6 Comments

1. Lisa Colton  •  Apr 26, 2010 @8:43 pm

   Hayim – I read this article recently as well, and was similarly dazzled and overwhelmed by the changes in systems and styles, more than the technology itself. Clearly, there is major change, rumbles below the surface before the volcano blows. (Wish I had a more positive metaphor, but that’s what I’ve got for now). It has HUGE implications for Jewish learning, both for adults and children. I’ve for some time now been pointing to the changing role of a teacher when information is available online. Are teachers becoming more like guides and coaches? How are we empowering students to be active agents in their learning? I hope that by doing so, we are teaching them the importance of asking questions and pursuing learning, rather than giving lip-service to “lifelong learning” but expecting little post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah. There is huge hope here, but the change goes far beyond a $20K grant to buy iPads for everyone in the school. This discussion points to a much more fundamental shift, which we need to acknowledge and embrace starting now.

2. Seth Weinberger  •  Apr 27, 2010 @5:02 am

   You have raised many interesting questions, and I will attempt here to give my answer to just your last one: what is the role of clergy in a future of technology-enabled education?

   The Fast Company article focused mainly on one aspect of our nonprofit’s goal to use technology to help teachers teach more effectively. But we have a related goal that was not covered: to use technology to connect each student to all the various resources needed for personal growth.

   If it truly takes a village to raise a child, what are all the implications if the village is fragmented, due to poverty? We believe that technology can be used to connect students, teachers, volunteer tutors, reading specialists, etc into an effective village.

   Technology can isolate us, or it can connect us, it is up to us to determine how to use it wisely.

   Clergy could play an enormously positive role in this technology-connected village. The separation of church and state has thrown the baby out with the bathwater: religious and ethical education should be part of every child’s development, but it is highly unlikely in our society that a child will learn about any religious principles other than the child’s own, and even that may not happen effectively. Morality is given ever shorter shrift in today’s high-stakes assessment-driven education.

   To frame it from a different perspective: technology can isolate clergy, or connect clergy; it is up to the clergy to adapt to new ways of helping our modern world.

   seth@innovationsforlearning.org

3. Kerry Olitzky  •  Apr 28, 2010 @10:45 am

   Would that our students and even more so those who arent our students would avail themselves of the increasing amount of technology relevant to Jewish education.

   On another note, will it enhance our abilities to provide better education or will it be a way to save money (an important issue) on human resources (an ethical dilemma).

   I have a bit of deja vu. When I was in college, a new field (and the faculty representative of that field) was being touted. He wanted us all to enter the new program called “leisure studies,” convinced that the advent of technology would provide us with so much leisure time that we would have to enagage a trained professional to help us navigate it. I dont know about you. I have lots of gadgets and use many of them quite effectively–but I am also a lot busier than I was in that classroom many years ago.

4. Jordan Goodman  •  Apr 29, 2010 @6:00 am

   Shalom All,

   Rabbi Kerry wrote: “Would that our students and even more so those who arent our students would avail themselves of the increasing amount of technology relevant to Jewish education.”

   Our students/next generation won’t for the same reason that their parents for the most part have opted out of Judaism and the synagogue. And that reason is that
   beyond lifecycle and guilt fixes (weddings, funerals, b’not/b’nai mitzvah and an occasional perceived need for a worship service), there is no relevant and compelling vision (a passion producing picture of the future) for non-orthodox Judaism and its primary delivery system, the synagogue.

   Back to “iLearn,” today’s blogpost by Seth Godin (link below) says it all.

   http://bit.ly/dvQ12T

   Wholeness to all of us,
   Biv’racha,
   Jordan

5. Larry Kaufman  •  May 1, 2010 @11:18 am

   My reaction when I first read this post and the articles linked to it was that we shouldn’t be talking about delivery vehicles (technology) when we should be focusing on content. Then I remembered that the site is called Tools for Shuls, and thus talking about the A is for App article could not be faulted. Accordingly I held my tongue.

   Until this morning, when this article appeared in the On Religion column of the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/us/01religion.html describing the success story of Catholic schools — which Freedman and his sources attribute to the focus on values, content, and parent involvement.

   Until there’s an app for that triad, all the technology in the world doesn’t mean diddly. This is not to knock technology — I fancy myself as an early adapter, albeit a technophobe — but what does it matter if technology helps us get there faster and easier if we don’t know where there is?

6. Rabbi Hayim Herring  •  May 2, 2010 @3:08 pm

   A few brief comments and, as always, a thank you for broadening the conversation:
   1. The article from Fast Company was not about technology per se, but about learning, unleashing creativity, liberating imagination, replacing testing with education and redefining the role of the teacher. But your caution is a good one—too often, people forget that technology is a tool, but as Rabbi Olitzky notes, a critical one that is sorely lacking in Jewish education.

   2. I’m working on my next post about some other dimensions which you raised—the ethical and what I would call the spiritual dimensions of technology. These are real issues and recently, we’ve seen the dark side of technology with the tragic suicides of several teenagers.

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