Kitah Alef Year-long Technology Based Torah Project

I am excited to integrate a few different apps into my classroom next year. I am still working on each of the individual pieces, but the goal throughout the year is to capture the Torah stories, and all of the work my students do in learning about the stories, in a cohesive video to send home and share with parents in May.

We will start the year with an update to my usual parent/student activity of drawing Bereshit. Instead of having paper drawings I will ask each child and their parent to draw their day in the creation story on the iPad and narrate it. I can then link each of the stories together to create one cohesive Bereshit video from the class. I also plan to have my students draw their own versions of stories such as Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality or Jacob and Esau on the iPad and then have them narrate their pictures using Explain Everything. We can also integrate some of the stories using iMovie – for example a “breaking news story” about the Macabees, explaining what happened in the temple, and the steps the Macabees are taking to fix it. “They put the oil in for one day and prayed. I never thought it would work, but today is the 8th day that oil is burning!” Here is an example of what I plan to do for Pesach. There are 11 separate slides in this example because there are 11 students in my class. The ideas is for each child to create one slide and then I would merge them all. The 10 Plagues

At the end of the year I will have different videos for each Bible story and holiday that we covered in Kitah Alef. I will be able to merge all of the videos together and send them home with my final monthly newsletter so that my students will be able to relive the stories and work that they have done as well as share all of it with their parents.

Reflections on Teaching and Learning with Technology (by Jessica)

I’ve worked as an educational technology designer for 15+ years, so I’ve spent lots of time thinking about using technology for learning. On the other hand, using iPads for learning is something I’ve just started exploring! This CJP Technology fellowship was a great way to dive in. 

What ideas have you taken away about using technology for learning?

The biggest idea I’ve taken away is the power of putting creativity and control in students’ hands. In my early years in the Ed Tech field, a team of experts (designers, programmers, teachers) created software; kids used it.  Now, kids can be directly involved in the creation — creating blogs, movies, animations, web sites, flashcards, etc.  

This has many advantages!  Above all, it’s extremely motivating for kids. I discovered this a few years ago when I had a student who never wanted to participate in lessons. One day he brought in a Noah’s ark toy and I lent him my digital camera to photograph it. Pretty soon, he and another boy were building a whole “stage set” to dramatize the Noah’s ark story, and taking movies with my camera. He was engaged like never before!  This is the kind of thing kids can do easily now with the iPad apps. They get to be the designers/creators/teachers instead of passive recipients. Another benefit is that teachers don’t always have to spend hours creating materials (like flashcards, just say) because the kids can do it for them! 

Of course, a challenge, as a teacher, is that you need to learn to let go and give the kids room to take off in their own directions (esp. if, like me, you love doing the creative stuff yourself)! I think another challenge is learning how to construct a really good activity/prompt, so that kids use the technology in a focused way that promotes learning and don’t just play around with it.  

How will your new insights change your approach to teaching?

In the past, many of my lessons involved imparting information. I might teach the kids about the different objects used to celebrate Shabbat (kiddush cup, challah cover, candlesticks, etc.).  Then we would do a craft —for example, making our own challah covers.  Kids used their creativity to make a beautiful challah cover, but not to think deeply about the meaning of Shabbat or to internalize the information we’d learned/discussed.

I believe that some of these technologies will make it easier to create a more integrated experience — one where students use their creativity to make the educational content their own. This year, a central question in my class will be  “How do we make Shabbat special?”  The class will create an online book together, exploring this question throughout the year.  When students make challah covers, they can also make videos/photos of their creations, and include text, audio explaining how these ritual objects make Shabbat feel special or different from the rest of the week, and why this is valuable. Throughout the year, we can build on this idea in discussions and projects, and our class book will be a creative and collaborative record of our learning together. 

What are your goals for applying what you learned in the Fellowship to your teaching in the future?

My goal for this year is to use technology to improve lessons that didn’t work so well in the past (or need improvement). Below are some of my plans for integrating technology, and my reasons for doing so.

 Jerusalem. 

I will create a web quest in which students can watch videos of people walking through different landmarks in the old and new city. They will answer questions about the places they visit (a sort of “scavenger hunt”). At the end, each will create a Tellagami or Explain Everything travelogue, in which they describe one or two places they visited and share what they learned, noticed, liked, were curious about (or perhaps they will pretend to be a tour guide and create a Tellagami introducing the site to others).

Benefit:  Students will get a better sense of Jerusalem by watching videos (vs. reading a pamphlet or book). They will feel more like they are actually there.

2)  Alef Bet

I will use Quizlet (and maybe Quia) to make it easy for students to practice the letters they’ve learned at home. I will also have them make their own animations/videos to teach the mnemonics for the letters.

Benefit: More of the learning will take place at home, so we can make the most of school hours! (Plus if I use Quia, this at-home practice will also give me data on each student’s progress.) Making and sharing their own animations should help them learn the mnemonics.

