Saturday, July 4, 2015

Tapping Israel

What can we do with our technology that we just couldn't do before.  That was my thinking when it came to my Israel Tiny Tap Project.  The game works best on an iPad.  Also, you will need to have sound.

Our students learn best when they are given the chance to explore the content in a self-directed way.  The content I made allows for multiple entry-points, depending on personal interest.  Students can choose Jerusaem, Masada, Tel Aviv, etc.  These would then lead the students to more choices and more information.  Masada is a great example - the different smiley faces have different tidbits about what life for the zealots may have been like for Masada.  One leads to a page with a (stock) photo of some children at Masada.  Clicking on each face plays a short audio clip of them describing their experiences.  Students could grow up hearing and seeing these stories, knowing that - when they go to Israel - they can add their own story to the app.  It makes the learning much more personal, rather than hearing it from a text book or teacher.

I also included buttons on the first page on most of the countries in the Middle East.  I think it is important that our students know the surrounding countries - or at least know how to say them correctly.  This also gives the students more choice - those who don't want to just click on Israel have a useful diversion that still teaches them something important.

I would use this game - and other Tiny Tap games that allow this kind of exploration - in my classroom in two ways.  First, on certain days I would have the whole class use the program to learn - by the end of the period each child would need to share one or two new things they just learned.  Secondly, if students finish work early, or if they arrive to class early, I'd let them use these games, which allows them to use downtime more effectively, and they may learn a thing or two without even realizing it.

Making this game took a very long time - I'd say maybe 2.5 hours for what I've got now, and I know I'm not even finished yet.  However, this kind of game can be used for several years, and I believe it is a good investment of my time.  But do know, if you want to make something similar, it is time consuming and at times tedious.  However, it is well worth the effort!

Monday, June 29, 2015

Final Project

My final project in the technology fellowship was a website designed to streamline communication between teachers and parents as well as document curriculum. This website contains pictures and videos of children participating in activities at school, and engaging in a variety of new experiences. This website will have information regarding the teachers background and best ways to get in touch with the teachers. There is also a special page regarding the different approaches to education we practice in our classroom and our specific approach to Jewish education. The best part about this website is the blog where we can post information for the parents in regards to what the children are learning on a daily basis. It is my hope that this website will be an interactive page where parents can have a better understanding on the energy of our classroom and practice at home what we teach in the classroom.
What I have loved about this fellowship is the opportunity to explore new ways to access curriculum and make curriculum accessible. In an age where screen time is becoming more a part of our education and our children's world it is important to know what valuable programs are out their and the potential of what technology can do. I enjoyed collaborating with the other teachers in this cohort, sharing ideas and getting their valuable feed back. I also thought it was just fun to play around on different apps and see what interesting projects we could make. I especially enjoyed learning about programs such as popplet and wix which helps me organize my curriculum and helpful for documentation purposes. This class has given me a lot of ideas for what I can do with my Nursery School and Kindergarten class next year.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Final project

For my final project

For my final project, I decided to work on a something that is dear to my heart. 
I have always felt that as a religious school teacher, my report card for how well I have taught the students each year comes at the Passover Seder. 
Of course we need to teach the kids how to recite the four questions with confidence in themselves and their ability to read the Hebrew. That's a given. But we also need to prepare them to take a leadership role in the Seder and be able to recognize the symbolism in what we do. Year after year. For thousands of years and hundreds of generations. 
My best way to do that is to teach them the Order of the Seder: Kadesh Urchatz. 
It is the Seder Cliff Notes. And it provides both me and my students the perfect outline for how to learn the Seder. Each of the parts of the Seder are listed. And put to music. And the tunes can be changed. Easily and often (by me, of course!)
So, I teach them each of the steps. I teach them the blessings and the symbolism. 
I prepare them to ask the right questions and know how to answer them. So that in the next generation, or the one after that, they can do it. Year after year. 

This year I used Prezi and Tellagami for my presentation. Next spring I hope to have the students learn with these tools and maybe add Garage Band to it. And my silly trick, where I can change the tune of that song at will, will make an impression on my students that just might stay with them long enough to make their own Passover Seders even more fun. Hopefully! 

