Showing posts with label Classroom Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classroom Teaching. Show all posts

Sunday, December 26, 2010

"Super..." and "Amazing..." Curricular Projects

This is cross-posted from Caren Levine's blog  jlearn2.0. Caren is one of those people who is always thinking about the intersection of Jewish education and technology. Her digital and analog lenses work in stereo, kind of a unified field theory of Jewish education. She cross-posted it to YU 2.0, an wonderful membership site maintained by my friend and fellow JJF Fellow, Dr. Eliezer Jones.

A question I am often asked is, "Yes, but what are some examples of how these resources are integrated into the curriculum? By real live educators with real live learners!"

Presenting two free ebooks to whet your appetites and tickle your imaginations:

The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators: A comprehensive guide to technology in all k-12 classrooms. Articles include perspectives from administrators and teachers, as well as elementary school, middle school, and high school projects, and projects centered around particular subject matter or tools (ESL, Skype, blogging). Contributors include notable education bloggers Steve Anderson, Richard Byrne, George Couros, Larry Ferlazzo, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, and others. Check it out!


But wait, there's more! Be sure to read through Terry Freedman's The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book, a compilation that is chock full of practical ideas for the classroom. The many contributors include an international cast of educators such as Terry Freedman, Jackie Gerstein, Julie Lindsay, Sharon Peters, Shelley Terrell, Silvia Tolisana, Jen Wagner, and Reuven Werber, to name drop just a few.

 

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Unpresenting
from Heather Gold via Beth Kantor

Beth Kantor is the co-author of The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change and a fantastic social media blog about How Networked Nonprofits Are Using Social Media to Power Change. It is one of the few blogs I read daily. This came in today, and it occurred to me that there is a lot here that applies to classroom teachers as much as it does to people who present at conferences. Enjoy and add your suggestions!  - Ira

What I Learned About Unpresenting from Heather Gold

 

I first met Heather Gold when she did stand up comedy at the first Blogher conference in 2005.   In addition to comedy,  Heather is a keynote speaker and teaches her unique style of interactive performance in “unpresenting” workshops.

I do a lot of presenting and am spending to much time writing bullet points, creating slides, and practicing what I’m going to say.    I think that this puts a stop to creating conversation in the room.    I wanted to learn some conversational mechanics — so I could stop talking at people and begin talking with them.

I took one of her workshops recently.   We had a small group and each of us had to speak in front of the group while Heather coached us.   It was incredibly helpful to have another pair of eyes point out ways how you could improve to encourage more interaction.

Here’s what I learned:
  • Emotions Are More Important Than Facts: To prompt conversation, you need to make an emotional connection.  Happy, sad, angry, etc can help open the conversation.  Maybe its an opening story that sets this emotional tone.
  • Feel the Room, Be in the Moment: Do not focus on what you want to tell people, read people’s body language, make eye contact, and most importantly connect to them.
  • Know Yourself: You need to cultivate as much self-awareness as possible.  When you open up the room for conversation, the unexpected might happen.     Understand that if you’re uncomfortable, the rest of the room might not be – so sit and stay with it.   Also, self-recognition gets the most laughs.
  • The Only Thing That Matters Is That You Care: The most important thing is that you care about your topic and that you have some passion for it.  If you’re bored with what you’re saying, the audience will be too.
  • Use Call and Response with Humor: As Heather pointed out, as a stand up comic, she can tell how people are connecting – they laugh or they don’t.    One thing I learned is that if you get a laugh,  say it again in another way.
  • Vary Your Style: If your natural style is high energy, then don’t stay at the level the whole time you present.  Change volume, tone, speed, and color.
  • The Pregnant Pause: Don’t always fill the space with talk – a pause, silence can create an opening for conversation.
  • When the Group is Quiet: If the group is not responding for whatever reason,  don’t tell them they’re being too quiet.  That only encourages them to be more quiet.
  • Eye Scanning: You may engage one-on-one with someone in front of everyone in the group, but let your eyes scan the room for other people who might want to join in.   The sides of the circle or room are where there might be energy.  Giving the gift of your attention to the audience, makes it more interactive.
  • Translation Techniques: If you use any jargon, be sure to pause and ask “Does everyone know what that is?”   Try to establish relevancy in the room.
  • Traffic Cop and Threading: Keep the conversation going by summarizing points and threading through out.  Sometimes if someone takes the conversation to a place where you don’t want to go, you can use the “talk over” technique.     Some people may think it is rude, but helps you keep on track.
  • Acknowledge People: When you are threading conversations and someone shares something amazing – acknowledge it.   Also, an opportunity for threading.    Make them feel you heard them.  It’s like when a child comes to you and says, “I hurt my finger.”   You might ah …
  • Don’t Walk Out on Applause: If you get applause, wait until it is finished before the leaving the stage.
Thanks Heather for a terrific workshop!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Will Social Networks Change the World,
or Do You and I
Still Have to do the Heavy Lifting?


