WellAdvised by JPRO

JPRO Network has a go-to ice-breaker: “What is something that you learned along the way in your career that you wish you had known sooner?” Responses run the gamut: work-life integration, negotiation skills, how to build stronger collegial relationships, and much more.

While our history dates back to 1899, we sometimes affectionately refer to the organization as a 120-year old startup. A year ago our Board and staff set out to reimagine our work to strengthen our field by serving the professionals who power our organizations. As JPRO’s mission is to support all those who work for the Jewish nonprofit sector in the United States and Canada, we listen carefully to make sure we understand the needs of our community. Our listening tour and poll gave us resounding feedback that early- and mid-career professionals need more guidance from seasoned colleagues.

With that data in hand, we set out to build a platform to offer confidential, free, easy-to-access advice to JPRO members. With generous support from the Jim Joseph Foundation, JPRO Network is piloting WellAdvised, which offers JPRO members one-time, one-hour advising sessions on a focused area of career-based inquiry or problem solving.

What is WellAdvised?

During a six-month pilot, fourteen exemplary professionals will volunteer their time to advise their colleagues. JPRO members can sign up online for a free one-hour advising session on one of sixteen topics.

 

After the WellAdvised session is scheduled, advisees answer a few brief intake questions to enable their advisor to be prepared to help make the most of the advising session. Following the session, advisees are asked to respond to a quick evaluation.

Walking the Walk

We believe that what an organization does on the inside shapes its impact in the world. JPRO seeks to increase the extent to which professionals can draw from the well of wisdom within our professional community, so we started there with our pilot design. We wanted to innovate, so we turned to UpStart and were lucky to be guided by Aliza Mazor, Chief Field-Building Officer. And just as those who take advantage of WellAdvised will benefit from advice from savvy colleagues, we turned to 20 brilliant professionals whom we called our Design Team, consulting with them at critical moments in the design. We learned that having a “menu” of advising topics makes this offering more inviting, that confidentiality is critical, and that the opportunity to make cross-field connections is meaningful – and much more.

Every Pilot is an Opportunity for Learning

Pilots are all about learning. Here are a few of the big questions that we are bringing to the test drive of WellAdvised:

  • Will those who participate in WellAdvised feel more supported as members of our field?
  • Can one-hour, one-time advising help advisees identify useful next steps on an issue or opportunity that they are working through?
  • While maintaining advisee confidentiality, what are some of the trends and themes that our advisors are hearing? How can we share and leverage this learning to best serve professionals across the field?

Anyone who works for a JPRO–affiliated organization is a JPRO member and can sign up to Be Advised. There are more JPRO pilots coming on the heels of this one including:

  • An online series in partnership with the Berman Jewish Policy Archive;
  • The Management Center’s Managing to Change the World course, offered at a discount, in partnership with UJA Federation of New York’s Wiener Center for Leadership and Learning.

Sign up for the JPRO newsletter to be the first to hear about all that we offer. And if your organization isn’t yet an affiliate, it’s quick and easy for your organization to join JPRO’s growing network of 160 organizations and over 4,000 members.

Jeffrey Finkelstein is the Board President of JPRO Network and serves as the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Ilana Aisen is the Executive Director of JPRO Network and can be reached at [email protected].

source: eJewishPhilanthropy

Faced with fusty texts, teachers learn to breathe new life into Jewish studies

Ayeka founder Aryeh Ben David says that when it comes to learning about Judaism, schools should be teaching connection over content

NEW YORK — Eighteen months ago, students at the Bi-Cultural Day School in Stamford, Connecticut, received a relatively flat account of Moses and the 12 spies.

They learned the who, what, where, when and possibly the why of the story: Moses sent out 12 spies to do a little reconnaissance in the land of Canaan. Ten came back and scared the daylights out of everyone, and only two, Joshua and Caleb, challenged the majority opinion.

End of lesson.

And while that’s fine if the goal is to win Jewish Trivial Pursuit, it’s not ideal if the goal is to help students deepen their spiritual and Jewish identities.

According to longtime educator Aryeh Ben David, quantity shouldn’t trump quality — especially when it comes to Judaic studies. Yet, for too long Jewish educators have pushed content, rather than connectedness, said the founder of the Jerusalem-based Ayeka: The Center for Soulful Education.

Founded in 2006 with the goal of reframing Jewish education, the non-profit’s name is the biblical word for “where are you.” Ayeka provides learning tracks for educators, parents, and individuals with online and in-person options in the United States and Israel. The idea is to help teachers breathe life into Jewish text study.

The organization has also published two books, “Becoming Soulful Educators” and the “Ayeka Haggadah: Hearing Your Own Voice.”

“We’re offering a paradigm shift in the way we teach. Students won’t remember what they are not personally connected to,” Ben David said. “Ayeka looks at Judaism as a vehicle for becoming our better selves, and it can’t be an intellectual process. Learning can’t be just about content and memorization. They [students] have to own it in their own lives.”

And that’s been the result at Bi-Cultural.

Since the introduction of Ayeka, the students are asked to consider what they would do if they had a minority opinion, said Michal Smart, director of Jewish studies at the school. Then they are asked to think about something they might be experiencing.

Maybe it’s peer pressure to do something they don’t want to do, or something they know is wrong. Teachers then ask the class to think about one small step they could take to change their situation. They will be asked to journal about it for homework and then, perhaps a week later, teachers will check back to see how they are doing.

Illustrative: First grade students sit in a classroom on their first day of school at a school. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

“It’s building community in the classroom. Judaism isn’t just about more information. Torah is a teaching of life and if you don’t ask those questions then you just a read a story. You have to put yourself in the story and put the story inside you,” said Smart.

Bi-Cultural was one of the first day schools to implement Ayeka. Now with the help of hundreds of thousands of dollars in multi-year grants from four major American Jewish foundations, including the Jim Joseph Foundation, Ayeka will expand its Soulful Professional Development program in up to eight Hebrew day schools in North America.

The grant will go towards training Judaic studies teachers to implement its Soulful Education pedagogy in their classrooms, as well as to coach colleagues in their schools in Ayeka’s methodology. The multi-year program will include retreats, on-site coaching sessions, and individual mentoring and webinars for staff, as well as for the administrations of the selected day schools.

Illustrative: school children in class. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“Jewish learning can be both a powerful and deeply personal experience that adds genuine meaning to one’s life. But the Jim Joseph Foundation knows that these experiences are only effective when facilitated by well-trained and well-resourced educators,” said Stacie Cherner, senior program officer from the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Two teachers from each day school that will participate in Ayeka’s Jim Joseph Foundation Spiritual Education Program will undergo training, which can last up to a year. Once they complete training they will help implement the method in their school.