Thank you for everything. And thank you for opening my mind to the possibilities. 
Judy Olshansky. 

Reflections

Reflections:
I was offered a place in the CJP technology course with the opportunity to get an iPad for myself and a bunch of new iPads for my school. How could I say no? It has been a long time since I've sat in a classroom as a student. A very long time. Yet, this was honestly an offer I could not refuse. So, I headed into the classes with a healthy dose of skepticism that I would learn anything useful and a modicum of fear that I would not be able to keep up or offer anything helpful to my colleagues. 
The good news is that my fears were unwarranted. The even better news is that I came away from the sessions brimming with ideas, new tools and the gift of confidence that I could make my classes more relevant to my young students and meet them where they live, in technology land!

I remember that the last time I graduated from Brandeis, I complained to my mother that I still have so much to learn and felt it was unfair to make me leave. She said that the university had taught me well if I realized that.  She told me that I can continue to learn and study on my own. 

I feel much the same way today. The class, my cohorts, Svetlana and Julie and the returning guests have all brought clarity, assistance and lots of new questions for me to continue to learn and investigate. And, happily, I can now try things and not worry when they fail. I will always have a second grader to figure it out and set me straight! 

I feel very lucky. 
Thanks to all,
Judy O. 

Sunday, June 21, 2015

What I lerened

I am looking forward to use some of the apps in my kindergarten classroom next school year. I still have a lot to learn and master how to efficiently use all of them. My goal is to create interactive and fun stories and games to attract children’s interest. So far I have mastered to use the apps explain everything, tiny tap, book creator, popplet, and wiki. I plan to explore more throughout the summer to master as much as I can. I also plan to take lots of children’s picture in action to share with parents.  This course has helped me to be more courageous to use technologies and see lots of fun ideas to bring in my classroom. Thank you!

"Prayeraoke"






For years I have enjoyed my Hebrew teaching but found it to be challenging.   As you well know, those of us who teach in after school programs have very little  going for us.  With only an hour a week per class, students arrive to us tired, hungry, stressed and certainly not at their best.  On top of all of this, they have no incentive to do a great job or study at home,  since no one has given students the sense that we are giving them a skill that will be useful to them, outside of classic Bar Mitzvah preparation fear.


So naturally, teachers like us quickly realize that one way of motivating students to learn some Hebrew in the classroom is to make it fun.  There are lots of kitschy Hebrew games to play in the classroom, however the mileage varies with such games and usually we sacrifice content or leave someone behind as we give in to the feel-good.  We acquiescence to the begging for games.  In essence, we water down our efficacy by avoiding what really works for mastering Tefila skills.  Repetition, repetition, put it away, then repetition.  Did I mention repetition?


As a long time bar mitzvah tutor and Hebrew teacher, it has been proven to me time and time again that this is the simple formula for learning prayers and melodies.  Repetition scientifically contributes to short term memory,  and returning to it often contributes to moving knowledge to our long-term memory.


My final project started out with the intent to create a Hebrew prayer version of karaoke, called Prayeraoke. I have had this idea for years, but have never found software or a person that could create it for me. This remains in my list of things to do.  (Please feel free to use my idea, in return for free rights to use it!)


Quickly realizing that I wasn't going to fulfill my dream of creating real Prayeraoke, I started to think about my use of music in the classroom and out.


In many places that I go, I consider my guitar and my song leading skills to be tools that not too many other people have. So when GarageBand was introduced to me in TTF, I naturally gravitated to it.  I layed down a few tracks, using only a quiet room, the iPad and my musical ability (which is mediocre) as tools.  Very quickly and gratifyingly, I produced something that sounded decent and could be used in order to tell a digital story.


Once the audio was complete,  I was able to export it to iMovie and smash it with a little bit of ExplainEverything and Drawing Pad.  iMovie seems like an appropriate app to bring it all together because it is versatile and accepts virtually any media as an import.


