develop high quality use. Still, without dogmatic either/or – facilitator or activator – lines in the sand, I accept and appreciate Michael Fullan’s redirection.

Michael Fullan activated my learning even further, leaving me not only with a direction, but also with some concrete steps as to how to move forward. And, again, it’s not about the technology. Wisdom I gleaned included:

Offer respect to others before it is earned
Engage in impressive empathy, meaning empathy even for those who stand in your way
Invest in capacity building – human capital and social capital
Build social contagion
Eliminate non-essentials
Focus on a small number of ambitious goals.

Perhaps it is paradoxical that at a technology conference I walked away with the message that what matters is not new, but eternal. What matters is what has mattered for millennia: the quality of our relationships, our respect for one another, and the supportive environments we create. I spent the rest of the conference attending some fantastic sessions, learning some impressive technology tools, but most essentially, connecting and engaging with others who care deeply about learning. At a conference about what is current, I focused on what is enduring.

To Michael Fullan, the ISTE organizers, the AVICHAI Foundation who sponsored my participation, and the engaging educators with whom I learned, from one of the motivated, thank you!

Rabbi Shira Leibowitz, Ph.D.
Lower School Principal, Schechter Westchester
Twitter: @shiraleibowitz
Cross-posted at http://www.sharingourblessings.wordpress.com/

The ISTE12 Conference - WOW!

2012-06-27T18:51:00.003-04:00

I am writing this post as I sit and wait for the final keynote at the ISTE12 conference to begin. I'm surrounded by thousands of people as I am trying to reflect on what I experienced during the last 4 days. Thanks to a generous grant from Avichai, I had the opportunity to attend this amazing conference in San Diego. The ability to be part of this large gathering of educators made me feel like I am part of a massive club of committed educators ("techies" if you will) all of whom want to learn about education in the 21st century, technology integration and want to be informed of the best tools and ideas that exist out there. In preparing for this, I read the blogs, tweets and postings about ISTE. I tried to get ready by making sure I pack comfortable shoes (I am usually in high heels), charge all my idevices, fill out the forms, spend a week choosing and re-choosing sessions, print out my schedule, print labels with my information for all the prizes I thought i will be winning, take another look at my sessions and change some things around, sign up for some after hours parties and basically... make sure I can make the most out of the experience. But nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced. It truly was an overwhelming experience (in a good way), full of learning and intense jam-packed few days. I tried to do it all, which was really impossible... I attended session after session, running from one end of the convention centre to the other, I went through the exhibition, trying to have hands on experiences and listen to some information about products and services (and yes, I admit, I wanted some swag, things to take home, praying that I win a an iPad). I sparked conversations with complete strangers, I tried to learn from everyone and everything: poster sessions, other educators, keynote speakers, computers, tweets, random volunteers, and ofcourse- children. Each session I attended opened the door to new information, meeting new people, considering new options for improving teaching and engaging student, but most importantly - learning. I will be amiss if I don't mention the opportunity that I had to connect with the great group of Avichai educators who joined me on this journey. It was fantastic to meet them, talk to them and be able to reflect with them each evening on what we learned and discuss the application of this learning opportunity in our different Jewish day schools. I made some great friends, got to meet face to face some of the individual's I've been following on twitter, and catch up with some old friends as well. This alone - was an important and worth while experience. It was great to meet other Jewish day school educators who, like me, are so passionate about education and technology, who are committed to teaching and learning in today's digital age, and who want to make a difference in Jewish education. ISTE also helped me think about our learners: our students and the way we can reach them better, how we can get them to collaborate, how I and the teachers I work with can make a difference in their lives by implementing these fantastic ideas, tools and incredible learning opportunities. There is no arguing that digital age learning and teaching has changed and will continue to change. ISTE helped me See what digital learning can be all about. On one hand, the gurus in the field presented. People like Adam Bellow, Vicki Davis, Michael Fullan, Tony Vincent and other big names offered fascinating opportunities to learn about topics and issues close to my heart, as a technology coordinator and a teacher (first and foremost). They had much to say about education as a whole, and technology's role in it. Then there were sessions where everyday teachers, and even students (yes, students!) presented and showed us, the participants in the conference, what can be done. It was just inspiring to be part of that. ISTE's theme was "Expanding the horizons" and that they really did. New possibilities were introduced, sites, apps, social media, products and so much more are the things I'm coming home with. I'm committed to share this learning, whether it is by including it in the posts I'll be writing, I'll be presenting it in the PD I'll be offering, or by implementing it by introducing it in our PLCs throughout the upcoming year. Thank you Avichai for your generosity and for this amazing opportunity, for your hospitality and for all the excitement I feel as I think of what I'm coming home with and where I can take this knowledge from here. I can't wait to impart this knowledge! Avital Aharon J.S and Technology Coordinator Associated Hebrew Schools Thornhill, Ontario, Canada

Technology in Education is not about Technology

2012-06-27T15:20:00.002-04:00

That title must seem fairly strange, especially as I am now at day 4 of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, a 20,000 person shindig with educators from around the country and around the world all here to discuss and learn about - what else? - technology and it's place in education. I will post more about someof the specific take-always from this conference and some of the really cool things about it as well in later posts. For now, I want to focus on this one issue.

One of the overriding themes at many of the sessions that I have attended has been about keeping the focus on the students. I attended a session this morning co-presented by George Couros and Patrick Franklin, principals in Alberta, Canada and Burlington, Massachusetts, respectively, who between them have over 27,000 followers on twitter and are certifiable rock stars here at ISTE. One of the first things that George said was that he wants to remove the word digital from what we do because it incorrectly puts the focus on that aspect of our work. Their talk was about how principals envision their schools and how they encourage their students to think and take control of their education. It just so happens that a lot of technology is really useful for doing all of this - but it remains a tool, not the driving force.