My friend and colleague Josh Mason-Barkin sent a few of us an e-mail his question and my reply follow. I hope you will add your thoughts.
"Malcolm Gladwell (in the New Yorker) says online social networks are not capable of empowering real and meaningful change. If he's right, what does that mean for attempts to make real and meaningful change in Jewish education?"
Josh - thanks for tossing this football out.

I think you reduce Gladwell's point to the level at which it might be paralyzing, or at least unhelpful. On one level, I think he is absolutely correct. The internet is changing the world. Not the way the men at Woolworth’s in Greensboro did. 

The social network is not a movement, at least not in terms that lead people to sing “We Shall Overcome” in a way that suggests the way things are done must change and change now. It is more a change in the way we perceive and make meaning. Not as dramatic as making a stand on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March of 1965, nor did I think we are praying with our fingers on the keyboard as Heschel praying with his feet in Selma. 

What we can do is profound, but not as dramaticly or even as profound as what Gladwell describes.

I think Gladwell has used the civil rights movement as a straw man of sorts, but one that knocks you down instead of being bowled over itself. That doesn’t mean social networking is trivial. It just isn’t going to change the world the same way as actual civil disobedience and real time advocacy will. 

At the same time, let’s look at “Yes We Can” and the Obama online juggernaut of 2008. The campaign relied heavily on social networking to mobilize money, awareness, bodies at campaign rallies and votes. They didn’t give up traditional RT campaign methodology in favor of the digital campaign. Plouffe and company’s genius was integrating the two.

One of the things I find myself saying often is that the technology is awesome. But it is not the only thing! It is a tool, not a revolution. Our success will come from integrating. Nothing will replace the value of students and a teacher sitting around a table or under a tree with texts and ideas. As Grishaver  suggests, we need technology PLUS analog/Face to Face/RT experiences, not INSTEAD of them. If the revolution means all digital all the time, it will fail as soon as the kids master the next level of the video game. He says: 
“The real point is that real life still offers some unique opportunities: classroom community, love-interests, caring faculty and a speed and spontaneity that you don’t get pounding away a keyboard with your thumbs. Virtual community makes it possible to participate with less exposure. It often feels safer. Yet Solomon and Flexner bring a whole bunch of research sources that suggest participation is higher in blended circumstances. A friend is part of a heavily funded online dialogue. The story I got from this friend was that at first, before they ever met, their online dialogue was full of posturing and pontificating. Once the online group shared a retreat together, the dialogue shifted. It became real people talking to real people.”
What social media and other Web 2.0 technologies offer is access to learners and teachers in new and exciting ways. It offers that access because they are using the technology. When we were kids (and you guys sort of still are ;-}) we went home and played with our friends, did our homework, read books and watched TV. There was not much access to us for our Hebrew school teachers when we were not in the temple. 

My sons, aged 12 and 17, now multi-task. While doing homework, they access their text messages on the phones, chat and post items on Facebook, surf the web, watch YouTube videos, etc. 

If my teachers are social media savvy, 

AND the kids let them, they can initiate or invite contacts that were unimaginable. 

AND we can entice them into other Jewish learning modes through third web sites and applications like the Embassy of Israel, the work David and others are doing in Second Life, and even blogs like Jew School and David Wilensky’s stuff. 

I am actually putting together a class called “Judaism, there’s an App for that” for our community high school. 

I am hoping to explore how we can get students to focus both their digital and analog eyes on Judaism.

So Gladwell is right. But his point doesn’t change the need for us to engage in digital forms of building learners, learning and learning communities.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Al tifrosh min hatzibur - Do Not Separate Yourself From The Community

This article was just published in the latest issue of the New York Jewish Week. I think the questions Jo Kay is struggling with cut to the core of one of the biggest challenges we face. BTW, I think Jo is one of the outstanding educators in our world.

How do we help people internalize Hillel's injunction - Al tifrosh min hatzibur - do not separate yourself from the community - in a world that is all about personalized service, and tending to individual needs?

I am less interested in how we think Jo should respond to the requests for private tutoring than I am in the question of how do better learn about people's needs, how do we meet them AND help them to be a part of our synagogue communities? I want my cake and I want to eat it! Thoughts?

Tutoring Trend Tests
Jewish Values

by Julie Wiener, Associate Editor

Several times a year, Jo Kay, the director of the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s education school, finds herself in a tricky position.

She has to decide how best to respond to unaffiliated families who — seeking an alternative to synagogue Hebrew schools — ask her if she can help them find a private tutor.

Kay ran Congregation Rodeph Sholom’s religious school on the Upper West Side immediately before assuming her current role, and her graduate school, a division of the Reform seminary, trains educators to work primarily in synagogues and day schools. A strong believer in Judaism as a communal, rather than do-it-yourself endeavor, she is not a big fan of home tutoring, even though she recognizes that many families have “extenuating circumstances” that make it necessary.

Nonetheless, due to her relationship with graduate students — many eager for extra part-time income — she’s seen as a source for tutor referrals. And, while she wishes the families who call her would instead find a place for themselves in a synagogue, she is reluctant to turn away anyone seeking a Jewish experience.

“The more families are turned away the less likely they are to connect ever,” she notes. “When I get a call from a family, I want to extend a hand, I don’t want to be just another person that they can say wasn’t interested in them.”

Kay, who hopes her tutoring students will inspire the families to get involved in congregational life, is hardly alone in her ambivalence about tutoring.

As seemingly growing numbers of families in New York and other major metropolitan areas eschew Hebrew schools for the convenience and intimacy of private tutors, many in the organized Jewish world — particularly those active in synagogues — worry that tutoring’s individualized approach, part of a larger trend in modern American culture, poses a threat not just to synagogues, but to the very ideals of Jewish community.

“There’s such a notion of privatization in the city,” observes Rabbi Felicia Sol of the Upper West Side’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. “We want to combat the notion that Judaism is all about hiring someone to meet my needs, on my schedule and not necessarily being as interested in the community at large. ... Jewish life has always been centered around the community.”

Yet at the same time, those who criticize tutoring recognize that part of the reason it remains attractive is because a number — though far from all — of Hebrew schools leave much to be desired.

And, like Kay, they understand that for many families the choice is not between Hebrew school and a tutor, but between a tutor and no Jewish education at all.

The most frequently leveled criticism against privatized Jewish education — whether with a one-on-one tutor or in a small group environment — is that it fails to teach about, or expose children to, the broader Jewish community.

Rabbi Laurie Phillips, director of education at Congregation Habonim, on the Upper West Side, likens Jewish studies tutoring to private sports lessons.

“You can learn to play soccer with a tutor, but it’s a different experience if you’re learning one-on-one versus being part of a soccer team. You’ll know how to play, but won’t know how to be part of a team.”

Jack Wertheimer, a Jewish history professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary and editor of “Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-first Century” (Brandeis University Press, 2009) wonders “how well” private programs “can socialize young Jews to feel part of a congregation.

“One of the great advantages of Jewish children being educated in schools is that they are exposed to different types of Jewish role models,” he says. “They see the rabbi, they see their teachers, they see other adults engaged in Jewish living. The private route limits the exposure of young people.”

In addition to exposing children to congregational life and, ideally, instilling in them a sense of belonging to a community, Hebrew schools, unlike tutoring, offer students a chance to socialize with other Jewish children — including ones who come from different backgrounds.

While one-on-one tutoring, by definition, cannot expose students to Jewish diversity, even small groups of kids learning together with a private tutor — such as the model Rabbi Reuben Modek offers in his Rockland-based Hebrew Learning Circles program — tend to “end up with very homogenous groupings,” notes Saul Kaiserman, director of lifelong learning at the Upper East Side’s Temple Emanuel.

“When synagogues are doing their best work, you have public and private school kids from all over the city that are having to deal with their different backgrounds and different levels of observance,” he says.

Says Rabbi Sol: “We really believe that having relationships and experiences together, and growing up with the same group of kids, instills something in our children that ‘it’s not just all about me.’”

At B’nai Jeshurun even the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony — and, while an exception is made for special-needs children, privately tutored children cannot have a BJ rabbi officiate, nor can they have the ceremony on Shabbat morning or a community mincha —teaches about community, Rabbi Sol says.

“B’nai mitzvah don’t lead the whole service, because it’s not only about them. The ultimate expression of bar mitzvah is actually becoming a functioning participant in the community at large — not that everyone suspends their own spiritual needs to have a concert or performance by a 13-year-old kid.”

Even if Hebrew schools do a better job than tutoring when it comes to fostering community, some leaders believe that synagogues would do well to adapt some of the practices of private tutoring — such as offering students more flexibility, more options and one-on-one attention.

“The organized Jewish community should adapt this model within its institutions so people don’t have to seek it outside,” says Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, which often gets calls from people seeking recommendations for a private tutor.

“If the goal is to provide Jewish education, then we should provide as many opportunities to get there as possible,” he says.

Some Hebrew schools offer some of these features, particularly opportunities for one-on-one attention.

Central Synagogue, one of the few Hebrew schools to employ full-time teachers, has a homework room, where children can go after class to receive extra help.

Scott Shay, who co-founded and helps run the Jewish Youth Connection, a Sunday school that is now sponsored by Kehillath Jeshurun, on the Upper East Side, says his program is a “hybrid” that provides the best of what Hebrew school and private tutoring have to offer.

