December 2010 Blog Posts (30)

G-dcast will release what is shaping up to be an amazing new episode and  Teachers Guide for the holiday on January 6, in advance of the holiday. 

It will not be on our website just before the holiday, but if you are 

an educator, event planner, or institution that would like to screen the 

episode for your students, participants, party guests, or website…

Thanks to Leslie Salley, who tweeted about this...apparently, in Memphis, a place very near and dear to my heart and my hometown :) , the city (public) schools are putting place graduation requirements which include taking a certain amount of online courses. (See HERE for the article,…

Many Jewish educators are familiar with open bible which uses google earth to list “the location of every identifiable place mentioned in the Bible.” They do a fantastic job, but I have been asked time and again if there was such a thing created by Jewish educators that did not include the new testament.

On my recent trip to israel on the JJF Fellowship I was fortunate to spend some time at…

[cross-posted from jlearn2.0]

A question I am often asked is, "Yes, but what are some examples of how these resources are integrated into the curriculum? By real live educators with real live learners!"



Presenting two free ebooks to whet your appetites and tickle your imaginations:



The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators: A comprehensive guide to technology in all k-12…

Today we toured Google Israel and The Center for Educational Technology (CET). I will be posting some important resources from CET in the near future, but my post today will focus on google. There was a lot to learn from the Google business model. Things like their flat leadership model, the 20% projects (each employee is encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that they feel…

In an excellent blog post by Brian Kuhn, entitled "Technology is a Game Changer for Learning," several different ideas about the necessity of using technology in education are introduced. What i found particularly powerful was a video embedded in the post, utilized to hammer home the importance of recognizing…

Today we began our day in Zippori, the home of Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi, the redactor of the Mishna, and Beit She'arim, home of the Sanhedrin. We ended our day in a Druze village where we dined in the home of a local Druze. I would have probably posted about the wonderful experience in the Durze home if it not for a task I performed In Zippori at the request of Rabbi Shalom Berger of the Lookstein Center.



Yesterday, Shalom approached me and let me know that we would be visiting a…

Thanks to Noah Hartman, I was directed today to an opinion piece published back in November on the EJewish philanthropy blog. The article is entitled “New Thinking on the Day School Tuition Crisis,” and it talks about the very real financial…

After a fantastic Shabbat in Jerusalem complete with beautiful tefillot. group seudot, D'Vrei Torah, bibliodrama facilitated by Ya'el Unterman and an inspiring text study with Elisheva Baumgarten we viewed a movie called The Children of Hung Shi that led to a discussion after.

The movie is about a young British…

Today on the JJF Fellowship Israel retreat we departed from the walled classroom to open world of learning as we headed to Zichron Ya’akov to experience the life and legacy of Baron Rothschild.



In the 19th century, the Jews living in Israel, called Palestine at the time, were living off foreign contributions and facing financial ruin. Baron Rothschild visited Israel and imagined settlements that were self-sufficient. In Zichron Ya’akov he looked over barren land, hard soil and…

I learned about View Pure this summer and used it yesterday in a teacher meeting. It takes away all the clutter from the sides of the video http://viewpure.com/ Try it

We began day two of the JJF fellowship retreat with a text study with Dr. Aliza Lavie, the author of A Jewish Woman's Prayer Book. Dr. Lavie is also a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel as well as a presenter and editor of…

Our first full day of the JJFF fellowship Israel retreat was spent in an S.I.T. workshop. Starting the day with only two hours of sleep, I was less then thrilled with the prospect of staying in one place all day and, worse, required to use my brain. However, my fears dissipated quickly when Shlomit Tassa, SIT trainer, facilitator, and account manager. and Robyn Taragin, Knowledge Manager and a Facilitator at SIT, opened the workshop by informing us the day would be “practical and hands-on.”…

After 20 hours of travel time, 5 movies, 2 chapters of Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom use and 13 diet cokes, I landed, along with three other fellows, at Ben Gurion airport safe and sound. It was good to be back.

I recently returned from the Jim Joseph Foundation fellowship (if you are not familiar with it click here) orientation dinner. As I sat in the Kfar Maccabiha dining room listening to all the exciting things we were going to explore I was also experiencing a…

Great blog post from a great blog called "Connected Principals" which, incidentally, our own Rabbi Akevy Greenblatt (or on twitter @Akevy613 ) is a contributor to! The post is written by George Couros, a principal in Alberta, and can be read by clicking here:…

I am sitting at the departure terminal waiting for my flight to Israel after my first experience with the new x-ray machines. I asked the TSA agent for a copy of the scans for my wallet. He was not amused. I did not let it bother me because I knew in about eighteen hours I would be landing in Ben Gurion airport for the second, and sadly last, Israel retreat for the Jim Joseph Foundation fellowship. I am looking forward to seeing Rabbi Shalom Berger and Esther Feldman of the Lookstein Center…