I completed an EdTech assignment on Podcasts. It was a lesson an introduction to a lesson of Venahfocu on Purim. I used Voicethread & found it very easy to navigate.

If I encountered a problem it was quickly…

Remember when students fell asleep in class over their books? I think they often still do, given the opportunity. 

I think that with visual tools, all that can change. Visual tools are a huge asset to modern education. The visual learner, musical learner, spatial learner and others all get to breathe a little deeper at…

        I have embraced technology through the years of my teaching.  This social network in the classroom is a new way of thinking and another way of reaching the children where they live and what they find interesting.  I know that the students are comfortable posting and discussing on the internet and it is second nature to them.  I thought that I would try to create a blog for my classroom and have the students respond to each other’s posts and be interactive with the writing…

How can social networking be used to increase student motivation in the Judaic studies classroom?

21st century learning skills suggest that learning be made relevant for students, suggest applicable lessons to their own lives, and promote critical thinking skills and creativity. This is both possible and a struggle for the Judaic studies classroom. We need to teach content, analyze it, make it applicable to their lives and offer methods of introspection that include critical thinking…

As I was learning about blogs I looked for good blogs that can be a good resource for me as Judaic studies educator when i work with my faculty. I came across a great blog about teaching strategies which was established in 2011 and is still active. It provide video and text about various methods and teaching strategies. Please review and I would like to hear back from you with your feedback.…

http://iriteliyahu.edublogs.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=3&action=edit&message=6

I created a social network for my JS faculty in the lower and middle school. My goal is that we will be able to exchange infomation, post questions, share lesson plans, links, display pictures and work that exhibit students learning and progress. It took me some time to create this social network and…

As an educator,don’t you ever wonder if your students are actually listening to you or if they understand the message that you are trying to convey? Do you speak their language? Do they speak yours? Well thanks to Edmodo, a free and safe social network for K12 education, you can all speak the same language! Edmodo.com is a free (yes, I am repeating that again!), secure, social learning platform for teachers, students, schools and districts.



Using Edmodo teachers can create a…

Productivity tools seem like a great way to have kids collaborate. Perhaps the best part about them is that they are accessible to most anyone. Our school has set up Google Accounts for every faculty member and students and thus Google Docs is an easy way to have kids work together, maintaining documents with revisions on the server. My early experiments however have been a mixed bag. The main culprit has been internet speeds. I do not know if it a software problem or a problem with our…

This week's chapter deals with Social Networking - which lead to so much to say.

I think it is really amazing that there are so many platforms out there that enable people to connect in all sorts of ways, and for educators of all specialties to connect.  You have Facebook, Twitter, my space, LinkedIn, YU has several groups.  You have nings up the ying yang...

But in order to properly extract what is meaningful and beneficial for you, one has to spend a lot of time checking in…

There is a constant flurry of emails going back and forth crowd my inbox.

Who is handling what?

Where are they in the process?

Have we thought about everything?

These are questions, I ask myself  regularly. Wouldn’t it be great to find a way to keep track of all those google docs that are being edited?  Enter – Trello.

Trello allows each project its own space and allows everyone to monitor the progress.…

I didn't have a twitter account and I thought twitter is a waste of time. How can someone possibly convey a message in under 140 characters? After reading up on twitter, I realized I was wrong and indeed there can be some profound comments conveyed in less than 140 characters. But is twitter right for the classroom? Using it for homework or as a poll is a clever idea. However, should we allow tweets in middle of the class? Should I pose a question and suggest answering it via twitter? On the…

Twitter is such a good tool to use in and out of the classroom. As opposed to blogs, twitter is fast, easy, concise, and comes straight to everyone’s smart phones now-a-days. Twitter is such a great way for teachers to update their students on HW, quizzes, test prep, trips, and any other reminders. It is also a way for students to get to know their teachers. If teachers use it properly, they can update their class on recent events relating to their subject, give input on school events and…

I do not have a Twitter account because on a personal level, I have no desire for one. I only really appreciate tweets that are amusing and I do not consider myself funny, so tweeting would contradict myself. I have never thought of Twitter as am educational tool until now—I only thought of it as yet another social medium. The reasoning given in Web 2.0 for using Twitter are intriguing to me as an educator.

The question I have is as follows: What about the lack of privacy…

One important component in blogging is Critical Thinking. As explained by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum in Web 2.0 , writing for an audience requires the tactful use of thought and language because the blogger must develop their own ideas and then blog them in a way that other people will understand them as well. This is not a simple task and takes tremendous conscientious effort.

Based on my experience reading blogs, I don’t believe that most bloggers follow this…

“That just won’t work here.”

“The teachers don’t want it!”

“Ha! They wouldn’t even be able to the find the power button!”

How often have we, as EdTech leaders and early adopters in our schools, heard lines like these before? It could be after coming back from a really cool conference and being incredibly…

Any student of film history knows that before the big budget blockbuster, and even before the various “golden ages” of Hollywood, there were silent movies. These black and white movies were made up of short scenes, and, because technological limitations prevented the use of audio conversations, there were short notes on a…

About two years ago my friend convinced me to create a Twitter account. After creating my account and tweeting exactly one time, I realized that I was not all that interested in reading people’s constant update on what they are doing.

I have spent the past week reading various writings on the use of Twitter in the classroom; such as chapter 2 of Web 2.0 How-to for Educators, 30 New Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom, and How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting…