Showing posts with label JEDLAB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JEDLAB. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Ken Gordon: My Daughter and Design Thinking: Have Either Really Come of Age?


Ken Gordon is half of the genius that brought us JEDLAB. (If JEDLAB means nothing to you, then go there now. Come back here later. Ken is a lot of things. And he has served our people in a number of ways. And I love the way he sees the world. Rabbi Laurence Kushner once wrote a book called Invisible Lines of Connection. Ken sees them as if they were painted in neon colors. And he has proven remarkably adept at helping others see them and use them to connect to more and more people especially in Jewish education. His main job is now in the world of business consulting, but even before he got there he was like me - a bit of a design thinking junkie. This article was posted on his company Continuum's blog in August. I loved it, then lost the link. Yesterday I found it again. I think it is every bit as important today as it was in August. Check it out. I love the way he synthesizes the Bat Mitzvah with the real world. It is a wonderful example of making Judaism relavant. (Hello, Millenials?) And go to Continuum's site to read more of Ken's work and that of his colleagues. It can teach us Jewish educators a lot.


by Ken Gordon

I have a 13-year-old daughter. Shoshi. She stands as tall as my wife Lisa, speaks Hebrew with a gorgeous Israeli accent, and knows more Torah than both her parents combined. As I type this, she’s studying hard to become a bat mitzvah. This phrase means, literally, “daughter of commandment.” When she officially becomes a bat mitzvah this winter, tradition says she will be responsible for fulfilling the roles and responsibilities of a Jewish adult.

I tell you all this because when I hear the phrase “design thinking comes of age,” which is the cover story of the current issue of Harvard Business Review, I think of Shoshi. I think of what it means, what it really means, for design thinking to come of age.

The official, optimistic line goes like this: In 2015, design thinking has become a fully responsible player in business, one that’s as equally important as, say, digital or branding. It is no longer a merely interesting concept in which a company might or might not dabble. We tell ourselves that design thinking is now an integrated element of many organizations—such as, say, Intuit—and we expect it not to loosen up their approach to problem solving, but to produce serious business results.

Ideally.

But then I think of my actual 13-year-old kid. Do I truly expect Shoshi, who neither drives nor votes nor dates nor earns money nor pays taxes, to become a fully responsible adult after the ceremony is over? I don’t. Truth is, neither my expectations nor our community’s will require her to be a real adult right now. More adult, yes, but not fully. This has a lot to do with the fact that we are secular Jews, and thus don’t literally follow the 613 mitzvot—but it’s also a realization that my kid, like most kids in our society, isn’t anywhere near proper adulthood at 13.

In a similar way, we may also be overestimating the level of maturity of design thinking in the business world. Advocates like to believe design thinking now occupies an ergonomically correct seat at the grownups’ table… but, it still has a ways to grow.

Which isn’t to say that there hasn’t been progress. John Maeda’s recent report about the importance of design to tech companies is significant—between 2011 and 2015, nine creative firms have been acquired in #designintech M&A. That’s nine out of thousands of design shops, of various sizes and capabilities.

At Continuum, we’ve seen some serious interest from companies in developing their innovation capability, and that seems a significant shift. Maybe the CEO of the future will be a designer-in-chief, but that moment, if we’re honest, still seems off in the distance.

So what do we do to slide design thinking down the maturity curve?
 

We can encourage those firms that have expressed an interest in design thinking to explore the concept more deeply. At Continuum, this means using the content we publish, as well as the conversations in which we engage, as a means of educating the interested.
 

We teach the notion that design thinking requires sincere cultural commitment to work. It isn’t just that one’s CEO cares about the design: the entire org must do so. Design-centricity isn’t just about hiring designers or attending workshops: it’s about adopting a certain mindset and approach for all business issues.
 

We must demonstrate that design thinking takes time and patience. Design thinking is a long-term process that involves much prototyping, testing, refining, tinkering to a serious degree. This takes time (it can’t be rushed) and won’t necessarily provide instant returns. Your org has to understand that design thinking unfolds in time, and might have to learn to develop a strong will to wait.
We insist that design thinking must drive business results, which means an emphasis on implementation.

Our current moment is about drawing a baseline. Design thinking is becoming self-conscious, and that’s a good thing: but it’s not the same thing as maturity. Once we know where we truly are, in the present moment, then we can design a more sophisticated future for design thinking. And that’s cause for celebration—one that won’t even involve a caterer.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Ask the right questions

"With the arrival and maturation of my generation,
the Millenials, the question “Who is a Jew?” is rather passé."
David A. M. Wilensky is a young man with whom I have strictly - so far - digital relationship. I began reading his work when he was a college student writing for Jewschool and have been and remain impressed with the depth and creativity of his ideas. He published a piece in The Jewish Standard a few weeks ago that I just saw. I think he makes some very important and interesting points.

When I was in high school (in the 1970s!), the big conversation still revolved around Jewish identity in juxtaposition with American identity. Are you and American Jew or a Jewish American? Which is the noun and which is the adjective? When I first began teaching (in the 1980s) we were still designing lessons and activities around those questions. We over-did it. To my almost 16 year-old son, those questions are meaningless.

Following the CCAR decision on patrilineal descent, in 1983 and ongoing efforts by the religious parties in Israel to amend the law of return to require conversion according to halacha (Jewish law) and officiated by approved Orthodox rabbis, the conversation became "Who is a Jew?"

