In the year 5778, the future, it seems, is now. If someone 50 years ago time-traveled to today and saw the myriad technologies and devices that make possible working virtually, she would be amazed, to say the least. She would see a professional environment for many where video conference, shared screens (of all kinds), emails, texts, and other virtual communication are the norm. Wow.

In many regards, we are fortunate to operate with these options. Geography, and sometimes even budgets, suddenly become nearly irrelevant as people around the world can collaborate, learn from each other, and trouble-shoot challenges either in real-time or as soon as they’re able to check their smart phone. The timing and place is entirely up to the individual.

Yet, with this flexibility and the advantages that come with it, we also have experienced its limitations. The value of traditional in-person workspaces that provide face-to-face interactions remains an important balance to today’s technologies. In our capacities as implementers of Jewish teen initiatives at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston and The JCC of Greater Baltimore, supported by The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, we’ve taken steps to facilitate opportunities for youth and teen professionals to come together in communal spaces. We’re doing this on limited budgets, so thinking strategically, and creatively is a must, as is experiencing the genuine impact in-person work environments have on these professionals, the teens with whom they work, and each of our communities’ landscape of teen Jewish experiences.

Going Against the Virtual Workplace Norm

Economics combined with the nature of responsibilities of a “regional” position means that many Jewish professionals, especially those who serve youth and teens, work out of their homes or are constantly on the road. They don’t have the traditional office and the natural interactions and environment that come with that. We know how common it is for these professionals to work remotely, floating from their home to coffee shops and elsewhere.

As anyone who has worked like this knows, it can be a lonely experience. Beyond that, there are elements of support systems, creative brainstorming, and knowledge-sharing that are lacking from the face-to-face, office workspace.

With this premise, we each looked for ways to create a communal workplace for professionals serving Jewish teens in our communities. We went about this in different ways, but have both seen positive results.

What’s Old is New: How to Bring People Together Today

In Boston, Margie regularly opens her home as a work space for anyone who is a youth or teen professional. It’s not surprising that professionals who have no offices come. What has been more surprising is that professionals who work in an office but not with others serving youth or teens come too. Why? Because we are building a community of youth professionals of which they want to be a part.

In fact, a collaborative grant proposal between local synagogues, a camp, a day school, and a community organization emerged directly from talks in this communal work environment.  This proposal, which recently received funding from CJP, includes a teen engagement professional who shares her time with several of these organizations.  Moreover, when people are together in this house, they help each other with marketing and publicity–both developing materials and simply knowing what other organizations are offering—troubleshooting challenges, brainstorming for programs, and simply turning to one another for professional development advice.

In Baltimore, 4Front—the name of the Jewish teen initiative—has office space that has become a hub of teen-focused activity. It’s a physical gathering space for teens and for the adults who care about them, which has strengthened relationships among professional colleagues and fostered collaboration. BBYO, for instance, has historically had an office at the JCC.  It now sits intentionally in the same space as the 4Front staff in order to spark conversation and collaboration. A summer camp that needed to conduct teen interviews also has been invited to set up shop in 4Front, while part of the office is designated as a “swing space” for any youth or teen professional to come in and have a place to work. Additionally, one day a month, beginning this October, will be designated as an open and collaborative day where professionals know they can come to the office and interact with peers working there that same day.

From In-Person to Real Results

We’ve heard from the professionals themselves how much they look forward to these in-person opportunities. They recognize that building a community of peers working in their field contributes to their professional growth. And while professional development is an integral part of all of the community initiatives within the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative these interactions are different than learning a specific new approach or skill. These interactions offer support and foster connections that lead to professional success and positive feelings about one’s choice of work.