On Monday morning, I attended a session by Alan November, wonderful speak who consistently advocates for teachers to find more and more ways to make students more active within the classroom. A key word in his presentation was motivation, with a particular focus on finding "jobs" for individual students to carry out in the classroom, such as scribe or researcher, that will allow them to have a greater and more active role in the learning that is taking place. Again, many of these ideas could not come to fruition without the powerof technology and the web, but the goal is what we do with all of that technology, not our focus on it.

I could go on and on, and I yet may do so in later posts. If you want to see my notes from the seasons I have attended, I have been posting them using Evernote (a wonderful tool that Tzvi Pittinsky just wrote about on his TechRav blog) and sting them to twitter (follow me at @rabbiross). But my point for now is that this conference is largely nothing that a critic of technology in schools would assume it to be. Yes, everyone is walking around with a smartphone and an iPad or chrome book or laptop and sometimes using more than one at a time. Yes, there is an overwhelming large vendor expo with more technology products than you could ever dream about. And, yes, I have learned about some really cool sites and devices.

But at the end of the day, this is an education conference and not a technology conference. To those people who have an allergic reaction every time someone suggests a new device or app to be used in the classroom, get over it. Technology already exists in your classroom and the best thing that you can do is to get ahead of it. It is indeed overwhelming and there are more products and sites and apps out there than we have time to think about. Nevertheless, the word from the experts and gurus out here is that the key is to keep our focus on where it has always been in schools - on our students. The rest is just commentary.

(cross-posted to jewishedd.blogspot.com)

ISTE 2012 Lessons Learned – My Soap Box Moment

2012-06-27T04:33:00.002-04:00

In the ISTE 2012 opening Keynote on Sunday afternoon Mark Prensky declared that the war is over and that the Digital Natives have won. And while his presentation was both compelling and entertaining, he has committed the grievous act of over generalization which may ultimately leave many students floundering in new 1:1 programs.

Children born in this day and age have a very high level of exposure to technology. Because of that, assumptions are made regarding the ability of children to quickly adapt to new technologies and apps. And while this may be the case for the majority it is definitely not the case for all.

There are many kids who come to school in Kindergarten or First Grade and their only experience with computing technology is with an iPad, iPhone or other touch device. This would be great if the school were implementing a 1:1 program with iPads. But what if your school was using laptops, or requiring time in a computer lab? The image of Scotty talking into a mouse immediately comes to mind (Star Trek). Imagine this 5 or 6 year old sitting at their computer and wondering why they can’t get to any of their apps when they touch the screen. And while most of these children can learn to use the other devices and applications some may struggle.

In this day and age where we are looking to technology to help boost differentiation let us not use technology to hinder it. As an IT Director, the idea of BYOD gives me nightmares, but maybe there is something to dealing with the headaches to better serve the our students.

ISTE 2012 Day 1 Wrap Up

2012-06-26T23:12:00.002-04:00

Wow! Is this year’s ISTE conference different or what?

Aside from the fact that the conference is taking place in my home-town of San Diego, I am in a very different place from last year and therefore the conference has been a very different experience. Without further ado, let’s get into the wrap up!

Keynote

The “Keynote Panel” was honestly pretty disappointing. Although Sir Ken Robinson was hysterical and on-point, this was lost in the over-commercialization and ISTE promo videos. I think ISTE might have forgotten that most of us don’t care so much about ISTE as we do about education, technology and learning… Nevertheless, there were some high-points:

The idea espoused by Sir Ken constantly is the idea that our lives are not linear, they are organic, and our education models need to reflect this. This idea is crucial to moving education forward and out of our current, Industrial Revolution, model of education, in which students are looked at as products needing to be built, rather than seeds which need to grow. For more on this I highly recommend you watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Shawn Covell (the lady from Qualcom) brought to light/reminded us of a very important reality: Mobile is the future, actually, mobile is the present. More people have access to a mobile phone today then to clean drinking water and toothbrushes. In the very near future there will be more devices on the mobile network than people on the planet. Mobile is the new, universal platform for communication. She also reminded us, over and over again, that Qualcom is the leader in mobile tech. My takeaway: Mobile is this generation’s Tower of Babel, the trick is to use it to unite humanity for good and not the opposite.

Marc Prensky, author of a number of books, spoke very intelligently about “digital wisdom”, the concept of merging our brains with machine brains. To do this we need to ask a very important question: What do our brains do better and what do machines do better? That was, perhaps, the most eye-opening concept of the whole keynote. Marc presented an answer to the question – which I felt was incomplete (although I am sure he would tell me that his book will answer the question more thoroughly) – teachers can provide empathy and passion, a machine can never do this.

Finally, Blossom – I mean Mayim Bialik – between trying to tell us how TI products shaped her life, was great. She was inspirational as she spoke about the influence of amazing teachers on her life and the importance of breaking down the walls that prevent our students from seeing themselves as they should see themselves. She told us that growing up she, “could not envision a female scientist” and she is glad that she was shown how. Very inspirational indeed.

One final message from Sir Ken: “If you design a system based on standardization and conformity, don’t be surprised if you get it…”

Poster Sessions and Schmoozing

I didn’t have much time to jam through poster sessions after the keynote and between all the hellos from old ISTE friends, but the big take-away that I took was the importance of collaboration in the 21st century classroom. This collaboration must be global as well as local and we must be facilitators as well as guides in this process. This collaboration builds a sense of empathy, sensitivity and develops real-world skills.