All the JYC students spend part of Sunday morning working on Hebrew one-on-one with college students, called “big brothers and big sisters,” Shay says. The college students often check in on their charges during the week in order to see how they are managing their homework.

But the program also features regular classes, as well as parties and other group activities.

Where private tutoring wins hands-down, however, is convenience. With a teacher who comes to your home at a mutually convenient time, there is no commuting, no need to carve out one, two or even three afternoons a week — and for busy families struggling to balance an array of competing demands and activities, this is no small thing.

Nonetheless, argues Kaiserman, convenience isn’t everything.

“I suspect those parents wouldn’t have their kids study karate or ballet in their living room, but somehow manage to get them to class because they want a quality program, and value it.”

Hebrew schools, he says, need to offer high quality — to compete not only with tutors, but with “the marketplace of after-school activities.”

“We’re down the street from the [Metropolitan Museum of Art], so we have to offer something as good as an art class at the Met,” he adds.

And while “we try to make it not impossible or unbearable,” Kaiserman says, “I don’t think inconvenience is necessarily a negative. Jewish values, yeah, they’re inconvenient. That’s the whole point. If they weren’t we wouldn’t need to be learning about them.”

JYC’s Shay agrees that requiring a bit of effort from parents is not necessarily a bad thing.

“While for some tutoring is a good option, I think there’s tremendous value in the parent having to get up and bring the child to a place with other Jews and other parents and say ‘This is something we Jews do,’” Shay says. “As opposed to saying ‘Here’s Rabbi X who’s coming, and your piano teacher is coming an hour later.’”

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Serious Approaches to Learning


My friend Josh Mason-Barkin gives a great review of the new Coen Brothers' film A Serious Man from the perspective of a Jewish Educator. I found one section particularly relevant given my experience this week with the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows and my previous post. Read Josh's whole review at http://tapbb.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/a-serious-ennui/. (Full disclosure-Torah Aura Productions publishes some of my work from time to time, and is owned by people I consider to be part of my family. That doesn't make them wrong!)

Jewish schools need to strategically and thoughtfully integrate technological tools into their classrooms, and publishers need to create materials that are congruent with these efforts. For the past several years, Jewish educational publishers (ourselves at Torah Aura included) have been trying to offer computerized tools that are basically digitized (or computer-gameified) versions of textbooks. Furthermore, publishers have seen educational technology as the next frontier in publishing, a new way to make a buck by selling software that claims to make Jewish learning “exciting.” That’s the wrong attitude. Instead of trying to use software to answer the same old questions (“How do I get kids to properly decode Hebrew?”), we need to be asking a new set of questions.

How can we utilize new technologies like Google Wave, twitter, and YouTube to allow for collaborative (hevruta for the new generation!) learning? How can computers help us to maximize our financial resources? How can the internet help us engage (and empower!) parents and families in new ways? How can we use technology to open up the world of Jewish education to better integrate the arts, science, and communication?

Lots of smart people are thinking about these issues, and we (both publishers and our customers, Jewish schools) need to listen. A bureau executive told me recently that Jewish education is miles behind secular education in these fields. That must change, and we as publishers must be leaders, not followers. We need to help teachers and students think about using tomorrow’s technologies, not provide them with hokey and simplistic “educational” games or digitized flashcards for iPhones.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Classroom Teaching with Mark Smilowitz

I have just spent 15 minutes on the treadmill learning about the issues involved in bringing "fun" into the classroom. I did it with my i-pod and a podcast on Classroom Teaching from the Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora by Mark Smilowitz. He is a very engaging teacher and very easy to listen to. You can download (or listen online) any of his podcasts (28 so far) at http://www.lookstein.org/podcasts.

Podcasting is a great mix of old and new technology, and is really great because it is portable. I have been listening to podcasts of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and Car Talk since my family bought me an I-pod over a year ago. I listen while exercising or cutting the grass. In fact in the podcast I just listened to, he even suggests having the students create their own podcasts engaging in the content of their class

Here is Mark's bio from the Lookstein site:
Mark Smilowitz has taught Judaic studies in middle school and high school levels for 11 years, in Israel. Unsatisfied with the available options for professional growth, Mark sought his own, personal mentor. That's how he met Professor Stephanie "Stevie" Bravmann, a veteran master teacher who, according to one colleague, "knows everything" about education.

Mark emerged from his weekly sessions with Stevie with powerful new insights and ideas about teaching that he immediately implemented with profound impact on his students, not to mention great personal satisfaction. When Mark moved to Israel in 2005, he found that his his new teaching tools worked just as well with children on the other side of the globe.

Now Mark wants to share what he's learned with other Judaic studies teachers. This podcast is an attempt to help teachers - beginners and veterans - find personal satisfaction in teaching. Please send us your comments so we can learn how these ideas affect you. Together we can create a community of teachers committed to excellence and bringing the very best in teaching to our most precious commodity, our students.

ShareThis