“This isn’t just another tool in the tool box. It’s not like going to a seminar for the day and then pulling out what you learned if nothing else is working,” said Rabbi Yehoshua Looks, COO of Ayeka. “What students need from their teachers is a degree of vulnerability. The teacher has to be present. They have to be affected by the material too. If Judaism comes across as preaching, we lose students.”

Yehoshua Looks, COO of Ayeka, talks with educators. (Courtesy: Ayeka.)

Ben David has worked for decades to make traditional Jewish learning personally relevant.

Born in the United States, he moved to Israel in 1978. After receiving his rabbinical ordination from the Israeli rabbinate, he served as director of spiritual education at Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute from 1987-2007. He also served as rabbinical educational consultant for Hillel International from 2004-2007.

In 2006, he founded Ayeka. “At first, some thought the idea was flaky. Some thought it was a gimmick. We’re not touchy-feely and I don’t play the guitar,” Ben David said, smiling.

Kidding aside, Ben David said he sees too many students disconnect with Judaism and what they learned after their formal education ends.

In recent years there has been a push for more experiential learning, taking students outside the classroom for activities. But Ben David thinks that sends the wrong message.

“It sends a deleterious message, a subliminal message that what takes place in the classroom is boring. We need to make what happens in the classroom as meaningful,” he said.

source: Times of Israel

Teen Initiative Aims to Drive Engagement

An intensive program focused on sports is launching Atlanta’s effort to connect with Jewish teens.

The Atlanta Jewish Teen Initiative is launching programs more than a year after the Jim Joseph Foundation announced it was giving an Atlanta partnership $2.1 million over five years to engage more teenagers with the Jewish community.

The initiative is a collaboration of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the Marcus JCC and the Atlanta Rabbinical Association under the leadership of Hope Chernak, who arrived in mid-April as the executive director of the $4.2 million effort (half from the Jim Joseph Foundation, half from local matching funds).

The initiative focuses on high-schoolers in the hope of boosting Jewish teen engagement and education throughout the community with new programs of interest to teens. Examples include an arts program, a seminar with lawyers and activists on how Jewish values inform social justice, and a possible seminar on civil rights in partnership with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Each program will be taught through a Jewish lens to foster teens’ connection to Judaism and will operate during spring, summer, fall and winter breaks from school.

A national collaboration began in 2013 after the release of the Jim Joseph Foundation report “Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens,” whose goal is to connect tens of thousands of teens to meaningful Jewish learning experiences.

The San Francisco-based foundation picked 10 cities — based on their specific characteristics and history of communal partnerships — to participate and committed more than $29 million to support the resulting Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative.

Amanda Abrams, the chief program and innovation officer at the Marcus JCC, said Atlanta was selected because religion is more of a normal practice in the South than in the other nine locations: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver/Boulder, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego and San Francisco.

Abrams said Atlanta’s initiative has been well received so far and was acknowledged by a Jewish Federation in New Jersey, which requested further information after hearing a presentation by Abrams during the General Assembly of Federations in Los Angeles in November.

“They thought what we shared was very informative, and my hope is that what we’ve done in Atlanta will transfer to other communities, at least in the planning process,” she said.

Input from the community and collaborations with existing organizations are important, Abrams said, as the initiative looks for sustainability early instead of waiting until the grant runs out after five years to seek new funding. The initiative therefore is flexible and open to change along the way.

The AJTI has canvassed in various communities, including Alpharetta and intown, to reach as many teens as possible. Although areas inside and outside the Perimeter present a challenge for the initiative, Chernak said AJTI is prepared to cross any boundary.

The Marcus JCC is working behind the scenes to implement the initiative by providing human resources, technical and financial support, supervision, and management. Federation is leveraging the funding with aid from the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Marcus JCC.

The ARA is serving as a resource to the initiative’s staff and volunteers by providing Jewish educational components and having members, including The Temple’s Rabbi Peter Berg, serve on the AJTI board. He said: “I am very proud because the AJTI is our community at its finest. We are working to not only offer great programing for teens that are not involved in Jewish life, but also toward a positive goal in the community.”

Chernak said the initiative remains in the pilot stage but is reaching out to agencies, synagogues and student clubs to schedule one-on-one meetings and explain the initiative.

“We are not trying to become another youth program but in fact support and provide any resources and 
 fill in a gap where students are currently not involved,” Chernak said.

AJTI’s first intensive session for teens, JumpSpark Sports, is scheduled for January and will provide a behind-the-scenes look at Atlanta’s sports industry.

AJTI also launched JumpSpark Professional for the development of communal professionals working with teens. A professional seminar in January will feature a discussion about teen behaviors and challenges.

The initiative hopes to create a pocket of communities with 15 to 25 kids each who will get to know one another and learn together. The initiative also wants to establish a leadership track in a year to help students learn what it means to be mentors.

Teens can learn more about the initiative at www.jumpsparkatl.org.

“Teens are at a critical stage of their life when they are building up their Jewish identity, and although we have great programs in the community, such as BBYO, there are still plenty of teens who have no Jewish connection, and having more options that are different and unique is important,” Federation CEO Eric Robbins said.

Abrams added, “It’s sometimes hard for people to understand what the AJTI is because there’s truly nothing like this that exists in Atlanta. It’s such an innovative way of serving Jewish teens.”

Source: Atlanta Jewish Times

Strength in Numbers: Creating Cohorts of Educators to Learn and Grow Together

There’s nothing new about the Jim Joseph Foundation investing in Jewish educators and in educator professional development (PD) specifically. In fact, some of the Foundation’s earliest and largest investments were in PD; investments which continue to be an integral part of the Foundation’s strategy, along with the rigorous evaluation of them. About a handful of Foundation-supported professional development programs are operated by our valued partners at any given time.

Yet, there is a certain “newness” to the latest set of investments following the Foundation’s Request for Proposals (RFP) for programs in Jewish Educator PD that differentiates it from previous Foundation grants in this space. First and foremost, the ten new initiatives all represent cohorts of educators, and the directors of these programs all comprise a Community of Practice (Cop) to learn together. This set of investments is a new structure in which the Foundation is operating, a change we made deliberately and after much thought.