Now add a variety of Jewish population studies, studies of how Jewish communities are structured and now the Pew Report, and we find our lay and professional leaders wringing their hands and panicking over the imminent death of  (choose any or all): day schools, synagogue schools, synagogues, Jewish Community Centers and/or the continued cohesive existence of the Jewish People as a distinct group in America.

Please read David's article. It splashes some cold water on those of us still fighting about things that don't really matter to the Millenials. And while I do believe we have put a bit more emphasis on Young Adults in Jewish life than is appropriate, they will soon be 40 year olds and able to learn Kabbalah and be treated like the rest of us!

It begins here, but the full article is worth reading and can be read on the Standard's web page. There are a number of comments there as well. I invite a conversation, there, here or on JEDLAB (in Facebook), in particular on the implications for us as educators. Thank you David for permission to cross-post.

Ira

David A.M. Wilensky is a program associate at Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach Institute. He lives in South Orange, and he is single, straight, and utterly shameless. 


David A. M. Wilensky
Published: 6 March 2014

So, really, why be Jewish?

With the arrival and maturation of my generation, the Millenials, the question “Who is a Jew?” is rather passé.

Forget the halachic dimensions to this endlessly debatable topic. Forget all the moralizing arguments over the issue. Forget the demographically induced paranoia, the post-Holocaust hand-wringing, the Israeli legal maneuvering (not to mention the pandering that comes with it), and the denominational infighting. And — for heaven’s sake! — forget the Pew study.

The fact is that “Who is a Jew?” is the wrong question. To maintain our relevance — to regain it, really — the question we must ask today is “Why be Jewish?”

The problem with the who-is-a-Jew question is the binary premise from which it springs: that there is an “us” and a “them.” (Worse, perhaps is the accompanying hope that we will one day delineate a set of criteria that define who is an “us” and who is a “them.”) The premise itself is as boring and potentially harmful as the question it gives rise to. It has infiltrated our national debate in a variety of guises: Who is affiliated and who is unaffiliated? Who is an insider and who is an outsider? Who is a member and who is a non-member? Who is inmarried and who is intermarried?

And, of utmost importance in the case of Millenials: Are your parents both Jewish? For 48 percent of us, the answer is no.

In each version of the question, the implication is clear: One is good and one is bad. When we make these questions central, whatever our intention in asking them, the question that many people will hear is this: Are you a good Jew or a bad Jew? And labeling people “bad” Jews probably is not the best way to draw them into deeper engagement with Jewish life.

 At the very least, the Millenials I know are bored with all this who-is-a-Jew business. And at the worst, the idea that this question will be useful as we confront the challenges now before us is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the changes we see today.

continue reading the rest of the article

 

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

JEDLAB and the Buber:
A conversation on I and Thou

December 29, 2014 - Due to some foolishness on my part, the images of the I and Thou Conversation were deleted. Since the Internet is forever, I was able to retrieve them! Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks to Ken Gordon for spotting the problem!


Long time followers of this blog may know that I was one of fourteen fellows in a program at the Lookstein Center funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation. Our brief was to create online communities of practice. Some of us were more successful than others. Some CoPs are still going strong, others have served their purpose and are but memories.

And then came JEDLAB! There has been a lot written about it and by those involved. It is worth reading some of it. More importantly, it is something you should join. Unlike CAJE of blessed memory or any number of conferences that have grown up in recent years (and may they all thrive and grow), it is an ongoing 24/6 conversation about Jewish education and the things that educators want to talk about, learn and teach one another. I try to check in at least once a day, and occasionally find I have something to say.

To join JEDLAB you need to be on Facebook. That is the central platform on which the community meets. (We do have the JEDLAB test kitchen on Google+ and we love to have ad hoc connections in a variety of places as well). And it is a community, currently 2,220 strong. Some write. Many read. And it crosses all lines: geography, movement, professional setting and methodology, relationship to Halacha, etc. Everybody plays, and no one can so you can't play (Thank you Vivian Gussin Paley). Just click on JEDLAB and ask to join. Or become my friend on FB (if we are not already) and ask me to put you in. Or ask anyone in JEDLAB to do it. It is worth your time. (If you are not on Facebook, you should join just for this. Set privacy settings so the kids from your 3rd grade class can't find you if you prefer.)

Ken Gordon, the founder of JEDLAB proposed a book group on Martin Buber's I and Thou. Not a light undertaking. He opened the conversation in a way that drew me and others in and if you follow, he moderated with a very light touch. Our first 36 hours of conversation is below. I think you will find it interesting and invite you to join in - preferably in FB at JEDLAB. If you comment hear, I will transfer your thoughts - in your name - to the group.

This is hopefully the first stop in a traveling blog carnival. That means that other bloggers in the group will hopefully pick up the thread of the conversation on their blogs in turn. I will put links in the comments section. (Note: Permission was given by the participants in the discussion before I posted this. JEDLAB is a safe place for conversation!)

Please enjoy and join us in JEDLAB! Consider this your present for the last night of Chanukah!

Ira


Since the image above is a .jpg of the Facebook conversation you can watch the video with this link:













http://bit.ly/Quiet_Introverts











Sadly, the Mechon Hadar document is no longer available.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Are you coming to to JEDcamp? I hope to see you there!

I am honored and delighted to have been invited to facilitate a session at the New Jersey/New York JEDcamp seminar on December 18! I hope that you will join us if you are in the area! This evening is designed to give teachers an opportunity to learn about and play with a variety of apps and tech tools. The idea is to add to your repertoire and help you get comfortable with more tools!

The image below is a list of the options! Go to http://jedcampqueens.eventbrite.com/ to register!

Come play!

http://jedcampqueens.eventbrite.com/

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