I ended up using the final product to tell a digital story (visual and audio) with key values intertwined in the text and subtext.  Students were asked to sing  along with the intermittent prompts on the screen to snap them back to attention, if needed.

Below, I'm including the 5W's and an H as to why one might use this combination. While it lacks refinement that I would want to use it for REAL humans, here is the link to the beginnings of the project:  http://youtu.be/_TKSYYDpbRc



Stop reading here or read on to learn why this might be an interesting medium:



Using Music and Digital Story Telling to Teach Values 5 W's and H


Why?  
  • Digital story telling may be a medium that better catches attention of our kids, due to conditioning and maybe wiring?
  • It is a way to combat students' desensitization to the teacher talking all the time
  • It may allow for greater creativity and encourage students to take on similar projects of their own
  • May appeal to different learning styles due to use of visual and auditory sensory input
  • Can be repeated more than once to reinforce, if needed
Who?
  • Teachers or students can create edit, embellish, or just be receivers of media
  • Parents can receive exactly what the kids saw via electronic media or email, blogs, etc.


How?
  • Can be used in a flipped classroom, PBL, Philosophical inquiry, or other modalities
  • Knowledge of the medium and software/apps can be part of the discovery process or part of a prerequisite
  • Assumes that materials are available for presentation:  ie internet access, projector, smart-board, iPad, etc.
  • Work toward goals and check in frequently on progress toward goal.  Don't use it if it will not help.
When?
  • When you need a change of pace in your classroom
  • When the goals of the lesson support using it
  • When you can create or find appropriate materials
  • The technology will not work against you
  • You need to reach more or different students than you might usually
  • Someone in contact with your material  (students, educators, parent) will  appreciate  the work
Where?
  • This sort of materials can be used in informal settings, home, school, etc.  Important to use in appropriate setting.  (Example:  video around a campfire may not be the mood we are looking for)
What?
  • We can create a digital version of almost any lesson.  Content can be anything
  • Engagement is key - ask how often in your presentation people are asked to do something. Is it appropriate for your goals?


Values planned for this lesson:  Shalom and g'milut chasadim.


Shalom:  Lo Yisa Goi - Nation shall not lift up sword against nation  (Isaiah 2:4, Michah 4:3)
G'milut Chasadim:  Story of Two Brothers


Thanks for reading!

Friday, June 19, 2015

What will the classroom of 6000 (2240 C.E.) look like?

The future is fun, but difficult, to predict.  It takes a stretching of the imagination.  For an example, take this picture:

It shows people getting around on motorized skates.  Not everyone is getting around - and one poor fellow has fallen! - but it is apparently widely available and used for pleasure and for purpose.  This picture is from 1910, and is purported to show the year 2000.  (There are more pictures here.  I suggest checking it out.)  Of course, the year is now 2015, and while motorized roller skates exist, they are not the big hip thing.  We can deduce quite easily this prediction is wrong.

But what is more interesting is to look at what the artist did not think was changing.  The clothing reflects 1910 fashion.  The roads have no cars, and also no marked parking spaces and parking meters.  The streetlights seem to still be gas, and are not particularly high (as ours are).  Interesting, 1910 is the year electric lights became more affordable and more practical.  They didn't need to predict something in the year 2000.  Had these pictures been painted in 1915, the street lights may have looked different.

Usefully predicting the future is really, really hard.  It's fun to imagine motorized roller skates, but more important to imagine the effects of motorized roller skates.  This means anything with wheels can be motorized.  And, for the most part, anything can be given wheels.  And since we're imaging, let's think of a miniature control system.  Surely that will be invented at some point.  So, automated wheels that can navigate safely.  What can we conclude from there.

This quickly makes mining significantly safer, and it automates some of the labor, eliminating many jobs.  Because it is safer and requires less employees, this makes mined resources much less expensive, making many things previously unavailable to the general public suddenly abundant.  Now you can mine Zinc in such quantities as to make it very cheap.  And, indeed, in several decades, the zinc and copper composition of the penny essentially switched, from 95% copper and 5% zinc to the current 5% copper and 97.5% zinc.