Why This, Why Now

It is important to note that this investment approach is not replacing the Foundation’s other grantmaking in which an individual organization receives support. Yet this new approach begs the simple question, “why?” After more than a decade of investments in educator professional development totaling more than $70 million, why intentionally create cohorts simultaneously among numerous organizations? Learnings from previous investments—both those related to educator professional development and others—show clearly that a cohort-based PD program targeting in-service professionals offers significant benefits for Jewish educators, namely:

  • The cohort experience in which people learn together, grow together, network, and support each other, is deeply impactful and effective. There are numerous examples that point to this; as just one, the recent evaluation of the Specialty Camps Incubator shows the added value of a cohort structure: Camp directors and assistant directors gained knowledge and insight by hearing one another discuss their challenges and solutions. These camp leaders also consider their cohort to include the Incubator staff and mentors, reflecting a strong sense of belonging to a larger community of Jewish camp professionals.
  • Professional development opportunities offered while educators are in-service (as opposed to before entering the workforce) increase educator morale, educator skills, and the likelihood that educators will advance and remain in the field.
  • By design, educator professional development programs tend to be relatively small in number. These are intense, immersive programs, tailor-made for participants with one-on-one mentoring, travel, and opportunities to return to their educational settings to apply learnings and to reflect (employers and supervisors are an important piece of this too). This also means that from a sheer numbers standpoint, in order to truly impact the field, the Foundation needs to fund a set of programs to reach a tipping point that engages a significant number of educators.

Of course this latter point also means that educator PD done in this manner is expensive, plain and simple. Yet the Foundation has learned that the high cost per person is worth the investment in high-quality programs. So we have—and continue to—bet on individuals who are committed to their practice and want to advance and improve in their work. The training they receive emanates out from their practice, to their workplace, and to the entire field of Jewish education.

A PD Cohort of Diverse Educators for Diverse Learners

While all of these learnings informed how the Foundation designed the RFP, there was no way of ensuring the quantity and high quality of proposals received. And indeed, the Foundation was fortunate to receive both a high number and high quality of proposals from a range of organizations. As a result, the organizations represent a diversity of missions, types of programs, and types of educators who will benefit. Thus, the ultimate infusion into the field of 500 professionally developed educators will come from different types of PD interventions. And from what we know, this makes perfect sense. Learners in one setting—whether camp, school, cultural settings, and others—will engage with educators who received training that may look quite different compared to a learner and educator in a second setting.

Again, this set of investments, in addition to creating cohorts of educators, also creates a CoP among the directors of these PD programs. While the Foundation has seen the benefit of interventions premised on close collaboration, this also is a new approach for us in educator PD—about which we are excited and eager to learn. The CoP will include in-person and online convenings, smaller working groups, networking opportunities, and an overall structure for problem solving and support.

Laying the Groundwork for More Learnings and Outcomes

Over the next four years, as these programs and the Foundation’s support structures for them are implemented, an external evaluation will offer important learnings about the results of the cohort as a whole (as opposed to just each program), similar to the evaluation of the Specialty Camps Incubator.

The Foundation knows the importance of—and has deep respect for—the educator. Numerous studies and evaluations in both the Jewish and the secular education arenas show that the learners’ experience, and the impact of the learning, is significantly dependent on the talent of the educator. And educators are better when they are supported, networked, and trained in ongoing ways. On a large scale, we want to help develop talented, dynamic, and committed educators, with a deep passion for Jewish life and learning who will ultimately each reach a wide circle of students. This latest big bet is part of that endeavor.

BimBam’s Chanukkah Shaboom! Special

BimBam’s digital storytelling sparks connections to Judaism for learners of all ages. Last year it released Shaboom!, a ten-part series designed for children ages 3-8 focusing on everyday Jewish values. Now, enjoy the latest Shaboom! episode, made especially for Chanukkah.

“We believe that Judaism has within it a blueprint through which one can become a better person,” says Jordan Gill, BimBam’s Executive Director. “I often articulate it as the formula V + C = M, values plus community equals mensch. If you teach people foundational values that inform how we should treat each other as human beings and then enable them to practice these values in community, the end result is someone who is making positive ripples in the world.”

The Foundation supports BimBam’s efforts to raise Jewish literacy by giving people opportunities, from childhood through adulthood, to use Jewish values, customs and rituals as a blueprint for becoming better and more involved citizens of the Jewish community, and the world. In addition to Shaboom!, the Foundation’s investment also supports BimBam’s Judaism 101, a digital series offering a baseline understanding of Jewish rituals and traditions to decrease discomfort as an obstacle for young adults looking to connect to Jewish life.

Learn more at BimBam.com

Learn more about Jewish educational technology in Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy,

Jewish EdTech in a World of Cognitive Surplus

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.

Exploring the Science of Character, Meaning, and Purpose on the 4th Annual Character Day

NEW YORK – Emmy-nominated Film Studio Let It Ripple is pleased to present the fourth annual Character Day with an estimated 100,000 events around the globe in companies, schools, museums, and homes – wherever people already gather – all screening the same films and joining an interactive worldwide LiveCast Q&A featuring prominent thought leaders talking about the importance of developing character (qualities like curiosity, creativity, initiative, collaboration, and empathy), and how developing those strengths can lead to a life of meaning and purpose in today’s world. Scheduled for Wednesday, September 13, 2017, Character Day is an innovative global initiative that has proven successful since its inception in 2014, and last year oversaw 93,000 events in 125 countries and all 50 states.

Spearheaded by Tiffany Shlain, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, thought leader and founder of The Webby Awards, Character Day highlights recent breakthroughs in the social science and neuroscience behind character development, and provides the tools (films, discussion kits, online resources), for millions of people to engage and develop the character strengths needed to thrive in today’s world – for free.

 

 

On September 13th, groups around the world will join and connect through the following:

  • Screen Let It Ripple’s global premiere of the brand-new short film “30,000 Days” that examines how people can live a life of meaning and purpose and explores the history of different philosophies around asking questions about living a good life.
  • Use free printed discussion kits that include the poster of periodic table of character strengths – a scientific graph outlining character qualities.
  • Tap into a 24-hour global LiveCast Q&A that links together the thousands of film screenings and discussions, and invites all participants to watch and ask questions to prominent leaders from extraordinarily diverse perspectives.

“Character Day is about bringing us all together to spend a day focusing on who we are, and who we want to be — for ourselves, our families, and the world,” said Tiffany Shlain, co-founder of Character Day and founder of the Webby Awards. “There’s so much science now to prove that we can develop who we are throughout our lives, and that doing so leads to more happiness, success, meaning, and purpose. Who doesn’t want that? We’re living in challenging days that require us to step up and ask these bigger questions in new ways.”