Importantly, there also are tangible results. Here’s how the teen Jewish landscape, and the professionals within it, have been positively influenced by working in the same physical space:

• Professional collaborations have developed around programs, marketing, and more—all efforts that occurred because professionals built trust and discussed their plans in ways that only happen in person.
• When these teen professionals come together around the table, literally and figuratively, the conversation is very congenial and collegial. This hasn’t always been the case. But being together and establishing some basic ground rules makes a real difference.  One rule in Baltimore, for example, is that, when we gather together, no one can use the term “my teens.” This helps set the tone that every organization is in the same boat and reinforces the idea that we are collectively responsible for the welfare and engagement of all local Jewish teens.
• By bringing people together, professionals gain a better understanding of the entire landscape of teen Jewish experiences. They are able to help teens connect with the experiences and programs that best fit them and their interests.
• 4Front actually has entered into organizational relationships because it shares space with specific organizations. For example, it is hosting a NFTY event at the JCC, and NFTY is making use of 4Front’s staff and Jewish educators so they can interface with their teens as well. Soon 4Front also will begin a peer consultancy, where professionals can present a challenge they have in their work to the group, which then consults on that issue. Clearly this model only will work if each professional views peers as trusted, informed, and valued resources.

Traditional Models in a New Age

We are excited by these results and the relationships and collaborations created. Moving forward, we want to strengthen more of our community organizations so they can provide the highest quality and deeply meaningful Jewish experiences for teens. We do that by strengthening professionals and the connections between them. And while technology has a large role to play to that end in today’s work environments, it’s important not to lose sight of the value of face-to-face interactions. We have learned and already seen results that come from sharing space and engaging in-person. It’s simple, but powerful. Trust and sense of unity among professionals goes a long way.

Margie Bogdanow, LICSW, is a Senior Consultant for Teen Education and Engagement at Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Rabbi Dena Shaffer is Executive Director of 4Front Baltimore, the Teen Engagement Initiative at JCC Baltimore, which is supported by The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

This is the final piece of the series in eJewishPhilanthropy, Continuing Conversations on Leveraging Educational Technology to Advance Jewish Learning. The series is a project of Jewish Funders Network, the Jim Joseph Foundation, and the William Davidson Foundation. For an in-depth look at opportunities in Jewish Ed Tech and digital engagement, read Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy.

In an age where everyone has ready access to what would have recently been considered to be a supercomputer, how can an industrial–age educational system adapt to an abundance of knowledge and tools?

We live in a time of a great abundance of knowledge, what technology thinker Clay Shirky termed a Cognitive Surplus. A student with an idea and readily available resources can create almost anything and reach a worldwide audience.

For example, students at my school, The Frisch School, were recently awarded first prize at an engineering conference attended by over a thousand people sponsored by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education. Using microprocessors, coding, and 3D printing, four sophomore girls designed a device for individuals with physical disabilities to communicate by blinking their eyes for a fraction of the cost of similar, commercially available assistive technologies.

Another student has created his own gaming studio, MidnightCoffeeInc, in which he has already published three retro-style games on Steam, the most popular gaming platform in the industry, and on the Android app store. He developed his games using graphic design software and drag and drop programs. His creative pursuits have received so much acclaim that he was chosen to present at the ISTE educational technology conference, the largest educational technology conference in North America with over 15,000 participants.

A recent alumnus who is now an electrical engineering student at The Cooper Union, created a fully operational version of the Enigma Machine, the electro-mechanical machine the Nazis used to create their “unbreakable” code in World War II. When I asked him if he would now design the program pathbreaking British computer scientist Alan Turing developed to crack the Enigma code, made famous by the film The Imitation Game, he looked at me quizzically and responded that anyone could write the program to crack this code nowadays even using a $35 Raspberry Pi microprocessor. Note, Alan Turing had to invent the first modern computer which filled an entire house in order to perform the calculations to crack the Enigma Code.

We have reached an age where everyone has ready access to what would have recently been considered to be a supercomputer. The smartphone, a device in the pockets of almost every teenager and adult, has millions of times more processing power than the combined power of all the computers used to power the Apollo moon landing mission in 1969.

The overarching question then becomes how can our current educational system designed using the factory model for the industrial age adapt to an an information age with such an abundance of knowledge and tools.

Addressing this question is the goal of the report commissioned by the Jim Joseph and William Davidson Foundation Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy and the Continuing Conversations on Leveraging Educational Technology to Advance Jewish Learning blog series published on the Jewish Funders Network and eJewish Philanthropy.