I spent much time chatting with people in the lobby, this “relaxed time” was so valuable for processing and assimilating the information that I received during the keynote and poster sessions. This is definitely a lesson that I plan to integrate into my classroom and informal education, rest facilitates creativity.

For more on my travels at ISTE 2012, you should follow me on twitter: @theadamsimon and check back on this blog.

Look for ISTE 2012 Day 2 Wrap Up soon!

[Cross-posted from http://adamsimon.org/blog/iste-2012-day-1-wrap-up/]

Evernote can be a Game Changer in the Classroom

2012-06-26T18:27:00.001-04:00

The following post by Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is cross-posted on TechRav.blogspot.com.

One of the most amazing things about attending a conference like ISTE is the power of serendipity. Some of the best sessions are the ones you don't plan for, they just happen. This morning, thanks to a tip by @AvitalAharon at last night's @AVICHAIFDN dinner, I went to special session on Evernote. Even though, I already personally use Evernote, what you can do with students blew my mind. This is definitely the go-to app for any iPad deployment. Below are some of my notes from the session.

The driving force behind Evernote is that it will help you remember everything. A basic goal of education is to increase knowledge over time. This can be illustrated by a simple upward graph where as we advance in our educational years, our knowledge increases. However, in our experience with students, usually there are jagged edges in this graph; gaps where knowledge is lost over time like the end of the school year or summer break when not only do students forget but they often lose their notes so do not have the ability to reconstruct what they learned. I have experienced this in my own life many times, where notebooks, even those that I save, wind up filed away in storage without easy access and even notes taken n computer can sometimes be lost when a computer crashes or is upgraded to a new model. With Evernote all of these notes are synchronized across over all devices so they are saved FOREVER.

Students will have a lifetime career in education and usually we only focus on one fixed point with the student, the grade they are in. The student with Evernote can always use whatever they love and have access to everything. Evernote can be the bridge to tie a lot of technologies together during the lifetime of the student. In a BYOD program students can use Evernote with whatever they have, phones, laptops, iPod Touch. They start to see technology as a tool, not a toy to create, collect, and collaborate.

In one app you can create, collect, and collaborate. You don't need you to train teachers and students on multiple apps to accomplish these 3 goals. Evernote is a box to put everything in. It's a digital binder and more. You can keep everything you've learned throughout the year. At the end of school, students used to throw their binders away. With Evernote this binder is saved forever.

Anything can become a note in Evernote, a text note, to-do list, snapshot note, and voice note. It's as simple as possible for you to get stuff into Evernote. Every few minutes, notes are synchronized. The Mac version is the most full featured version of Evernote. In a school setting, you are not restricted to just typing notes. You can use voice note. This can be great for students if they lose their train of thought and can't keep up with the teacher. Instead of desperately trying to transcribe what the teacher is saying without understanding, they can turn on the record button and just focus on listening to the teacher, knowing they can listen again and write the notes later.

You can drag and drop PDFs into Evernote. Use an app called Clearly to remove all ads from the website first and then drag to Evernote. You can organize stuff in a Notebook and then you can out all of your Notebooks inside a stack for further filing. You can now collaborate by sharing individual notes or a whole notebook with others. Everything in Evernote is private by default. You have to decide to share.

There are also apps to automatize things in Evernote like to send starred Gmail messages to Evernote or starred Google Reader posts. You can also use the note links in Evernote to create a table of contents in a new note. Since each note has its own unique link, you merely create a new note with a list of hyperlinks to each of the other notes and you have a Table of Contents.

Evernote Hello! is an app to remember everyone you meet. You can email into Evernote by forwarding to your personal Evernote email address in settings. You can choose tags by putting # then tag at end of subject line. You get a note in your Evernote with the title and Notebook based on the email.

Evernote has image recognition so it will recognize handwriting and text from notes for a keyword search. Can snap photo into every whiteboard into Evernote and automatically put into Notebook shared with students. When you do a keyword search then it will look up everything including pictures notes which it recognizes as containing these words.

Evernote partners with a number of apps. These include:
Clearly
Hello
Food
Sketch
Peek (for fash cards)
Penultimate

Evernote is great tool for portfolios. For example, can photograph science projects together with papers on it so it can be in the student portfolio. Can set up scanner which will go directly into the Evernote accounts of students using the Evernote email in settings.

In her blog post, Our Second Graders are Piloting Evernote at Van Meter Shannon Miller describes how her students used Evernote in second grade. Her kids made a "My Community" project where kids took pictures around the school with their iPads and put it into their Evernote account. They took all the pictures and made it into a flippable ebook using Flipmaps. Here is a video by a 2nd Grader explaining Evernote.

The Nerdy Teacher is a high school English teacher who had a class so students with iPads. He wanted to use free apps and needed something for kids to take notes and share ideas. In No Tablets, No Problem Thanks to Evernote he describes how he used Evernote to solve this. He points out that kids catch onto Evernote quickly. They explore it and then they run with it. Evernote allows high school kids to keep all their information. Many of them are so disorganized and with Evernote kids can organize and tag so easily. Tagging notes comes naturally to them since they tag pictures on Facebook all the time. They can then search a notebook. A kid who wants a teacher to slow down but is embarrassed can hit the mic button and start recording the lecture. Kids can use Evernote on their phone too in case they don't have an iPad or laptop. Kids can study their notes from anywhere with phone or no wifi on a bus on the way to a sports game or during downtime at a practice or after school activity. They are not tied down by textbooks or notebooks. Everything kids need is there in Evernote. You can edit a comment on a note or record commentary or corrections in an assignment using Evernote. You can also so much paper using Evernote. Teachers can even use a shared Evernote document to record audio feedback and commentary on a student's written work. This can be a very valuable educational tool.