Over 20 thought leaders around character development will be participating in the Character Day Global LiveCast Q & A including Krista Tippet (Peabody Award winner, New York Times best-selling author), Angela Duckworth (MacArthur “genius” award, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance), and The Dalai Lama Center, who will be contributing a special video message on Character Day. All participants can tap into this global Q&A that happens through Facebook Live and Google Hangouts to watch and ask questions throughout the day. The list of speakers will be continuously updated at www.characterday.org. To date, there are already more than 60,000 screenings scheduled in all 50 states and across 60 countries with events taking place at organizations spanning the top tech companies, museums, schools, universities and libraries – as well as homes around the world.

Everyone is encouraged to create their own distinctive event at any time of the day and in any place on Wednesday, September 13, 2017. 

Please join the worldwide conversation and initiative by signing up. It takes two minutes and is absolutely free thanks to the support of visionary foundations including The John Templeton Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, The Covenant Foundation, Righteous Persons Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation, and Embrey Family Foundation.

Sign up at CharacterDay.org. 

About Let It Ripple

Let It Ripple’s mission is to use film, technology, discussion materials, and live and virtual events to engage people in conversation and action around complicated subjects that are shaping our lives, and updating these topics through an engaging, accessible, 21st-century lens. Over the past twelve years, the team has created and distributed 28 films, engaged more than 50 million people in dialogue, and created a new way of making films called “cloud filmmaking,” where films are made collaboratively with people from all over the world and organize global days of screening, conversation and action.

Helmed by Tiffany Shlain, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, thought leader and founder of The Webby Awards, Shlain has had four films premiere at Sundance, has won more than 85 awards and distinctions, and has had four of her films selected by The U.S. State Department to screen at embassies around the world to foster dialogue across borders. Find out more at http://www.letitripple.org.

Source: “Exploring the Science of Character, Meaning, and Purpose on the 4th Annual Character Day,” Boulder Jewish News, September 4, 2017

Ubiquity, Access, & Availability: How EdTech Can Transform Schools, Homes, & Anywhere In Between

This is part 11 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. Later this year, Jewish Funders Network will launch a new website to help advance the field of Jewish educational technology.

To understand and then appreciate technology’s role in our learning and our lives, we need to understand the essence of what technology is and what it allows us to do. When we move beyond brand names and the latest technical features we can see that technology is meant to allow us to increase our production, communication, and give us the ability to interface and interact with the world around us.

Image by Gregordy / WikiMedia Commons

There isn’t a single industry that exists today that doesn’t utilize the power of technology to increase or enhance its productivity, efficiency, or quality. Why then is education still discussing, and at times even struggling to validate, how technology can transform teaching, learning, and meaningful experiences in both?

Today, the word technology will evoke the images of iPads, laptops, and 4K displays, but I assure you that in its essence, and by definition, they are no more technological than the pencil and printing press before. To understand and then appreciate technology’s role in our learning and our lives, we need to understand the essence of what technology is and what it allows us to do. When we move beyond brand names and the latest technical features we can see that technology is meant to allow us to increase our production, communication, and give us the ability to interface and interact with the world around us.

Technology is becoming increasingly intelligent. Hotel rooms, refrigerators, even our coffee makers are not just automated but programmed to react and respond to best serve our needs, all while ensuring that the highest levels of efficiency and effectiveness are achieved. Our methods of communication, transportation, and service experiences, revolve around technological advances. Many of these new technologies didn’t exist even ten years ago and are still rapidly developing. You find technology creating an impact everywhere from hospitals, auto mechanics, airports, and even the grocery store. Technology has nearly changed every facet of industry, yet education still lags behind and technology is questioned. In 2017, we can still wonder about the ubiquitous nature of technology in education, and at the same time you would be hard pressed to find someone committed to a medical professional, mechanic, or contractor who opts out of using technology. Why is education different?

Access and availability are still a conversation because we have not yet addressed why technology is critical to successful teaching and learning. Technology’s impact on education isn’t going to be through the volume of technology present, but how it can shift and redefine the teaching and learning process. Technology is moving forward at a rapid pace in a direction that is mobile, handsfree, and voice responsive. We cannot view education in a different light and not provide students with the same tools that the real world interfaces with everyday. You might not (yet) have a smart lightbulb or Amazon’s Alexa but those days are numbered as companies incorporate these technologies into our everyday experiences whether we like it or not. 15 years ago you would be hard pressed to find a school that didn’t offer a keyboarding program. Today, while schools continue to invest hundreds or thousands into keyboarding, technology companies are spending millions to make them obsolete. Education needs to be on the edge of what technology is relevant now, not to jump on the trending bandwagon but be aware of how best to prepare our students for the year 2030 when they begin their professional journeys.

The Future of Educational Technology is Mobile, Creative, and Adaptive

Mobile technology allows us to experience the world around us. It directly impacts our ability to survey, compile, and engage with people, places, and things. So how does this interface with education? Well it depends on your definition of education, and what learning and develop you value. If you value memorization, fill in the blank, note taking, and lecture listening skills, then the purpose and value of technology will be very different than if one values creativity, complex nonlinear problem solving, critical thinking, reflection, and collaboration. Education should and must move beyond the 19th century model. The real world doesn’t function this way. While students must master the skill of memorization, documentation, and written communication, those must be components of a larger and more meaningful learning experience. With this in mind we can then look at technology as a tool to connect with others and capture experiences. Only then will technology use becomes authentic and access to it becomes more than justified but a requirement. At this point technology becomes a catalyst to help students acquire skills beyond memorization and essay writing, that will prepare students for the workforce of the future.

The World Economic Forum lists skills such as creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence as top ranking skills that will be prerequisites for success in the workplace of tomorrow:

Yet today’s educational framework, especially one void of technology, seems to assume that these skills are either not important or will be mastered at some later date. When we consider expert projections like the one above, coupled with technology’s saturation in all areas of our life, then the lack of access and availability of technology at school will seem out of place. Technology should be as ubiquitous in education as it has become in the rest of our lives.

To better understand this approach to technology’s role in learning, let’s discuss the learning experience of a 1st grader in science. Students can fill out worksheets, watch a video, and draw a picture. They can also take all of their research and learning that they encounter including their own videos and drawings, and develop a two minute film to present their understanding. This learning product not only demonstrates their understanding of the topic, but, more importantly, it does so in a medium that is portable, shareable and beneficial to others. We must have an honest conversation when looking at the value in student work beyond knowledge assessment. Can students develop final products that others can learn and benefit from? To achieve that level of learning, students can no longer produce generic fill in the blank learning to indicate understanding of classroom content and its application. They need to actively create something to be shared with others.