In this series, educators have discussed how to adapt trends in educational technology to Jewish education like the Maker Movement in which individuals create using both hi-tech and low-tech tools and Augmented Reality, a trend made popular by the Pokemon Go game and now embedded into the latest iPhone. They have described how ubiquitous mobile technology can be used as a tool for creative and ingenious approaches to Jewish learning and skill development. The importance of proper teacher training to help teachers grapple with the brave new world of educational technology has been emphasized both from the perspective of a funder and a provider of professional development.

The promise of online learning as a means to create high quality Jewish educational instruction for any student, anywhere has been discussed as well as the need to think carefully and adhere to a protocol of tried and true recommendations before following every new technology trend. Developers have illustrated how they utilize research-based best practices to maximize the educational value of their videos and argued for the importance of supporting open source technology allowing future programmers to build on knowledge created by others.

Finally, a series of questions and strategies for impactful investing has been carefully presented to utilize in planning funding for our scale-up nation.

This is only the beginning of a continuing conversation between funders, developers, educators, parents, and students. A new online space is being planned to further this important discussion as funders and other stakeholders in Jewish education seek to find ways to fulfill the promise of the cognitive surplus facilitated by technology in order to enhance Jewish education for all.

Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is the Director of Educational Technology at The Frisch School, a Modern Orthodox Yeshiva High School in Paramus, NJ. In this capacity, he works with the faculty to integrate technology into every aspect of teaching and learning at Frisch.

Rabbi Pittinsky is also a professor for MOFET’s International Online Academy, an educational consultant for the Jewish Funders Network and a Smart Board Certified Teacher Trainer. He is an active blogger on topics related to the intersection of technology and Jewish education and an avid user of social media. You can read his blog at:http://techrav.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @techrav.

Rabbi Pittinsky leads professional development workshops throughout North America, Israel, and South Africa on a broad range of educational technology related topics and presents at various educational conferences, most recently at the The International Society for Technology in Education Conference (ISTE), the largest educational technology conference in the world and at The Jewish Funders Network Conference.

Five years ago, Foundation for Jewish Camp, with the support of the Jim Joseph and AVI CHAI Foundations, launched the second cohort of Jewish Specialty Camp Incubator. With the conclusion of the grant period late last year, an independent evaluation (viewable as Executive Summary and Full Report), conducted by Informing Change, shows many of the same important, positive outcomes as were seen in the first incubator: Incubator camps attract middle and high school youth who wouldn’t otherwise attend Jewish camp; The camps’ specialties drive camp enrollment and help keep campers coming back; With Incubator staff guidance, the four camps quickly developed the infrastructure necessary for organizational growth and stability; Incubator camps infuse Jewish content into the camp experience in many ways and shape the lives of campers regarding their Jewish growth, specialty growth, and personal growth; among other outcomes.

We don’t want to focus on these positive outcomes here, as excited as we continue to be about them. Rather, we want to share some of the insights from the evaluation that are relevant not just to the incubator camps, but to the broader field of Jewish camping, and even to the overall field of Jewish education and engagement.

1. The Importance of “New”

The opportunity for a “new” experience is especially appealing to Jewish teens. Teens have many competing interests for their summer time: school, work, internships, spending time with family and friends. To make camp appealing to them, Incubator camps need to continue marketing their newness, both to first-time campers and returning campers who want to do something different from last summer – what we call an “aspirational arc.” As an example, URJ Sci-Tech Academy not only has added new specialty tracks each year – such as Forensics; Bio-Zone: SciTech MD; and Earth and Sky: Astronomy and the World Above” – but also builds in new elements to its existing specialty tracks as campers progress from youth to teen sessions. These strategies help to counter an attitude of “been there, done that” that returning campers may have as they age and run out of summers to have new experiences before they leave home for college or to start their careers. This challenge is as present for camps as it is for any organization engaging this audience.

