technology & jewish education (jewish week)
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8/9/2019 Technology & Jewish Education (Jewish Week)
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The New York Jewish Week Education Supplement 2010
Technology’s Integration into the Jewish Classroom
By Rabbi Jason A. Miller
Many 30- and 40-year-olds will remember when the single cart with a computer and monitor was
wheeled into the classroom and the students formed a single line waiting for a chance to use the
device for a few minutes. Perhaps it was typing out a few lines of code in BASIC to move thecursor several inches along the screen, or perhaps it was creating an elementary art design.
Today, the Technology Age has entered the classroom full speed and it is integrated in every
subject and curriculum. Jewish day schools have recently added chief technology professionals
to their management teams. Congregational schools have technology experts on the faculty.Synagogues have cleared away dusty books in the library from a bygone era to make room for
student computer labs and SmartBoards.
At the Jewish Academy of Orlando, Apple iPods are not an unusual site. While the students are
not allowed to listen to Miley Cyrus or Matisyahu in school, they can be found hooked up totheir iPods to learn Torah trope (cantillation). One of the school’s Hebrew teachers has created aset of podcasts for the students to learn individually as she works with small groups. The school
has also used blogs to connect with other Jewish schools on topics of interest. Digital
photography mixed with the latest production tool was used to create a slideshow of the childrenin Kindergarten using their bodies to form the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Linda Dombchik,
the school’s director of technology, explains how middle school students used technology to
create a virtual Holocaust Museum using Keynote, Apple’s presentation creator, to teach their
peers.
While many Jewish day and supplemental schools provide access to computer labs with dozens
of computers, some schools have transitioned to ensuring that each student has access to a laptopcomputer throughout the day. Many schools struggle to keep up with the latest technology as
students become accustomed to faster computers at home and the technology quickly movestoward obsolescence with each passing school year. Jewish Federations and foundations like
AVI CHAI work with day schools and synagogues to provide the newest computers and devices,
including SmartBoards and iPads.
The AVI CHAI Foundation has engaged with classroom teachers through experiments in an
educational technology grant program, in which 400 applications were reviewed and 30allocations were made. Eli Kannai, who directs educational technology at AVI CHAI, notes that
the field is now starting to use SmartBoards, more than just fancy projectors, in many classrooms
demonstrating the shift to “interactive teaching.”
Integration
In the past decade, the Jewish classroom has become integrated with technology. What was once
a stand-alone experience, technology is now a utility for all subjects in schools, from math andscience to Hebrew and Torah study. Students at Hillel Day School in Metropolitan Detroit use
an interactive tool called Wordle to visually represent the concept of technology. These young
students might type a descriptive paragraph about the week’s Torah portion, a poem by Israeli
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poet Yehuda Amichai, or the words of a pslam. Wordle then generates a “word cloud” with the
provided text. The words appearing more frequently show up comparatively larger in the word
cloud.
Perhaps the single greatest technology integration into the Jewish classroom centers on Hebrew
language learning. Kannai cites the enhanced use of audio and video devices to teach Hebrew.Rather than rely on the language labs of old, both day and supplemental schools are using the
latest interactive software applications to make learning Hebrew fun and challenging. Studentswho are accustomed to playing video games at home enjoy the thrill of gaming at school to learn
the ancient Jewish language. TES, the largest Jewish software distributor, has released several
applications focused on teaching children to read Hebrew, conjugate verbs, and master Biblical
Hebrew in an innovative way. Today’s children are more comfortable in front of a computer than any previous generation and the mode of learning must match the familiarity level.
User Generated Content
Another trend is “user generated content” in which teachers now create richer lesson experiences
for their classrooms, and share these tools with other teachers. Each teacher maintains awebpage and blog which students and parents may access for supplemental learning.
Additionally, students are generating their own content by filming videos and uploading them toYouTube, blogging their research projects, and collaborating with their peers on websites and
PowerPoint presentations to teach classmates. These forms of user generated content create a
virtual classroom of sorts without formalizing the distance learning approach.
As more students own personal devices that can access the Internet, we are near a situation when
every student will have such a device in class, be it a Smartphone, tablet, or small laptop. Thelessons of the past should prove helpful to a Jewish education system that needs to continuously
adapt to the technology changes in this new world. It is up to the educators to realize that before
banning iPods, iPads and laptops from the classroom, they must seek out the ways to integratethis technology into the curriculum.
Jason A. Miller writes the “Jewish Techs” blog for The NY Jewish Week’s website. He also
serves as the rabbi of Tamarack Camps and is the founding director of Kosher Michigan.