This seems like terrible news for copper miners.  Their workload is getting less and less (and also more automated).  We need to stop the machines.  Call in the luddites!  But we could also broaden our scopes.  What else could copper miners do?  They could mine something else.  They could learn to repair or optimize the machines.  They could join the booming electric light business.  There are a lot of options.  We can't restrict ourselves to what we know.  2000 was way, way cooler than motorized roller skates.  (As a bonus, almost all of the new jobs would be much, much safer than mining.)

So what does this mean for education?  Here's a typical "future of education" picture.  Every child has a tablet, and the teacher has what looks like to be an enormous smart board behind him.  Presumably this is all touch-enabled with fast wireless internet.



But there are a number of assumptions here that reflect the old way of thinking, and indeed a major "gas light."  That is, contemporary traditions that are already in the process of being replaced.  First, all the students are sitting at desks, and they are all facing the teacher.  The teacher is standing at the front with, for all intents and purposes, is an electronic black board.  The students and the learners are in one room.  There is a window showing it is daylight: We can assume they go to school during the day, Monday through Friday, as students go to school now.

If we can have electronic black boards, that information can be displayed on the students screen directly.  We already have screen sharing programs that allow this.  Especially for such a large screen, there's a lot to take in.  Why not let students peruse it on their own device?  Why not have different parts be links.  Let's pretend this is a class about bridges.  The students have been tasked with physically building a bridge out of materials.  Students could click on different parts of the bridge and learn more about them.  How does it work?  What is it called?  What's the best way to make it?  That saves the teacher time in the classroom (though it calls for a lot of prep work), and it gives the students a lot of agency.

OK, so what about the desks?  If the students have tablets, why do they need desks and straight-backed chairs.  They should be given a variety of sitting methods, or even allow for standing.  There's no educational reason the students should be seated in such a way.  Not to sound too Silicon Valley, but toss out those tables and chairs and bring in bean bags and standing desks (Well, and keep some of the chairs and tables - there are some students who genuinely prefer those).

Time of day.  Why?  To go extreme, why have classrooms at all?  If the electronic blackboard can be viewed on students' tablets, and if the teacher has already created links and videos, etc, why do all the students need to be present at the same time?  Add an "email me" button or say "From 2-4 PM I will be available by video phone, click here to call." and the teacher is still available.  The students will make their bridge at home, or in the library, or wherever is most convenient for them.  Then they'll bring their project in to the teacher (Who needs to physically have it to evaluate it.  There are other kinds of projects where a photo or video would suffice), who will evaluate it, and then make a video or take a picture of each project and post it so all the students can see the work of their peers, and maybe give feedback on it.  All on their tablet at whatever time works best for them.

If it seems novel to not have a "school day," consider the popularity of online colleges and telecommuting.  Even if many online colleges have significant credibility issues, that doesn't mean online degrees will be worthless forever, or that the idea itself is not credible.  Many schools with campuses have online programs that greatly reduce (though not always eliminate) the time a student needs to be at the campus.  This frees them up to work and take care of their families and other needs that may have stood in the way of their education.  There's no particular reason to not extend this model, once it starts to work better and the frauds have been deterred, to high school and middle school.  Imagine how much more successful our students could be if they could work at their own pace and had all the information they needed at their fingertips.  Sure, some may abuse the system, and it may take a while to be normalized, but that's the price of progress.

Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus, denounces writing.  He says, "[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learner's soul, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters..."  Of course, it took a long time for writing (and, more importantly, reading) to go from being a scholarly/priestly tradition to a skill within the reach of a common citizen, but it happened, and while Socrates may be right that our memories suffered because of it, it did not create "forgetfulness in the learner's soul."  It did not damage the human race.  Growing pains aside, it has done a great deal of wonder for us all. Much more than those who first wrote on papyrus could ever have imagined.