2. The Value of Data

Similar to existing organizations, new organizations (camps included) need data of many types to inform strategic decisions and monitor early activities to identify strengths and weaknesses for course correction. And while start-up organizations have many demands pulling on their time, data collection should be prioritized. The Incubator provided camps with data from their campers and families, benchmarked against the other Incubator I and II camps, as well as other Jewish camps in the field. In addition, Incubator staff and camp stakeholders measured each camp’s organizational capacity semi-annually to ensure that progress was being made, so the camps are on track to exit the Incubator out of the startup stage, on a path to sustainability.

3. The Importance of Filling Out Staff

Directors need staff support, especially from a strong assistant director, early on. Starting any business can be a lonely (even with the support of a cohort) and challenging endeavor; bringing together a professional team early in the process provides a much needed support system. Incubator II camps benefitted from having an assistant director selected well before the first camp summer so both the director and assistant director could participate in Incubator activities as they developed the camp concept into reality. This support was invaluable to the directors and facilitated many of the organizational development achievements in the early years.

4. Get the Campers

Any organization with an earned income model must make recruitment among its top priorities even when the program is not fully developed. Focusing on enrolling campers in early years allows for quick and efficient testing of the program elements and operations; this focus also is the best path to quicker sustainability. Camps with lower enrollment in the first year never quite caught up with their own initial goals and with the other camps. Campers from the first year or two also help with word-of-mouth recruitment, as seen with many parents deciding in later years to send their children to camp after hearing about it from a friend or family member.

5. Integrated Jewish Learning

Nearly all Incubator campers and their parents say that camp had a positive influence on campers’ Jewish lives. The way Incubator camps approach integrating Jewish learning,values, and reflections into their programming is working, regardless of whether the Jewish content is fully integrated with the specialty throughout the entire day, or partially integrated at select times. What is most important is to find a model and tailor the Jewish curriculum to meet the end user at their level so they better engage with it.

6. A Business Model Designed for Sustainability

For long-term sustainability, a new Jewish camp – specialty or not – needs to enroll, at a bare minimum, an average of 80 campers per week during their summer season. Camp leaders need to be mindful that giving away camp for free – or at deeply discounted rates – is not the way to reach this enrollment goal. Scholarships and discounts may help bring campers early on, but can also set the camp back on its journey toward financial sustainability. Finding the right balance of enrolling campers and making a profit is crucial for new camps and organizations.

7. Location Matters

Location affects recruitment and the camp experience. Incubator camp directors identified locations to support their specialty and fit their budgets. The financial implications of location include the facility costs, operating costs of running that site, and recruitment costs of traveling from that site to meet with new families. Simply, the location needs to be attractive and accessible to enough of the target market that they enroll.

With these positive outcomes and insights, specialty camps have created an exciting spark in the Jewish camping field, pushing all Jewish camps to think creatively and to maximize their reach and Jewish learning. In fact, traditional camps are beginning to create and implement specialty tracks within their regular offerings in an effort to retain older campers and to attract campers who may want to specialize in a particular activity. Some traditional camps also are rethinking session length influenced by the Incubator camps’ models, recognizing that shorter sessions may attract campers who have a “packed” summer. And more and more camps of all kinds are beginning to gather data to inform their marketing and fundraising strategies.

Already, the experiential Jewish education curriculum and training protocols designed by the Incubator team are the basis of and being used by FJC’s Hiddur initiative – which helps camps become more effective at delivering Jewish educational experiences to their campers and staff – and by the Jewish Coaching Project targeting day camps funded by UJA-Federation of NY. We are confident that other funders and organizations in the field will make use of these and other resources emanating from the Specialty Camps Incubator, and the insights and learnings presented here. With Incubator III underway, the structure of the initiative continues to be fine-tuned, taking an already strong and proven model to even greater heights. We will continue to be transparent in our learnings and outcomes, with the heartfelt belief that the entire field of Jewish education and engagement will benefit.

Michele Friedman is Director of New Camp Initiatives at Foundation for Jewish Camp. Ellen Irie is Principal at Informing Change, a strategic learning firm dedicated to increasing the effectiveness and impact of people who are working to make the world a better place.

originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy