Reflections on TTF at 6/28/13

• I believe that much of the technology that we (CJPTTF fellows) have been exploring over the past few months will allow for deeper content exploration for more learners within the classroom. Technology provides great tools for project-based learning by providing portals into resources online not easily accessible offline and also expands the possibilities for creative student-directed exploration. I have learned about many tools that will assist and support students who need to move faster, those who need to move either more slowly or those moving in different directions or those taking alternate routes to the same destination. Using wikis and webquests, google docs and other tools along with appropriate scaffolding provides a safe way for shifting greater responsibility for learning into the hands of the students.

• I have already begun integrating a little technology into my fourth grade class this spring. In a lesson reviewing the Ten Commandments, I located a YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoXyk5AFAvs with kids doing a “rap boogie” (my definition!) of the Ten Commandments. Before giving my students the assignment to dramatize the meaning of a Commandment of their choosing, I shared this video. By the end of the short video, most students were already doing their own interpretive dance and rap. They also volunteered where the commandments were slightly different from what we had studied (i.e. resting on Sunday). I then handed groups a video camera to record their Command(ment) Performance. We did not have time to view the videos during that class so I created a Ten Commandment video loop for the next class and left it running as they arrived. They loved it and they demonstrated what they had learned.

• This positive experience linked with the work we did in and out of these seminars, has set me off on another adventure of creating a wiki and webquest for the first half of the coming year. I already have the complete buy in of the grade coordinator and director of congregational learning in re-creating the Judaic curriculum for the coming year using whatever technology/creative tools I can. At a minimum, the months (about 4) devoted to exploring Bereshit will be learning constructed through a grade wiki and using many different internet/digital tools. In addition, the website I created this past spring for the entire 6th grade as a home base for creating a siddur, will become a wiki so that students can be their own editors in the same process of creating a siddur. The wiki will also connect students to diigolet to find useful information in building their understanding of prayers and the construct of a Shabbat shacharit service. The siddur they create serves as the liturgy for a 6th grade family service near the end of the school year which the students lead from beginning to end including chanting from Torah. Students will be able to access trope, prayer and their individual verse melodies directly from this wiki as they prepare for this service.