#JEd21
Jewish educators on Twitter who want to be part of a bigger conversation know the hashtag of choice is #JEd21. This hashtag was created by Phil Brodsky (yes, hashtags do have creators!) when he was the Hornstein Intern at Darim Online. Much of the conversation tagged with #JEd21 involves the application of technology to Jewish education, because after all, what is the 21st century if not the Information Age?
Longtime Jewschool readers (or dlevy groupies) might remember that I’ve been working part-time (for eight years!) on my masters degree at Hebrew College. I’m pleased to let you all know that this coming Sunday, I will be graduating with two degrees — an MA in Jewish studies and a Masters of Jewish Education. Since so much of my life has straddled the worlds of Jewish education and the internet, I set out to take a hard look at what Jewish education really does look like in the 21st century, and what it could look like if we all put our heads together.
Once my research started, I quickly realized I’d need to limit my inquiry a bit — this isn’t a doctoral dissertation, after all. So, I decided to stick with what I know best (and is dearest to my heart), supplementary Jewish education for teens. Below is the fruit of my labor. I don’t know how interesting it will be to any of you, but here you go.
Eagle-eyed readers will note that two other Jewschoolers make it into my citations.
(If you’d prefer reading a Google Doc to Scribd, I’ve got you covered.)
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This is only tangentially related to your thesis, but one place I rarely see people talking about technology and Jewish education is with technology as a resource for teachers. At one point you note that part of the problem of integrating more technology into education is the lack of computer skills more many teachers. Simply based on generations, this will rapidly change in the next 5+/-5 years, but some of the basic resources just don’t exist.
I feel there is a huge gap in Jewish education of technology geared towards teachers. Where are the lesson plan wikis? Where are the open source curriculua? Where are the summary pages of reliable online resources that teachers and use to help students learn on their own? If a teacher has a good idea that other teachers can use, where do they put that idea? There are examples of this for secular subjects, but the models for this in the Jewish community are minimal to non-existent.
—Dan · June 2nd, 2010 at 11:39 am
The Lookstein Jim Joseph Foundation Fellowship (www.lookstein.org/jjff/) is one (well-funded) endeavor to start answering the questions you pose. JESNA’s JE3 (je3.jesna.org/) also touches on these issues, although their approach is that of a publication thinking about these issues rather than a laboratory working on developing new tools.
—dlevy · June 2nd, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I’m a bit underwhelmed by the JJFF. They talk about online communities, but link to none on their website. They don’t even link to their fellows’ own group blog: jjffeducators.blogspot.com/ which seems to be fairly low on comments. The website says the online communities were supposed to be launched in May 2010, but there’s no other mention on the website. It migth be a good start, but it’s years behind the networks of secular education blogs and resources.
I’m familiar with JESNA and like a lot of their work. They definitely seem to be headed in the right direction of linking to stuff that’s out there, but there still seems to be little content generation.
There still seem to be some important gaps to fill.
—Dan · June 2nd, 2010 at 2:08 pm