This level of ubiquity and integration allows students to view technology as a tool to reach new heights as they discover creative and ingenious approaches in their learning and skill development. To achieve this requires all stakeholders to be involved in the education process including educators, parents, and students. Each stakeholder must look at their role in understanding how technology allows for the access of information, how to synthesize and reconstruct knowledge, and most important of all, who and how they can share their understanding and final product of learning beyond the teacher’s grade book. The success of the above rides on ensuring like any component of a school’s success, that all stakeholders are part of the development, launch, and commitment to sustainable growth.

Stakeholders Need To Know Their Role In Technology Use and Integration

School Leadership and Faculty

Schools must invest in technology in a way that is in line with their mission and vision, rather than having technology define them, or worse contradict them. Do you want technology to promote mobile and active learning around campus? Do you want the walls of your classrooms to disappear? Do you want students to be actively engaged in developing creative solutions to represent their learning through music, drama, and media reach projects? If the answer is yes, then a laptop would not be your solution. The best device to fit your institutional mission would be a tablet with a detachable keyboard. Whether its iPad or Android the point is that these questions should drive the technology, not solely based on cost of purchase and maintenance, or ease of I.T. management.

Parents

Parents need to partner with schools and be supported by them as well. The term lifelong learner must extend to the parent body. Parents must understand that for students and schools to embrace change, parents too must be open to change and growth. This will show not just schools, but our children that the parent body is commitment to learning and discovering new things. How familiar are you are with technology? Do you need training? Do you need a Q&A, FAQ, or link to resources? If technology comes home with students, it is critical that parents are informed and aware of what the technology is capable of doing. Remember, a pencil is technology, but parents don’t have to worry about their pencils connecting to the internet.

Students

I believe that students have the most critical role of in the education process, since it is they who will validate and reveal what methods, tools, and strategies will empower them to achieve their highest potential. It goes beyond how are they are supported and trained, but rather how they are listened to, and sought out for their input and advice on what will help them love learning and desire to work hard. If we want full buy-in, we need to not just hold students accountable to our expectations, but support them in a way that technology use and learning at large is intrinsically motivating. Students in a successful technology infused learning environment should be able to answer the following question regardless of age or ability. What are ways you can demonstrate (show) your understanding of what you are learning? When we reach this level of thoughtfulness that goes beyond “technology use,” we are truly preparing students for the future where technology is not an option, but simply part of learning and life.

Ubiquity, access, and availability of technology tools and resources are vital for students to be prepared for a future that does not yet exist. They need to be introduced to technology as part of their educational growth and development, so that they will see them as tools that will meet their professional success and needs. If we are successful in this, then technology use will be authentic and fulfill its purpose of supporting our students and children in becoming inquisitive, independent, and inspired lifelong learners.

Michael Cohen, The Tech Rabbi is a designer and technologist turned educator. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Trainer who advocates, speaks, writes, and facilitates workshops on creativity and innovation. He works with schools on a local and national level to help them develop a creative mindset to influence and and empower individuals in becoming confident and passionate problem solvers. Michael shares his story of creativity and innovation through social media, and conferences such as Apple Education Events, EdTechTeacher Summits, iPadpalooza, ISTE, and SXSWEdu. He is the host of the “Educated By Design” Audio Experience Postcast where he features experts who share how they ideate, plan, and implement creative solutions to solving complex problems.

Michael currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four children, and is still an avid skateboarder.

Augmented Reality in Jewish Day Schools

This is part 9 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. Later this year, Jewish Funders Network will launch a new website to help advance the field of Jewish educational technology.

Augmented reality tools can be used by teachers and students to enhance Jewish learning.

via Shutterstock

[This article is part 9 of the series 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. Later this year, Jewish Funders Network will launch a new website to help advance the field of Jewish educational technology.]

By Rabbi Moshe Rosenberg

It’s Monday morning at the SAR Academy in Riverdale, NY. Live music is playing in the atrium as the children arrive. Some children are talking or playing with friends and some are congregating around the piano player. Still others float to a bulletin board which displays pictures of teachers and administrators. An iPad is suspended nearby. One by one kids scan a picture using an app called Aurasma and suddenly the picture begins to speak. Each face on the bulletin board asks them a question from Parashat Ha-Shavua, and then shows a Google form on which the children can fill in their names and the answer to the question. Those children whose answers are correct will earn popcorn redeemable in the school office.

It’s Open School night at the Academy and parents are between presentations. They walk over to pictures of their children and scan them with iPads provided by the school. They are rewarded with videos of their children welcoming them to the program, in both Hebrew and English.

The common denominator of these two scenarios is the injection of excitement and surprise by giving students and parents access to an additional electronic layer of information through the use of an Augmented Reality app.

Background

Augmented reality, known as AR, is defined as: “An enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device.” When a pilot is fed information on a viewscreen concerning the aircraft approaching him, he is using augmented reality. When Ikea enables you to project what a certain couch would look like in your living room, it is taking advantage of augmented reality. And when the signs and pictures of a school begin to talk when they are scanned with a particular app, it is augmented reality in the service of education.

My first exposure to augmented reality in a school setting was on a tour of the Avenues School in Manhattan. Posted on a hallway wall was a blank map of the world. The tour guide said that it would yield a wealth of student-generated learning when scanned using the right app.

When I went home I tracked down the video they had created about using AR and my imagination was inflamed. In my mind, I was already substituting a map of Israel for the map of the world and Judaic subjects for the ones in the video. I also substituted the free Aurasma app for the for-pay one used at Avenues and set to work finding ways to incorporate augmented reality into our school.

How Do You Make it Work?

In order to make the Aurasma app do its “magic” and display a video or an email or another picture, etc, when it scans an image, someone has to plan the magic in advance. That means that a teacher and/or student must establish an account on the online Aurasma studio (Aurasma.com), and learn how to use that studio to pair the image (e.g. the class picture) and the digital overlay (e.g. the video in which the students greet their parents.) There is a learning curve, but it is not impossibly steep and involves no programming.

The figure below shows how I used the famous image of the Arch of Titus to evoke a video in its bottom right corner. Less obvious is that on the right side of the studio, I was also linking to a YouTube video, as well as automatically generating an email. This particular “Aura” (image + overlay) was one clue in a Tisha B’Av Treasure Hunt. The intro video connected the Arch of Titus to the concept of baseless hatred and applied that concept to the contemporary problem of bullying. Students would see a YouTube logo, which when tapped, would take them to a video about bullying. They would also see an email logo which, when tapped, would display a question about the video in the subject line. They would then type their answer in the body of the email and send it back to earn credit for the clue.