I would recommend Evernote as a key app for any 1/1 iPad deployment. It's not about using information anymore, it's about curating information. We are overwhelmed with information, Evernote helps us organize it.

Heading to ISTE!

2012-06-22T15:02:00.003-04:00

This Sunday, I will be heading to San Diego for my first ever ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference - a 20,000+ person confab with over 700 sessions, keynotes, hangouts, hoe-downs, and every other possible way of getting a bunch of committed, innovative, and wired educators together to talk about ways to improve the field. And, of course, it is a good excuse to be in San Diego during the last week of June.

I will be blogging from the conference, and tweeting as well (follow me at @rabbiross) and will obviously have much more to say once I am there and get over the feeling of being overwhelmed. Right now, simply looking at the convention center is making me feel overwhelmed. A few thoughts before I head off:

1) Live meetings are important. One thing I am looking forward to at this conference is finally meeting many of the people that I know only through twitter and the blogosphere. Some of them I simply follow. Some of them I have had long, drawn-out twitter-fueled conversations with. Some of them I can almost pick out of a crowd. Some hide behind an animated avatar. As wonderful as social media is - and I am a believer - there is nothing that substitutes for sitting down for a chat or hearing a live session from someone that you have already gained so much from.

2) Everyone is your teacher. As the Sages say, "Who is wise? He who learns from everyone." I have no doubt that every single one of the 20,000 people in attendance at ISTE will have the potential for teaching me something, whether they are presenters or people waiting in front of me on line to get into a session. There will be so many people there from so many walks of life and types of schools (from around the country and around the world), and there are so many innovations being tried in classrooms that chances are anyone I speak to will have something to say to me that I do not already know. At the same time, I have to be willing to share and not assume that as a newbie at the conference I have nothing to contribute - as I said, everyone here will be a teacher.

3) Building a Jewish education technology cohort. I am attending this conference thanks to the good graces of the AVI CHAI foundation, who are sponsoring Jewish educators at ISTE for the second time. In addition, several other Jewish foundations will be sending cohorts, and many other ISTE veterans from Jewish day schools will be attending on their own as well. As events like this become more fixed on the calendar of Jewish schools, and as the network of ISTE attendees from such schools continues to grow, the impact on the type of education that we are able to provide to our students will increase as well. While Judaic education specifically currently is far behind more general subjects such as math and science in terms of the resources that are available online, an ever-growing group of Jewish educators will help to begin to produce materials and ideas that will allow others to leverage the power of technology to improve and enhance their classroom environment.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for updates from the conference.

(cross posted on jewishedd.blogspot.com)

Playing with Your Food

2012-04-03T17:11:00.004-04:00

Soon enough the Seder will be here. After we sit down and have our first cup of wine we will say, “This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and celebrate Passover.” These are not original, but I wanted to ask three questions. Why do we open the Seder with these words? Why do we make the Matzah the focal point of our discourse on freedom? Isn’t it a little late to be inviting people to our Seder?

Both literally and figuratively we want to make sure that everyone has a place at the table. So while we should be concerned about people who are hungry and are excluded due to poverty, we are also concerned with those who for other reasons are excluded from joining in the celebration. At its core, Passover is a holiday in which we celebrate becoming a nation. As we start the Seder we remind ourselves that we need to retell the national narrative in a way that includes everyone.

It is not surprising to see food as the media of choice for a ritual. We do love our food. In many respects we preserve memory with all of our eating. At its core Passover is a celebration of the vitality of the Jewish People. From its conception we split up into family groups to celebrate the Passover sacrifice. In reality as much as we talk about living in a greater Jewish community; we all live in many different smaller communities. So while we have a mitzvah to sit and eat and remember, inviting people to our Seder knits together our communities into this ideal larger community.

We might think that it is too late to wait until we are sitting at our Seder to invite people. I prefer to think about the fact that we are challenging ourselves for the work of the entire upcoming year. Whether the issue is poverty or inclusion in the community, there is not going to be a quick fix that we can accomplish in the night of the Seder. To the contrary, we are actually committing ourselves to do the heavy lifting throughout the course of the whole year. Through sharing meals we each can connect to the network of Jewish tables, but is one meal enough? We need to work all year to link these communities in a deep and lasting way.

The Seder begins with this Matzah and it ends with the finding and eating of the Afikoman. In the Seder, the Matzah keeps our attention focused through a game of hide and seek. Through the course of year we are also playing another game of linking people to our common table. Similar to what we see on Purim it would be an interesting game of connecting the dots if we were to map out how a network of Mishloach Manot was connected.

Thanks to a grant from Avi Chai this past summer I attended Games for Change. This is a wonderful conference on using games for education and social change. There I learned about Macon Money. Macon Money is a community-wide social game designed for the residents of Macon, Georgia. Using a new local currency with a fun twist, the game builds person-to-person connections throughout the community while supporting local businesses. This game seemed to have been an amazing way to create positive incentives around the people of Macon building community. I would encourage you to learn more about how the game worked. In addition to giving its participants the feeling of community, it produced amazing data.

I am not trying to limit our imagination about Passover to a large social game like Macon Money, but you have to admit that there are some similarities and they are both fun. I have no doubt that if you mapped out the Mishloach Manot from your community or our efforts to invite people to our Seder it would look like this data from Macon Money.

