Initial Technology Ideas

These are my initial thoughts of technology applications given our current 7th grade curriculum.

Topic: Jewish Life Cycles

Lesson Layout:
Introduction of Jewish life cycles with brainstorming session to assess students' understanding

Key Technologies:
Common Craft. I can see students having a lot of fun creating their own explanations of Jewish Life Cycles using this approach. I've seen it done with drawings instead of the paper cut-outs; either way, or a combination of the two, would make this a more engaging process for the students.


Topic: Purim
Lesson Layout:

Read the Purim story, discuss different ways to retell it. Do some online research for different Purim Spiels, music. 

Key Technologies:
Common Craft. Students could take their live presentation script or write one of their own. They could then collaborate to create their Common Craft pieces to retell the story in a way that the younger classes would enjoy. This is something that could then go into an area where teachers could just take it to present, or it could become part of an expanded Learning section of the temple web site.

Our 7th graders present a Purim play to the religious school each year. This will give them an opportunity to present the play in a lasting way. They could also use this same approach to create short plays for some of the younger classes.

Another fun approach for students might be to create a storyboard or comic strip version of the Purim story. That's even something they could put together and use as a donation to the temple library, or as a fundraiser, depending on how it's done.

Topic: Holocaust
Lesson Layout:

Flipped Classroom mode. We have an extensive Holocaust study packet. The problem is that we never make it through the whole thing because it's just too long.

It will take some commitment on the part of the students, their families, and the religious school to get students to read this material outside of class so that we can jump right into the discussion and project work.

Technologies:

An all-class collaborative timeline using Timetoast or similar online timeline creating program. I envision students each taking a different aspect/person/time period of the timeline, and adding in what they've learned from their reading. Also, if the families are amenable to it, students could add in family history, making this timeline unique. At the end of the project, we will have a lasting timeline that will become part of the temple archive.

I think this approach is useful because of the amount and type of information you can add to the timelines. It's also important for the students to see what else was going on in the world around them -- in the arts, sciences, sports, politics, etc. -- to gain a better understanding of how something like this could happen and go unnoticed or misunderstood for so long.