Going beyond Zoom to Enrich Learning in Part-time Jewish Schools

ABSTRACT

The use of technology in part-time Jewish schools during the pandemic and beyond has, with few exceptions, been limited to Zoom, a communications platform that works best for frontal teaching and small group discussion. This study focuses on two Jewish educators whose Technological Pedagogic Content Knowledge enables them to deploy a variety of online tools that promote student-centered learning. The teaching exemplars we highlight show what is possible when educators go beyond Zoom, utilizing sophisticated software to engage students in the interpretation of a Biblical text and lively, interactive tefillah.

KEYWORDS:

• Online tools
• part-time Jewish schools
• religious school
• technology in education

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Rabbi Adam Lutz and Rabbi Rebeccah Yussman for their active participation in this study, and for their patient translation of technological jargon into ordinary language. Thanks are also due to Builders of Jewish Education, Los Angeles (BJELA), for funding this study, and to Bill Aron, Laua Geller, and Gil Graff, for their comments and critiques of earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ https://www.edutopia.org/video/3-ways-level-your-zoom-skills

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(1985_video_game)

³ The Teachers' Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools, 2009 Fast Response Survey System data set, collected by the National Center for Education Statistics.

⁴ Calls for technology in the schools morphed, over time, to advocacy for “21st century learning,” as in the following excerpt from the AVI CHAI blog cited above (Abrams, 2011): “We believe that the learning taking place in Jewish day schools must be interactive, collaborative, project-based and most importantly, skill-based. In a world where a student can Google just about any content that can be delivered by a teacher, what is the role of the instructor? What are the 21st century skills students need to have when they graduate?”

⁵ See the critiques by Neiss (2013, 2020).

⁶ Several large synagogues, most prominently Central Synagogue in NYC, have raised endowments and/or rearranged their schedules to create full-time positions for teachers. A 2010 article (Wiener, 2010) mentioned other large congregations on the East Coast that were considering similar staffing arrangements.

⁷ Here too there are exceptional schools (many of which are led by alumni of the Mandel Teacher Educator Initiative) that pay teachers for planning time and other professional development.

⁸ This is a technical term for content-laden software designed to be used as-is, without input from the teacher; in an earlier generation this type of material might have been called “teacher proof.” Purveyors of this software include the nonprofits Shalom Learning and, JiTap, and commercial publishers such as Behrman House

⁹ JCAT is currently piloting an abridged version of its program in three synagogue schools, all directed by alumni of MTEI. (Katz, M. Personal communication, April 26, 2021.)

¹⁰ http://www.shinui.org/. There does not seem to have been a national effort to make these offerings available to schools outside of the catchment area of these agencies.

¹¹ Some of these webinars were primarily aimed at day school teachers, but welcomed teachers from synagogue schools as well. Many thanks to the agency professionals who supplied this information: Joy Wasserman, Jennifer Goldsmith, Jeff Lasday, and Natalie Walden.

¹² Gold, M., personal communication, April 26, 2021.

¹³ Padlet is a popular app that functions as an online virtual “bulletin” board, in which students and teachers can collaborate, reflect, share links and pictures.

¹⁴ “A hyperdoc is a digital document ... where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub. Within a single document, students are provided with hyperlinks to all of the resources they need to complete that learning cycle.” (Gonzales, 2017)

¹⁵ Adam found this idea on the web: https://popcholent.com/building-a-kosher-sukkah-inside-minecraft/

¹⁶ https://tivnu.org/

¹⁷ The legendary Israelite who was the first to enter the Sea of Reeds.

¹⁸ https://www.chaivillagela.org/

¹⁹ Lutz, A. (2021, January 22) personal communication.

²⁰ Student names are all pseudonyms.

²¹ The use of chat seems to be a common feature of the Zoom classes for students in 3rd to 12th grade, and is deserving of a paper on its own (Miller, 2020).

²² This is the approach taken by Mindy Gold, founder of EdTechMMG (https://www.edtechmmg.com/), who, in an email, wrote: “Knowledge is one thing. Applying that knowledge and understanding choices around what tool to use, when and, most importantly WHY and HOW a digital tool supports learning goals, is another. I help teachers increase their TPACK with heavy focus on the P.” Gold, M. (2021 April 26) personal communication.

²³ For information about after-school programs see http://www.nitzan.org/what-we-do.html

²⁴ We were not the only ones to make this assumption; recall the workshops offered by central agencies affiliated with Shunui and the quotation by Arnett.

²⁵ www.Secondlife.com