In addition, there is no doubt that realizing this network on Passover has an effect on community throughout the year. What would it look like to play a version of Macon Money in a local Jewish community? How might this change how we think about and even do community throughout the year? What would it look like as an experiment to take some money out of core allocations from our local Federations and give that money to the users to create community and let them use this communal currency to "play Jewish community"? I am not only interested in making participation fun; I am also interested in inverting how we spend our time and money. What would it look like for agencies to be spending less energy, money, and time arguing and reporting on the importance of their work to the people who volunteer and work at Federations and more time reaching out to people to use their services and participate in the community? The work of Federation is serious work, but this does not mean we should overlook the value of games. I am not overlooking the fact that games can craft serious fun, but this kind of game is important because the game mechanics themselves create incentives for the desired behavior at every level.

I am not suggesting that we leave the future of our community up to chance. I realize that there might be a risk of putting this spending power in the hands of the players, but this will all be happening within the larger planning process for a community or what the players call the rules of the game. But structuring this like Macon Money ensures that our communal currency is current and up to date with the changing needs of our community. It might be interesting to see how this kind of game might play out (pun intended) in terms of including the people most excluded from our Seder. Our future is way too serious to not have fun with it. It is time to play with our food. Chag Kasher V’Sameakh- Have Fun and Liberating Passover

- Adapted from my blog saidtomyself.com

Rabbi Avi Katz Orlow is the Director of Jewish Education at the Foundation for Jewish Camp

Children and Technology: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerous

2012-03-19T13:15:00.001-04:00

As our society becomes even more dependent on technology, we will have to continue adapting to the technology innovations that continue to amaze us. The constant advances in everything from mobile gadgets to our household appliances will force us to change the way we currently do everyday tasks. If you need help figuring out how to use any of the new technology, just ask your kids.

Joking aside, children adapt quickest to new technology because they don’t really have to adapt much. Swiping on an iPad screen, controlling the Xbox 360 Kinect videogame console through virtual reality, or starting the family’s washing machine from a mobile app seem to come naturally for children. In the same way that parents joked in the 1980s that they needed their children to program the VCR, today’s parents marvel at how comfortable their children are with new technology.

Children as young as four years old are using the Internet, mobile devices, and gaming consoles. In some cases this is a good thing, but there are certain risk factors that parents should be aware of. While technology can be used for positive educational purposes, there are also serious physical and psychological concerns.

A recent Nielson study finds that in households owning a tablet computer and with children under 12, 70% of children use the tablet. 77% of these children are playing games, while 57% use the tablet for educational purposes. The rest of the most common responses include 55% of these children using the tablet for entertainment purposes; 43% to watch television and/or movies; and 41% to keep the child occupied while at a restaurant or event.

Many parents report that letting their children use tablet computers like the iPad can be very helpful when waiting at the doctor’s office, on long car rides, and before the meal arrives at restaurants. There are also advantages to having children do their homework on the iPad. Julie Feldman of Farmington Hills, Michigan explains that her daughter Emily (a 4th grader at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit) is excited to come home and finish her advanced math homework on the iPad using the application Wowzers. Feldman, a registered dietician, also sees advantages in technology for children concerned about their nutrition. “My young clients are able to track their daily food intake with an app making it much easier to monitor what they eat.”

There are, however, concerns that some children are spending too much time in front of a digital screen. When children spend too many hours watching television, playing video games, surfing the Web, and using a tablet, they are likely not getting enough exercise or face-to-face social interaction. Dr. Daniel Klein, a children’s psychologist in Metro Detroit, says he sees many young patients who are spending too much time using technology by themselves and not enough time playing outside and interacting with their peers. He works with parents and provides guidance to help monitor their children’s computer and gaming activities. There are also fears that children will see things in video games or online that will have negative effects on their behavior and can lead to anxiety disorders, violent behavior, or hyperactivity.

Feldman believes that parents should determine what technology they allow their children to use based on the child’s maturity level. She gave her daughter a cell phone when she was 8-years-old, but understands that this might be too young for other children. “It’s very dependent on the child,” she says. “My daughter spends many hours at dance classes and needs to be able to communicate with us. Having a cell phone and being able to text us is anxiety reducing for her.” She also has become more cautious about her 3 ½-year-old son’s video gaming activity as she has noticed that he is acting out violent scenes and shooting with pretend guns after playing some realistic video games.

All parents should be aware of their children’s activity online and put monitoring software in place to ensure safe experiences. If a child is using a computer, parents should ensure that adult content does not come up in search results. Google and other popular search engines on the Web have SafeSearch features to filter adult content from search results. Violent scenes can also be avoided with such applications as NetNanny, which provides Internet controls.

In addition to psychological and emotional concerns, there are also physical dangers when children use technology. Dr. Daniel Rontal, an ENT at the Rontal-Akervall Clinic, notes that with the increased popularity of portable music devices among children comes an increased health risk to children’s ears. “Some children don’t realize that something is broken on their ear buds and they scratch inside their ears,” he cautions. “There is also the danger of noise induced hearing loss and that is something that isn’t even realized until years later. It won’t show up for 15-20 years, but we’re seeing more people with early hearing loss in their mid 30’s because of listening to music which is generally being played louder than it was in the 80s and 90s.”

“Kids in general feel that they’re bullet proof,” Rontal adds. “The white iPod ear buds just sit in the ear and those are okay, but the ones that go into the ear canal, called sound isolating headphones, can definitely cause infection and scratch the ear.”