We have a great future in front of us.  Let's imagine something wonderful.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Reflections


A LUDDITE IN THE LAND OF THE ETHER: HOW I BROKE DOWN THE WALL

One of the most important things I've discovered in my technological journey, is that there needs to be  a clear difference in one's mind between clarity of the functions of the app being worked with, and clarity in one's mind of the task being assigned or concept/skill being taught. This lack of distinction on my part in my endeavors resulted in much yelling and tears, (also on my part).

Rethinking how I wanted students to potentially interact with a particular app, necessitated much playing and revamping of my presentation.  Then a funny thing happened. I actually started seeing improvement in my technological products! I didn't think I would see it happen.

I like to create visually interesting  lessons, and I've learned a lot about manipulation of items on the iPad. I started using more of my own art work and photos and as a result, became more invested in learning more and being willing to experiment and "play".  This phase is key. Some folks apparently get to this point quickly. Some entered our cohort already at this stage. I feel it took me awhile.

I learned a lot about how I learn and what motivates me to keep going.  Having gotten over the hump, I have a new level of excitement about what can be done in the classroom. I still firmly believe that technology is only a tool, and that content and pedagogy should not take second place to technology.
It's important to always be mindful of whether a particular lesson can really be enhanced via technology, or is just as effectively delivered via more traditional tools.

I'm glad I got this opportunity. The skills I've learned and need to further develop, and the ability to work with some  of the other CJP Fellows have been invigorating.

I'm looking forward to a summer of further investigation and creation.

Creation Myth

Video created last day of Cohort 8


What I've learned...


Next year, I am teaching an 8th grade comparative religions class.  I feel that this is the perfect age group to try out what I’ve learned in the fellowship.  I will be creating a webquest that I will start the year off with.  Through the webquest, students will learn the basic beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  After being taught the origin of the three religions, students will be grouped and assigned one of the religions.  The task assigned will be to find out the connection each of the three religions have with Jerusalem.  Each group will then present that information to the class by creating a movie trailer (or another option by choosing from the technology they are familiar with).  These trailers (or other presentations) can be used on the schools website to encourage future classes to attend 8th grade.  At our congregation, enrollment tends to drop off after bar/bat mitzvah years.  The key technologies I would use are the iMovie (movie & trailer options), a webquest, green screen and any other technologies that the students are interested in using.

Here is my outline of my project:
https://3monothesticreligionswebquest.wikispaces.com/Monotheistic+Religions+Webquest

Technology in the Classroom


There are several big ideas that I have taken from this fellowship.  Most importantly, I’ve learned how the iPad can be used as much more than a source of entertainment.  It truly is a way in which to enhance student learning and engage students in lessons through technology and creativity. These new insights will change my approach to teaching by creating new avenues to learning.  I feel that the use of technology in my classroom will create a more focused atmosphere where students will feel comfortable and excited about participating, make connections and display their knowledge.  It is no surprise that students do not want to be at Hebrew school so hopefully the use of technology and iPads will make the experience more palatable. This multi-sensory approach to teaching will benefit all students and make me a more effective teacher.  My main goal for applying what I’ve learned in the fellowship is to become more comfortable with the various apps and technology so that I can seamlessly weave it into my lessons.

What have I Learned?

This course has made it so I no longer see using iPads and technology in the classroom as a way for the kids to self entertain or as a way to fill space.  I now feel that the iPad is a great teaching/learning resource.  
            My students are young and I do not yet feel fully confident with Wikispaces and some of the apps, so right now I am hesitant to use the iPads as much as I would like, however, I am excited to start trying. I think that once I allow my students to explore the different apps and learn how to use them, I want to allow my students to creatively interact with and explore what they are learning and feel excited to share what they created.  
            As we all know, most kids do not want to go to Hebrew School, and I think that allowing the students to use technology will make them more excited, focused and engaged in class.
            My goal is to become more comfortable and confident in my skills with the apps, how to use them to plan a lesson and how to better use Wikispaces.  I want to be able to feel like I am in control of the classroom and the learning when the students are using the iPads, and then I will continue to try new lessons and ways of incorporating technology in my classroom.