Source: Moshe Rosenberg

More than Just Razzle Dazzle

I needed to determine if AR could just add “ Wow” to a curriculum, or could also actually become part of that curriculum. My answer is a qualified yes. There were numerous ways that an AR element has enhanced curriculum in our school, but logistical issues make its implementation not as simple as I would like. Here are a few sample projects:

  • Fifth graders, researching Righteous Gentiles on the Yad Vashem website, in conjunction with learning about the midwives in Egypt, filmed their presentations. We set it up so that scanning the Righteous Gentile on their poster would bring up the video of their presentation.
  • Third grade students filmed each other acting out tips they learned from the nurse on how to limit the spread of germs. We connected pictures of the students to their demonstrations.
  • During the last Shemitta Sabbatical year, we ran a school-wide Shemitta/Environmental program, turning our atrium into five geographic regions, each with environmental challenges. Kids entered the areas, scanned specific images that led them to videos on those issues, and then conducted discussions with their teacher concerning the videos they’d watched.
  • Middle School students, when not involved in an official lesson, can scan images posted in their area, which lead them to videos that provide more depth to issues examined in class.
  • Third and fifth graders took home a HaggadAR shel Pesach, in which readers could scan the pictures to watch the students singing the songs of the Seder.

If you download the Aurasma app, make a free account, and follow Mosherosenberg1, you can scan the famous image below of the arch of Titus, and trigger the three auras mentioned in the article. And if you click here, you can access all of the images which are clues for the Tisha B’Av Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt.

Source: “Arch of Titus Menorah” derivative work by Steerpike is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Drawbacks

  • Producing augmented reality takes time, as does training students to produce it.
  • It is not enough to produce the “Auras”- you must test them as well and deal with the sometimes finicky nature of the beast. (“Why isn’t my image scanning properly? Why am I seeing the video from the previous image
”)
  • In order to view AR in the Aurasma app, you must set your app to “follow” the work of the account that produced it. Doing so is straightforward, but nothing is straightforward when you are dealing with an entire grade and certainly when you are dealing with a parent body which wants to view materials sent home. This also means that you will likely want to keep all the work under one account so that you don’t have to adjust everyone’s device to view numerous authors’ work. Such organization is not simple at all, and makes it tempting for the teacher to do all the work.
  • And in its latest incarnation, Aurasma requires that you establish a free account in order to view anyone’s auras.
  • Sometimes teachers opted to use the simpler, if less impressive option of QR codes, which also send the scanner to see additional digital content. I dream of finding the system that is easiest to set up, automatically visible to the public, and free.

Not Just for K–8

My colleague Orly Nadler at Maayanot High School points out that as students reach high school, “there is a lot more emphasis on primary sources and analysis which limits alternative experiences.” She sees more potential in social studies for this type of activity.

In that vein, my colleague Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky at The Frisch School reports that augmented reality through the Aurasma app has been a key component of his school’s evening showcases in both history and the arts. For the Frisch Evening of the Arts, students produced a time-lapse video of how they had created their artwork. When viewers scanned paintings and sculptures at the evening, they triggered the videos, thus showcasing not only the art products of the students but the creative process, as well. This project was recently featured at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference (ISTE). You can view the presentation here.

Hot Off the Presses!

A new resource is brewing special excitement in the world of educational AR. This past spring saw the debut of a tool called Metaverse, which allows you to design location-based AR experiences. In other words you can make the educational equivalent of the Pokemon Go app that swept the gaming world last year by designing an “experience” and linking it to other “experiences” to form a quest. The quest consists of user-generated clues, which may be questions, videos, 3D objects and more anywhere, using the GPS function of your device. Using the app, students detect the site-based clues and respond to them in order to earn rewards. Using Metaverse one can also design adventures in which users take on roles and advance through different possible scenarios in an experience similar to a Role Playing Game (RPG). Since the app is a start-up, the creators are personally and immediately responsive to feedback. They have formed two Facebook groups, Metaverse Pioneers and Metaverse Teachers to share ideas on how best to leverage the tool and they offer webinars for teachers as well.

In truth, location-based augmented reality in a Jewish context is not a new concept. In an initiative supported by a signature grant from the Covenant Foundation, Rabbi Owen Gottlieb designed and implemented Time Jump: New York, an augmented reality game and simulation which “uses place-based and inquiry-based learning, building on current research on mobile Augmented Reality Games to bring Jewish history to life in the 21st Century.” What Metaverse seeks to do is put the tools for designing simpler versions of such games into the hands of every teacher and student.


Conclusions

This study has stressed the ways in which augmented reality tools can be used by teachers and students to enhance Jewish learning. We have focused on the Aurasma app since it is commonly used by educators. There are many AR apps that teach specific areas in general education, or play games. Publishers have used scannable images to add depth to their publications. Most significantly, businesses have driven up sales with AR driven campaigns. In most cases educational applications are more of an afterthought for companies aiming at the lucrative business market, and so we should not be surprised that no one has approached the generation of AR with a mindset of what would best suit an educational setting. A possible exception is the groundbreaking work of Compedia, an Israeli high-tech company which works with the Israeli government on cutting edge projects involving augmented reality and virtual reality, but which also applies its technology for educational purposes, producing entire curricula of AR based lessons. But even Compedia is providing the product, not the tool. Hence those who want to design their own AR experiences are limited to what is out there. No system exists whose primary goal is placing the tools of creation in the hands of students and their educators and empowering them to populate a new stratum of reality with their educational creations.

The ideal system would simplify both the design and sharing process. To make it even more helpful for Jewish education, it could partner with a content provider, such as Sefaria and Jewish Interactive, which can make available libraries of Jewish texts and images for use as triggers and incorporate the capacity to produce a variety of interactive activities as part of the AR. These might include manipulating 3D images, submitting data, and playing games. It would explore possibilities of connecting to other emerging forms of educational technology within the same experience. It would be free for educational use and would enable students, classes and schools to pool the results of their creativity. If properly realized, it would add an entire new dimension to the ways in which our students can interact with and depict their heritage.

Rabbi Moshe Rosenberg is a fifth grade teacher and JudeoTech Integrator at the SAR Academy in Riverdale, NY. He is the spiritual leader of Congregation Etz Chaim of Kew Gardens Hills, New York. His most recent book is The Unofficial Hogwarts Haggadah.

Jewish EdTech: If You Build It, Will They Come?

This is part 10 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. Later this year, Jewish Funders Network will launch a new website to help advance the field of Jewish educational technology.

Developing the Jewish EdTech ecosystem requires an agile investment approach. The optimal framework for this is an application of the Lean start–up methodology, oftenreferred to in the social sector as the Lean Impact Methodology.