Kidz Gear offers wired headphones for children designed specifically for the Apple iPod, iPhone and iPad. The Kidz Gear headphones feature unique KidzControl Volume Limiting Technology that provides a safe listening experience while helping to protect children’s hearing. This technology delivers a safe volume limited listening experience for children that is always on and limits the volume levels to 80dB and 90dB.

New technology helps us be more productive and improves our lives, but we have to learn to use it safely and in healthy ways. So too, as adults, we must be responsible and monitor the way our children utilize technology. In some cases, technology seems to be make things worse. For example, overuse of computers and mobile devices can curtail important interpersonal communication and can hinder children from developing the skills necessary to deal with others in real life.

There are real benefits to children using technology as well. Reports abound that demonstrate how technology is bolstering children’s learning experiences and complementing the education they receive in school. Some technology is even making it easier for children with developmental disabilities. The bottom line is that, like anything, there are positive and negative implications to the latest, greatest technology innovations. There are risks to children using technology without the proper supervision and moderation. The best thing that parents can do is become well trained in the technology their children are using so that they can monitor it best. That will ensure a positive, safe, and healthy technology experience for children.

Rabbi Jason Miller is an entrepreneur, blogger and social media expert. He is president of Michigan-based Access Computer Technology, a full-scale IT and social media consulting company. He was voted by the National Jewish Outreach Program as one of the top 10 Jewish Influencers during Social Media Week in New York City this past January. Follow him on Twitter at @rabbijason.

Versions of this appeared in the Detroit Jewish News and on the Savvy Auntie website.

Interesting Questing

2012-03-19T11:52:00.000-04:00

Gaming in education, especially of the digital kind, is a big passion of mine, much of which was inspired by my attendance at ISTE last summer as an AVI Chai fellow. I was fortunate enough to be able to explore a variety of ways of doing this with the support of an iCenter iChallenge grant this year, and I even managed to figure out how to work digital hunting into my ILP (Individual Learning Project) that I’m doing for my certificate in Israel Education through the iCenter and Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies. I recently presented on Interesting Questing at the annual conference of the Illinois Computing Educators. My wiki page can be found here and my Livebinder is here. So – what did I actually do? I created and ran two quests so far this year:

The first was for about 300 6th graders. They used mobile devices to scan QR codes to read instructions, watch videos online and seek out various locations in a local synagogue while performing tasks such as making a map of Israel with their bodies and making up bag lunches for a soup kitchen. The students were divided into groups of about ten students and used their own devices – iPods, SMART Phones and iPads – to read the codes. They had a lot of fun doing it. The buzz was unmistakable as they entered the synagogue and saw the codes posted. The code shown here is the one to the opening video.

The second was far more complicated. I used ARIS, which is being developed at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It’s in development, so some wonkiness should be expected, but it’s reasonably stable. The user interface is pretty straightforward. There’s a pretty minimal online user guide and a community forum, but I found the easiest way to learn the software was to just jump in and use it. The Flash-based editor must be used on a computer, and the game is played using iOS devices. I created a hunt that had seven stations in the school, with a task to be completed at each station. The app features data collecting tools such as audio and video recording, so kids had to complete tasks such as uploading a recording of themselves singing “Ha Kova Sheli” or a photo of the group with a particular item. ARIS allows you to create characters, which made it a great choice for a Purim-themed game. Some screen shots are shown here.

The other incredibly cool thing about ARIS is that you design it using a Google map, which allows you to put clues in the real world. Literally, you can sit at home on your couch (I speak from experience here, people) and place the clues wherever you want them. Additionally, you set the range so that you can determine precisely (well, sort of – see below) where a person needs to be when a clue becomes visible to them.

ARIS allows you to have the player interact with a character, get clues, pick up or give items, so a game designed in ARIS can have all the qualities of a regular scavenger hunt with the addition of immediate gratification.

The Purim quest was designed to take place during a 35-minute rotation, in which the students were guided through joining the school network (which had been opened for the event), downloading the app and creating a user ID. They were given a brief demo on how to use the tools and access the camera, recorder and QR code scanner (called the decoder in the app). Because we were concerned about the interaction between the devices’ GPS location services and the game we made extensive use of QR codes rather than relying on the range settings in the maps.

What did we learn?

Like all activities that involved the Internet, always have a plan B. The biggest problem with the Purim quest was that our bandwidth was really stretched to the limit, which prevented the kids from uploading the media they created (such as the movies or audio recording). Unfortunately, most of the logic for the Purim quest involved uploading media before the next clue could be seen, so if the kids couldn’t upload their media the game was stopped. Luckily I had created seven different versions (for purposes of staggering the groups) with QR codes as opening plaques, so we were able to get the students started on new games when the one they were on stopped.

The other thing we noticed with the QR code scavenger hunt in the first case was that groups of ten were too large. It’s not like a group of kids following a scavenger hunt on paper; the lure of the electronic device is just too strong – if the kids can’t touch the device at least part of the time, it loses its appeal. The other issue was the accuracy of the devices’ GPS systems. When we tested ARIS on various devices – iPads, iPhones and iPods – we discovered that the accuracy of their GPS systems varied tremendously. Not surprisingly, phones seemed to work the best. I don’t know if that was because of the devices themselves or the fact that we were in the school building, but since the game was going to be played in the building, we felt we needed to compensate for the inaccuracy by setting the range pretty wide. This, of course, causes other issues in when clues showed up where they weren’t supposed to. To avoid that we used QR codes, rather than rely on the clues appearing automatically.