3) Shabbat

Every year, I have kids create a Shabbat Box full of special items for Shabbat. This year, I will also have them create an online book or blog exploring the question “How is Shabbat special/different from other days? What can we do to make it special/different?” (See above for more information.)

Benefit:  The online book will allow students both to share their own personal experiences (including home experiences), and also to build a collaborative, shared document. I believe it will invite deeper discussion and sharing. I also think it will enhance home-school connections, since parents can view the book as it evolves.

Course Reflections - Teaching and Technology Fellowship

I went into this class looking for ways to reach students; to differentiate the way information is presented, excite students about learning and grow as an educator.  Nearly three months later, I can look back at the work I have done and reflect that I really have accomplished those goals. 

The moment you even say the word iPad students change their body language in class, begin to pay attention to the instructions and start creating new ideas.  It's like giving students freedom to be themselves while learning. In only the few classes we held after getting the iPads, I could see the difference in the students.  They were eager to know what we were doing and how it would include the iPads. This excitement was rare previously but was refreshing to witness.

There is also a distinct value in exploration that the use of the iPad easily allows in the classroom.  Connect to the internet and you can find information about anything.  Students are great at using Google but not always so great at deciding which information is accurate and reliable.  Being able to research on your own helps to harbor interest in the subject and ownership of your own learning. Being able to create something interesting to you and appropriate for your level of understanding and abilities is invaluable and bringing technology into the classroom helps to make that goal a reality.

I find myself browsing through apps in the AppStore often, looking for new things and thinking about how they can be used in improve my teaching.  Not take the place of teaching as many would have you believe.  I often ask myself what purpose the app would serve; would it be for my own organization of materials, for a class presentation, to send home to families or for a student project?  Each use has its own value and there are many apps that fall into the categories I have devised. I even bought extra Cloud storage just so that I wouldn't have to get rid of anything! 

Technology in the classroom is really about so much more though.  Through this experience I have decided that a significant advantage to technology in the classroom is the way it helps to communicate what learning took place.  Technology can often provide evidence of learning which can be sent or posted to share with families.  Students who are excited about the learning opportunities they experienced are more likely to share with the adults they live with about what they learned than just report that their day was "OK".  The community can be better involved with the education of our students by witnessing student ability through these products.

To me this course was really a catalyst, a jumping off point, for changing the way I teach and the way I hope students will learn. Five classes and some CloudWork certainly does not make me an expert on anything but it points me in the right direction to improve as an educator and provide opportunities to students that are engaging and informative.  I know where to look for new ideas and how to change my thinking about topics.  For students, it is less about what you know at the end of a course and more about how you learned it.  

CJPTTF: Take-Away Big Ideas

From the beginning, the idea of this fellowship excited me. As someone who has grown up surrounded by technology and who is just delving into teaching, the intersection of the two was a point of difficulty. I lacked ideas of how to meld the two, but I was already optimistic of the benefits the combination could impart to the classroom. Having seen how integral technology was in the lives of my students, it was crucially important that I use it to attract their attention to class.

I have learned many varied things from this fellowship. On a class wide scope, learning how to manufacture quizzes with Google documents, how to make flash cards online with quizzlet, and how to make entrancing visuals with programs such as tagxedo and wordle will all be used weekly in my class. On a macro level, our in depth exploration of the uses of wikis has inspired me to, in my role as technology coordinator for the religious school, to create a wiki for our school. This will be extremely useful to connect to parents, keep track of kids' work, and to keep track of the multiple facets of the technology we use.

I intend to use all we've learned as both a springboard for further exploration, as well as to pass it on to my fellow educators and down to my students. I hope to encourage our school as a whole to take advantage of this opportunity to forge forward, and to avoid stagnation. I am most excited to see in what ways I can use what I learned to engage my students, and to relate better to them. Many of the ideas shared with us were new and fresh to me, and I can't wait to try to fit them into a lesson plan. These ideas include web quests, vokis, online games, and the various timeline generators.

The final, critical idea I took away from the fellowship came from my own experiences learning during its duration. I discovered that technology can be a useful tool, but cannot replace classic instruction. I was reminded of the dangers of overwhelming students. I hope to avoid that pitfall, and to apply all we have looked into as part of next year’s curriculum.