 

Our previous article discussed the importance of an ecosystem; let’s take a closer look at the strategies and tools needed for creating a specifically Jewish EdTech ecosystem. It begins with asking the right questions


In this post, we’ll look at the benefits of an agile investment approach to the Jewish EdTech space. We’ll also consider the limitations of traditional accelerator programs for niche sectors, and investigate how to tweak the approach for Jewish EdTech in particular. The post will conclude with a working hypothesis expressing the author’s vision for a reinvigorated Jewish education environment.

Applying intuition scientifically

Developing the Jewish EdTech ecosystem requires an agile investment approach. The optimal framework for this is an application of the Lean start-up methodology, often referred to in the social sector as the Lean Impact Methodology. The approach is intuitive and rigorous. Just as a scientist sets hypotheses and tests them experimentally, the Lean Impact innovator will set a hypothesis with three potential outcomes: validated (yes), invalidated (no) or unclear (maybe) results. If tests show that the hypothesis is supported by evidence, the innovator has reason to scale up the operation. If tests show the hypothesis to be false, the innovator should revise the hypothesis. Unclear results call for revised tests. This way, testing enables the innovator to make step-by-step evidence-based decisions.

TESTING LEARNING
Step 1. Hypothesis: We believe that
 Step 1. Hypothesis: We believed that

Step 2. Test: To verify that, we will
 Step 2. Observation: We observed

Step 3. Metric: And measure
 Step 3. Learning and insights: From that we learned that

Step 4. Criteria: We are right if
 Step 4. Decisions and actions: Therefore we will

Source: Strategyzer.com

Interactive Whiteboards by PolyVision

The Lean Impact methodology is not a magic formula for finding optimum solutions. The answers will only be as good as the questions, a topic addressed in an earlier article in this series. The learning process proceeds by asking questions (“hypothesis generation”), effectively testing the hypothesis, and then extracting meaningful lessons from the conclusions. Successfully following this approach requires agility, flexibility, and humility.

How does this fit into the broader impact objective

The lean impact model described above is the best way to accelerate innovation in the sector. Once effective solutions are identified the next step is to catalyze these innovations by supporting scale-up efforts. And finally, those initiatives which prove impactful and scalable require support to achieve sustainability. Currently, the bottleneck is innovation, and it is for this reason that we’re focused on accelerating innovation.

For funders who are uncomfortable with the risks associated with innovation and experimentation there is still room to meaningfully contribute. This can be achieved by supporting knowledge management and best practices about effective solutions. And also by actively participating in mobilization of resources for scaling and sustaining successful innovations.

Finding solutions that work

Traditional accelerator models are well understood, particularly in the technology sector where they have been refined over decades. There are by now clearly defined benchmarks for impact investing in terms of what constitutes an outcome and how to achieve outcomes.

However, the rigorous selection processes that make incubator models so powerful creates a blind spot for niche sectors such as Jewish EdTech. In a robust ecosystem, innovation can be driven successfully by developing more accelerators in conjunction with impact funds. However, such extremely selective winnowing practices depend on an adequate supply of innovators, opportunities and funding to produce successful entrepreneurial ventures. The model is effective in major commercial sectors, but seldom works in smaller sectors, such as education.

Advancement in the impact investment sector has enabled more accurate filters to select investments and to better monitor real impact. However, the model’s stringency can also be a limitation. The model assumes that optimizing the selection process is the path to success, which is only true when there are adequate candidates to select from. In niche markets, optimizing selection will often produce zero opportunities that meet the required criteria. Understanding this “market failure” is fundamental to building solutions for the “real world” rather than “ideal world”.

Experience has taught us that for-profit companies often have the skills but not the incentives to address social problems and not-for-profits have the desire to address social problems but lack a business model for operational effectiveness. This realization led us to develop a hybrid methodology, which acknowledges both the limits of the market and the social imperative of addressing those problems.

Impact–ful Investing

By shifting the emphasis from the traditional testing standards – whether or not you have a viable business model – to an emphasis on can you get the job done, we are able to target the most appropriate revenue models that support the best solutions, regardless of whether they are not-for-profit or for-profit enterprises. Many problems can only be served through social funding, since a viable market will never exist; but the methodology at least ensures these solutions will be optimal in terms of impact.

The methodology seeks to answer different questions as potential solutions emerge:

  • Which innovations work
  • How can effective solutions be scaled-up
  • What is the optimal funding structure to maximize impact potential of effective scalable solutions

We’ve looked at how to construct an approach that asks the right questions in order to find effective solutions. What would this look like in practice?

We can use the methodology to create an ecosystem heat map that maps out what our ecosystem contains and what is missing, providing a broad overview that enables data-driven decision making at an ecosystem level.

Then we develop a heat map of the ecosystem maturity, with green, orange and red indicating decreasing levels of maturity in that order. The example below has zoomed in on the Day Schools segment:

Green = most mature | Orange = medium level of maturity | Red = least mature

Data driven insights will emerge from the heat map, such as:

  • If we create content for school-age children will we bottleneck in implementation?
  • How can we develop the “implementation” vertical in Grades 3-9 where we have better content already available?
  • How would our funding strategy need to change to achieve this?

Having identified “Implementation” as a constraint in our example, we can further drill down into focus areas to identify opportunities to promote effective change:

We’ve developed a theoretical model to illustrate how the process would be applied to the Jewish EdTech Ecosystem. Of course, the following analysis is not an actual assessment of the ecosystem, but simply serves to demonstrate the methodology in practice.

Building knowledge for the ecosystem

We start with an overview of the ecosystem:

Putting a program in action

We can extract valuable action points from the report, Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy

The report recommends eight “Best Bet Investing Strategies”:

  1. Invest in collaboration among the best of existing Jewish EdTech producers
  2. Partner with companies and organizations already active in the EdTech space
  3. Invest limited funds in pooled EdTech investment funds
  4. Track and commission EdTech products that emerge from the general EdTech space for the Jewish audience
  5. Invest significant grants in developing new content using “Big/Proven Talent” and general EdTech companies
  6. Invest with smaller innovation grants and in field building
  7. Invest in crossover opportunities
  8. Infrastructure

The Jewish EdTech ecosystem should follow a lean start-up approach to building the ecosystem. This entails an agile, relatively quick cycle of (1) testing a hypothesis, (2) learning from early results and (3) implementing solutions based on these findings. The hypotheses would be aligned to the learning agenda as mandated by the funding group.

As a first step in generating an ecosystem heat map, in the coming months we’ll be launching a centralized product and service index to inform and empower this methodology.