Designing in ARIS takes a lot of time. There’s a lot of testing involved, and it can get tedious with placing the items on the map. But it was a blast! The kids were excited to be using their devices in school, and the “coolness” factor is terrific. It’s definitely worth working with, and I’m excited to figure out where to use it next. Feel free to contact me for me information!

To Touch or To Hold: What We Gain and Lose by Using iPads in Day Schools

2012-02-20T14:52:00.001-05:00

(Cross-posted on The AVI CHAI Foundation blog)

By: Michael Berger

We all knew it was coming. Technology is making its way into day schools – like all disruptive innovation, it appears initially in a small number of schools, and within a relatively short time, it’s mainstream.

Julie Weiner’s balanced article on iPad use in Jewish day schools highlighted that we may be observing the emergence of a revolution. Was this what the move from hand-copied scrolls to printed books was like in the late 15th century? Did educators then sense that, to use Lisa Colton’s phrasing, a technological invention was becoming a societal innovation?

As someone who grew up in the day school of the 1970s, I recall the experience of “looking things up,” whether in encyclopedias, large Judaic volumes (Tanakh, Mishnah, Talmud) or dictionaries and concordances. Learning to use these texts required skills of _navigation_, honed by repeated use. Of course, which navigation skills were needed depended on the sort of text. Some were basically alphabetic, but required knowledge of grammar and identifying a word’s root – and also spotting other uses of that word. Other texts, like encyclopedias, involved an additional element of thematic classification before pulling out the volume – “under what heading or topic would you likely find X?” That was an intellectual exercise in organizing information and knowledge, realizing that this or that fact actually fit into a larger framework, which may or may not have been in my current “database.” And finally, some texts required a sequential or chronological navigation – where would one likely find the story of Ishmael, or of the manna falling? Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom or the story of Esther? These searches meant developing and committing to memory a larger storyline or order of books in which to place Biblical references, legal rulings (such as in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah or Karo’s Shulchan Arukh), or Talmudic discussions. etc.

All this searching was accompanied by a tactile and visual experience – holding large volumes, opening them up to early, middle, or later sections, leafing through them to spot key words or chapter numbers, and on occasion going back to the shelf to pull out another reference source that could help in my frustrated search to locate a passage or word.

According to several brain scientists, recent studies show how these activities help deepen the channels in the brain that make for lasting organization of the material, the creation of associations, and easier retrieval at some future date. In other words, learning is not merely access to information, but a process closer to internalization than acquisition.

Looking back, these frameworks for remembering many things also became a source of potential creativity: with the associations established in the brain, one item or data point could lead to a host of others. (Joshua Foer, author of “Moonwalking with Einstein” about memory, notes that both “inventory” and “invention” have the same Latin root – those with a large inventory of facts and ideas were the ones capable of inventing.) None of us really knows what will happen as generations of students hit a few keys and up pops a source on a flat screen. What sort of “mental scaffolding” are such students developing to organize the material they study? How do they process it, or make connections and associations when all they have to do is touch a screen and the device finishes their word for them and locates the original source?

I don’t see myself as a Luddite, nor am I advocating for keeping these advances out of schools. But we must also acknowledge that most technological leaps forward alter our experience in profound ways, both positively and in some unexpected ways. Technology no doubt helps many students get to the original sources, but it also robs the experience from its tactile dimensions and seems to sever those sources from their natural – and critically important – contexts. If you’re an educator who’s used iPads in your classroom, especially for Judaics, please share what you did and how that affected students’ learning one way or the other.

Michael Berger
Program Officer at The AVI CHAI Foundation

Click to see comments: The AVI CHAI Foundation blog

The iPad Effect in Jewish Day Schools

2012-02-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

By Rabbi Jason Miller

A version of this appeared on the JTA.org website and at Blog.RabbiJason.com

Bill Gates paid a visit to Steve Jobs toward to the end of the Apple visionary’s life. The two technology giants talked about the future of education. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, both men agreed that computers had made surprisingly little impact on schools. Gates said, “Computers and mobile devices would have to focus on delivering more personalized lessons and providing motivational feedback.” One of the many projects Jobs had hoped to develop before his life was cut short, Isaacson explained, was “to disrupt the textbook industry and save the spines of spavined students by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad.”

High School students using their iPads at
the Frankel Jewish Academy in Metro Detroit

Rabbi Joshua Spodek regularly studies the Talmud at home with his son, but when he began using an iPad and the iTalmud app, he noticed how his son responded to the “fusion of modern technology with ancient text.” Spodek, who works at the Scheck Hillel Community Day School in North Miami Beach, thought of a way to bring that technology to the classroom. The school is now offering an entirely paperless Talmud course.

“The increased levels of engagement, portability, and space and cost saving have been enormous,” said Seth Dimbert, the school’s director of learning technologies. “Normally, when you study the Talmud, each page is covered with cross-references and tertiary commentaries, and you have bookshelves filled with dozens or even hundreds of secondary reference texts. Using an iPad application puts all of that reference material in hypertext. It’s an ideal way to study the Talmud, which is in some sense the original hypertext.”

At the Frankel Jewish Academy (FJA) in suburban Detroit, students began this school year with a nice surprise. Each student in the high school received a new 16GB WiFi iPad2. The school-wide distribution of the iPad to each student is the result of both a generous gift from an angel donor and the advantageous timing in the school’s computer lease agreement with Apple. Patti Shayne, the school’s director of technology, believes the iPad project is in line with FJA’s reputation as a cutting-edge institution, especially in the area of technology.