Initial Uses of Technology in My Own Teaching

This year, as I began to learn with TTF, I integrated technology in two ways. I created flashcards on the website we learned about for my 3rd grade Hebrew class and with my 6th graders, we used Quia.com to create an end of the year Jew-pardy game to review the year's learning with the 4/5th graders who the 6th graders were sharing their learning with throughout the year. In both cases, I saw how much more excited and engaged the students were. They all thought that using computers in class was very cool and their energy around learning and participation was markedly different.
One of the projects that I have devised for my 5-7th graders for next year (as a part of our new Project Based Learning curriculum) is a Digital Midrash project. This project will be presented with them with a Prezi (created on prezi.com), one of my favorite on-line teaching tools. I used Prezis with my Adult Ed course this year and they LOVED the slide presentations (and a Prezi is SOOOOOO much easier to create than a Power Point!). The Digital Midrash project will encourage the students to use a variety of the technology tools/ideas I learned about in TTF this year including (but not limited to): word clouds, timelines, Ted Talks, Blogs/Vlogs, and more! I'm very much looking forward to sharing the Prezi with the TTF class and to getting their feedback on how I can make this lesson even better before sharing it with the students next year!

TTF: Big Ideas

I have to say that my head is still spinning with all the options I now see are available for me to use in the classroom. I am more inspired than intimidated. This has been a wonderful learning experience!

Technology in and of itself is not necessarily something that will benefit students in the classroom. However, after extensive exploration (and diving down numerous, fascinating rabbit holes), I can see ways to apply different technologies to various subject areas in the classroom.
   
I will be more likely to go to my extensive bank of online resources to look for more innovative ways to engage my students in the topic at hand. While Life Cycles are an important part of our religious school curriculum, the textbook we have is fine, but it doesn't grab the students' attention. The funny thing is, I think that if I took the activities in the textbook and converted them to some online format (blog, game, flash cards), the students would jump right into it and actually enjoy it more!
 
I hope to find the right match of technology to enhance my students' understanding of the topic material. There's so much available that I think it will wind up being fairly easy to find programs that are suitable matches for the tone of the lesson I want to present; the challenge, I think, will be winnowing down my choices. I look forward to checking in here for future input and inspiration!

Judy's Big Ideas from TTF

The primary ideas that I have taken away are that technology is indispensable for capturing attention in today’s classroom.  Students are so used to being able to find information for themselves that the teacher as a source of information has lost most of his/her value.  The teacher need to become a coach for the students self -motivated discovery. Also students’ attention span for screens is greater than their attention span for in-person presentations.  I believe that there is a real place here for collaboration between younger and more experienced teachers.  The younger teachers have  technological experience that is invaluable and the experienced teachers have the longer perspective and  more realistic approach  which is also invaluable.  Putting them together can make some wonderful things happen.

I am both a teacher and a director of education so the change in my approach to teaching applies to the whole school , rather than just my classroom.  I believe that the teacher’s role is changing from conveyer of information to coach in students’   learning to direct their own learning.  This is best utilized in project based learning which I plan to bring into the school in a more systematic way next year. I am also moving to a model where every class communicates on a Wiki, although I plan to initiate it only in two classes next year.

My goal is to move quickly but not too quickly in this direction.  I am cautious about too much change in a school where the students are actually happy and relatively engaged.  On the other hand, I am cognizant of being behind the curve compared to what is happening in public school and eager to try new things. The movie making retreat was a big success with the staff so I think I have a team that is excited about making this change happen. Tonight we had a teachers' meeting to discuss Project Based Learning  for next year.  Things are moving forward!

big Ideas

      You know that dream when you show up for class in your pj's (or worse, with no clothes!) or you have forgotten to study for the test or learn your lines for the play?  Well, I thought I was going to live that dream in this seminar.  Ok, technology is still somewhat of a foreign language, but at least it's one that I can understand.  I have learned so many new things, even though I still have to return to some of the basic tutorials from time to time.
      The most important lesson I have learned is that there are so many interesting ways to use technology in education and it isn't that hard to find them.  Just being exposed to a variety of applications has opened a new world for me.  Having the confidence and courage to just mess around and actually try to figure out how to make something work was a major accomplishment.  When I emailed my coach to say, "You know that question we had that we didn't know how to answer?  Well, I figured out how to make it work!" That was when I realized I could actually do this.  I'm no expert, and I have a lot to learn, but I know enough to get started and I will continue to learn along the way.
      I don't think I will actually change my approach to teaching.  My orientation has always been to put the students at the center and make them responsible for their own learning.  Technology just gives me more opportunities to make this happen, and will allow the lesson to meet the students where they are, since this is definitely their world.  As Charlie told us, "You don't really need this."  But it does make things more engaging and interesting.  I am also reminded that I don't always have to know how to implement the technology that I am using.  The students can figure that out.  They are much better at it anyway.  I just have to be able to lay the foundation, to know where we are going, and to lead them in that direction.  Their natural abilities and creativity will take over from there.
      I am excited to apply the lessons that I have created to my eighth grade class, as well as to introduce some of the technologies to my staff.  We are beginning to implement project based learning in our school, and the ideas I have gathered from TTF will inform our learning and apply to the project based curriculum.  This will be the basis of our professional development in the next year.