Our recommended investment approach includes prioritizing the following four recommendations:

  • Partner with companies and organizations already active in the EdTech space Invest in collaboration among the best of existing Jewish EdTech producers
  • Commission EdTech products that emerge from the general EdTech space for the Jewish audience
  • Invest limited funds in pooled EdTech investment funds
  • Invest with smaller innovation grants and in field building

Jarred Myers manages an Innovation Portfolio for a Private Family Foundation, using venture philanthropy and mission investing tools, he focusses on technology driven solutions for education and employment. Nicky Newfield is the Founder and Executive Director of Jewish Interactive and is a trustee of the Glatt Charitable Foundation.

Building Jewish Identity Through Engaging Video: A Developer’s Perspective

This is part 8 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. Later this year, Jewish Funders Network will launch a new website to help advance the field of Jewish educational technology.

Since this is media, how can you know that you’re really having an impact? What proof do you have that video can build Jewish identity or literacy?‘

 

BimBam (formerly G-dcast) is a Jewish media studio. Our creative team has worked on over 300 short videos and apps, and we have big league experience from Apple, Pixar, The New York Times, etc.

Usually, people find us through our work – they don’t ask us too many creative questions beyond, “Can I do a part in a video?” That’s because they or their kids already love the programs, and it’s easy to see our track record. Our Judaism 101 and early childhood education videos have clear and easily shared metrics – high viewership numbers, great audience retention curves and accurate aim at the demographics we’re targeting.

What we do get asked routinely is, “Since this is media, how can you know that you’re really having an impact? What proof do you have that video can build Jewish identity or literacy?”

Great questions. What I want to offer is a perspective that we’ve found to be true: well-designed Jewish media programs that are informed by best practices from secular educational media are as effective as their peers. PBS Kids shows (e.g., Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Peg + Cat, Sid the Science Guy), Sesame Workshop programs, and Reading Rainbow have been studied for decades by leading researchers using sample sets comprised of thousands of children and their parents. Interactive educational programs in the app marketplaces are, to some extent, being put under the lens while in development or afterwards.

Funders are advised to read this research – which they will find fascinating not only as evidence supporting certain types of programming but also as former children themselves. Research-based shows are studied for proof of literacy building, numeracy support and social emotional development. They are tested in both formal controlled settings and informally, in homes.

There are protocols, well-established, to choosing groups of respondents to study and there are protocols for discovering not only learning changes but also affect and engagement. For instance, guided by Stanford PhD researchers who work routinely on PBS properties, we tested early Shaboom scripts on eight 3, 4, and 5 year old children – two boys and two girls of each age – in their homes, beside their parents. It did not matter that they all lived in the Bay Area, something that we’d thought would be a factor. We got all of the information we needed to learn from these 12 children in order to improve our pilot episode, through asking establishing questions, observing measures of engagement during viewing (such as toe tapping, pointing at the screen and looking at a parent), and answering questions post-viewing. This formative evaluation allowed us to improve our pilot script – for instance, we added more Hebrew vocabulary words, increased the use of musical chants and changed the name of the show based on feedback we observed and heard from children in this phase.

After producing a finished animated pilot, we did another round of testing, conducted entirely blind to us by Ph.D. researchers who watched the program with dyads of parents and children, and then conducted play testing afterwards to measure what social skills children had developed through viewing the shows. (Children performed little actions with dolls to demonstrate welcoming guests, for instance.) This summative evaluation showed that in fact children were learning social skills and assimilating Hebrew vocabulary for those actions.

We were fortunate to receive a large grant from the Peleh Fund which made it possible for us to bake this crucial, but costly, round of evaluation into our development of Shaboom. But it is unrealistic to expect that any small Jewish nonprofit will produce comparable research on their evaluation budgets, or that funders commissioning Jewish work from secular shops will know how to conduct such research. We learned a lot from our experience on Shaboom, enough that we can – to a great extent – cobble together our own in house studies with our own staff. However, this comes at great cost to staff productivity in a small (5-person) organization – capacity that could be improved either through a major evaluation grant or a full time staff person focused on learning measurement.

Given substantial communal buy-in, I recommend going bigger: establishing a center for Jewish media research staffed with Ph.D. media and learning science researchers who are trained to do this sort of work and dedicated to it, full time. This would show serious intent to invest in effective, high quality media work by the funder community, and would up the game of all of us media producers substantially by having partners for evaluation.

Such an investment might be a pipe dream. No matter: I believe that we have the research that we need from existing educational media companies. The community of funders should hold Jewish media producers accountable to these studies – and show their fluency in them – rather than asking for original research. Playtesting, and viewer testing, are serious endeavors and cannot be thrown together in the “free time” of scrappy small studios or independent artists.

When you work with a well-versed studio or artist, you will find that they are familiar with this research and can tell you, without hesitation, that it builds Jewish identity and interest in practices – from baking challah to singing brachot to trying out bikur cholim. At BimBam we have evidence that our programs and apps have produced these effects – but we also went into the work confident, because we followed research best practices.

So, familiarize yourselves with the research. Browse the archives of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, of Commonsense Research, the Fred Rogers Center, the Pew Research Center, the American Psychological Association – read up on the work at the university centers doing work in this area (Annenberg at UPenn, the Children’s Digital Media Center at UCLA, Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern, Learning Sciences and Technology Design at Stanford, Technology, Innovation, and Education Program at Harvard, etc.), and consider picking up some journals that publish new studies on media education research. If you’re really interested in this space, you’ll find them fascinating – and helpful as you partner with Jewish media producers.

Sarah Lefton is the founder and Director of BimBam, formerly G-dcast. She began working in interactive media in the last millenium, at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). She went on to produce projects for The New York Times on the Web, the Village Voice, Princess Cruises and several children’s toy brands. Her social media “Save Jericho” project for NutsOnline.com garnered national news attention.

Taking an abrupt turn for the less corporate, Sarah joined Northern California’s independent Jewish summer camp, Camp Tawonga, as their Marketing Director for four years, learning about Jewish outreach and wilderness. Inspired by its Yosemite location, she designed the infamous YO SEMITE tee shirt, and launched her first Jewish entrepreneurial project: Jewish Fashion Conspiracy. Sarah is a past President of San Francisco’s pluralist Mission Minyan, and board member of the San Francisco JCC.

Sarah is a recipient of the 2012 Pomegranate Prize for exceptional young Jewish educators. She was named one of the Forward 50 most influential Jews of 2009, and is a recipient of the Joshua Venture Group fellowship for Jewish social entrepreneurs.