“The move to this incredible new technology gives teachers access to so many more sources and enables students to leverage their learning. With the iPad, students have one central place for assignments, communications and in many cases, text books and reading material. They will be able to access sources not available before,” explained Shayne. “Our job is to make that learning as inspiring and exciting as possible and prepare FJA students for a future where competency with all web-based devices is the norm.”

Kindergarten students at the Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy
of Morris County, New Jersey (Photo by Johanna Ginsberg)

The students aren’t the only ones in the school who have embraced the iPads. The teachers had a chance to play with them before the students even returned from summer break. One teacher at FJA was already an iPad pro. Robert Walker, a government teacher, has had an iPad since 2009 when they were released to the public. “Where I see the iPad really impacting learning is that it appeals to so many different learning styles. Students will have more freedom in choosing the direction they want to go to master their coursework,” Walker said. “While meeting the requirements, students will also have the ability to go above and beyond what they are required to do. It’s a powerful tool that will support learning in any number of ways.”

One way the iPad will help students learn is by giving them the opportunity to review a lecture they might not have fully understood the first time. FJA’s chemistry teacher videotaped himself going through a problem and then uploaded the informational video onto the students’ iPads. “Students now have the opportunity to watch his demonstration several times,” explained Shayne. “Sometimes you don’t catch it all and some students are hesitant to speak up. With the iPad they can listen to the explanation as many times as they need at home or at school.”

That same chemistry teacher uses a free app called Mahjong Chem, which his students use to practice matching elemental names to symbols, naming polyatomic ions, assigning oxidation numbers, earning electronic configurations and understanding metric prefixes. Other apps that are being used include Pages (for word processing), Keynote (for presentations) and Numbers (an app similar to Microsoft Excel). Students are allowed to purchase their own apps, as long as the apps meet the standards of the school’s Acceptable Use Policy. Teachers may even require students to purchase apps; a requirement explained to parents in a document from Shayne as the equivalent to asking students to purchase a calculator, notebook or other necessary school supplies.

Are the students using the iPads for serious academic work or are they just expensive video game consoles with a pretty screen? According to 12th grader Shira Wolf of West Bloomfield, it’s a mix. “In Jewish Leadership, our teacher, Mr. [Marc] Silberstein, is trying to be completely paperless so we went over the syllabus on our iPads and got to play around with the neuAnnotate app to annotate it.” She also noted that it’s common to see her peers playing the popular game “Words with Friends” on their iPads during study hall or even in class, which is frowned upon.

Other Jewish day schools across the country are incorporating iPads into the schools as well. While it’s mostly middle schools and high schools, there are also some elementary schools that have made iPads part of the learning process. At the Modern Orthodox Ohr Chadash Academy in Baltimore, all fourth-through-sixth graders have an iPad. As Julie Wiener, educational writer at The Jewish Week points out, the iPads “bring challenges as well: they are fragile, expensive, awkward to type on and chock full of distractions, especially when connected to the Internet. And it is unclear whether -- once its novelty wears off and if it becomes as commonplace as pencils and notebooks -- the toy-like iPad will retain its magical power over children.”

Some educators are quick to point out that if teachers use the new technology to teach the same way they always have then the technology is not being used correctly. “To let students simply listen to lectures on their own time – that doesn’t require an iPad. It requires a tape player. Or to study Talmud in the same way, just with a different visual – again, we’re not revolutionizing education,” argues Dr. Erica Rothblum, the Head of School at Beth Hillel Day School in Valley Village, California. “At our school, we have a 1:1 iPad program for all students in grades 4-6, but we are very aware that this is a tool. There are times that a pen and paper are better tools, and students will use those. The iPad does allow us, however, to encourage discovery, play and research.

At Rothblum’s school, the students are creating a “visual tefillah” by finding visuals that represent their prayers and using keynote, including animation, to illustrate what the prayer means. Students there are also creating “voicethreads” in Hebrew in which they record themselves telling a story or a conversation in Hebrew and then parents, teachers and their peers can listen to the recording and leave comments.

So, what’s next? Mobile device learning is certainly the wave of the future and school administrators are predicting innovations that never would have been believed a decade ago. When cell phone technology became inexpensive enough for high school and middle school students to be able to bring their phones to school, policies were quickly implemented to first ban the communication devices and then eventually place restrictions on their use.

One thing that has changed with this younger generation is the innate comfort level they have with technology. After all, this is the generation that has grown up with iPods, digital cameras and smartphones. Shaindle Braunstein-Cohen, former director of the Hermelin ORT Resource Center, underscored this when she said, “We used to teach technology as a subject. We would teach how to use a device. It’s no longer the ‘something’ that we teach; it’s the platform on which we deliver information.”

When asked how long Shayne expects FJA will keep the current crop of iPads until they become stale or even obsolete as Apple continues to release more powerful versions each year, she responded, “We are looking at a three-year refresh rate. As to what the future holds, maybe one of our students will invent it.”

Follow Rabbi Jason Miller on Twitter @RabbiJason

Examples of EdTech at the MHA

2012-01-24T10:18:00.001-05:00

As a co-facilitator in Michael Minno's mini-keynote on 21st Century Learning Environments at last week's NAJDS Conference, I was asked to collect samples of various ways in which we are using new "environments" for learning in our school. I tried to so from all of our divisions - Early Childhood, Elementary School, Middle School, and High School - and from all of our subjects, General Studies and Judaic. I posted them to this site and hope to continue to update it with new examples as they emerge from our classrooms.

Let us know what you think and be sure to let us know what you are doing in your schools so that we can all continue to learn from each other!