It was a pleasure to present at High Tech High Foundation about the World of Jewish EdTech with such esteemed colleagues...
Posted by Tzvi Pittinsky on Monday, April 4, 2016
On Tuesday, I came back to Frisch in the midst of many awarding projects, attending a Nach Art Gallery walk on the prophet Zechariah's visions, painting pottery with my class as a part of this year's Yad Hayotzer project on Jeremiah Chapter 18, continuing to assist in the enhanced augmented reality that will be a part of next week's Frisch Evening of the Arts, and presenting to various History and English classes on using 3d printing, augmented reality, virtual reality, and various presentation apps for their culminating projects. This does not even include the many 3d design projects in our engineering lab as they continue to prepare for their yearly Frisch Science and Engineering Symposium next month. It has been an exhausting and exhilarating week.
Here are some highlights…
Coastal Roots Farm
On Sunday night, we visited the Coastal Roots Farm supported by the Leichtag Foundation. What a great model of sustainable farming using Israeli Netafim drip-line technology to conserve water! The farm gives all of its produce to local food banks, runs educational programming for many local schools, camps, and youth groups, and even has a walking path through a fruit orchard on the outskirts of the farm where anyone can take a fruit to fulfill their interpretation of the mitzvah of peah. It was quite impressive. It brought up thoughts of the farm that was started at my school recently, known as the Frisch Farm organized by Grow Torah.
I'm not much of a farmer but I respect the experiential learning opportunities to teach Torah, Halacha, and science through farming.
Tonight I visited the Coastal Roots Farm supported by the Leichtag Foundation as a part of the Jewish Funders Network...
Posted by Tzvi Pittinsky on Sunday, April 3, 2016
High Tech High
Monday was time for a tour of High Tech High followed by my presentation. Only one of High Tech High's many schools was in session but the visit still gave much to think about. The school seemed to be designed with group work in mind. Every learning area contained 4 classrooms, none set up in the traditional style of rows of desks and a board, leading into a large common room with computers and different seating arrangements.
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| Leah, a senior at High Tech High and our tour guide, showing one of the learning areas with 4 classrooms and a common room. |
During our visit, we met group of students selling hand crafted specialty soap. They learned how to make the soap in chemistry class and in Media Arts they studied graphic design so they could market their product with website, various social media platforms, packaging, business card etc. I looked at the website for their Wicked Soap Company and its quite impressive. This type of real-world integration of science and marketing is rare for high school students. The excitement on the student's faces when they were hawking their product to us illustrated their deep engagement. They convinced many of us to buy their product.
This got me thinking of the opportunities in my school to merge education and entrepreneurship. We do this frequently in student-run clubs and Tzedakah projects but not often in the classroom. Perhaps adding a "Shark Tank" type pitch and marketing campaign for the engineering projects which already have real-world applications would be a start. One thing to realize is that these students have chemistry 10 hours a week so they have the time to cover the traditional chemistry curriculum and finish creative projects. This would be difficult to manage with the rigorous dual curriculum of general and Judaic studies in our Yeshiva day schools.
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| The Students of the Wicked Soap Company |
The school features two month-long internships in 11th and 12th grades where students leave the building while journaling and ultimately reporting back on their experiences. Leah, a senior at High Tech High who led our tour, interned for the fire department in the paramedics unit. She wants to become a doctor and the internship gave her real-world experience to pursue her goal. Students do not take an exit exam or capstone project but seniors present to a panel what they have learned in their stay in high school. If the panel does not like their presentation then they would have to do it again. The school was filled with student-designed art and engineering student all over the walls and ceilings. I asked a teacher if they used any textbooks. She said no since anything they needed to learn could be found online.
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| A picture of me with Gary Jacobs, the visionary behind High Tech High |
The World of Jewish Educational Technology
After visiting the school, it was time for our panel of the world of Jewish Edtech. My presentation is below.
My presentation focused on three examples of Jewish EdTech which I thought would be relevant for the Jewish Funders in attendance.
Case Study #1: Blended Learning in Jewish Education
In the first, I described my search for a solution to a challenge in Hebrew language. We were looking for an online language platform allowing benchmarks for students with a dashboard for teachers to monitor students asynchronous activity and active time using the system. This would help us differentiate education for students requiring either remediation and enrichment. After an exhaustive search, we have yet to find such a platform. The Jewish EdTech space has many real-time platforms which replace the teachers with educators using video conferencing as well as many supplementary platforms to help the teacher but none seem to differentiate education for the students working independently of a teacher, a key feature if we want teachers to successfully manage many levels of instruction within the same classroom.This example illustrates that while there has been much progress in the field of Jewish Edtech, it has been mostly replacement. As Rafi Eis said in his Lookjed response to my inquiry, most current Jewish platforms “basically use the classroom educational model, with adjustments (technology, animation), but the familiar feel of the lesson driven classroom remains”. These might help in specific situations, when there is a dearth of teachers in a specific area or when a student is homeschooled and cannot schedule a regular class for other reasons, but will ultimately be inferior to the model they are replacing. True Jewish educational technology integration, to enhance, expand, and differentiate the current curriculum is still relatively uncommon. This is where I believe funders can help. We need much more transformative Jewish online content.
Case Study #2: Apps, Apps, and More apps
Smadar Goldstein, a friend and fellow Jewish educational technologist who runs a distance learning Jewish education and professional development platform, tagged me and a number of other Jewish EdTech people in recent a Facebook post, “What are your favorite education apps?”The answers include collaboration apps Google Apps for education and Lino, a number of real-time assessment apps like Socrative, Nearpod, Kahoot, and Quizlet, some Flipped Learning apps like Educanon and Explain Everything, and some presentation apps like Keynote, and Google slides. Not a single Jewish educational technologist mentioned a Jewish app. This is not because of a dearth of Jewish apps. It’s due to the fact that many if not most of the best apps for Jewish education are just the best educational apps, Jewish or not.
This might seem contradictory to my previous case study about the blended learning Hebrew platform but let me explain. In terms of curriculum, we need specific transformative Jewish edtech materials. IXL and Dreambox are wonderful platforms but they don’t do Hebrew and certainly won’t do Talmud or Bible. We need content specifically created for the Jewish market. This is incredibly difficult to create both because it is such a small market and because there are no set standards for Judaic Studies. Hebrew language would be a good place to start since at least it can match the Ulpan system in Israel and the standard set by other world languages.
In terms of technology tools, apps, in most cases the tools created in the much larger world of general education are equally useful in Jewish education. You don’t need to create a Jewish Google when Google already handles Hebrew language better than any other collaboration platform and when much of Google is developed in Israel anyways.
What is most needed in reference to tools is teacher training and student access. Teachers need to have effective onsite professional development to integrate the vast amount of edtech tools for their Judaic Studies education. This is what I do at Yeshivat Frisch on a daily basis. Some other schools have Jewish edtech coordinators on staff, others do this virtually through platforms like my friend who posted the Facebook query created. This is essential for edtech integration in general and even more so for Jewish edtech where the teacher needs someone who not only speaks the language of technology but of Jewish education.
Case Study #3: An iPad (or Laptop) for every child
A donor offers to purchase an iPad for every student in the grade. The school naturally takes the donor up on the offer, how can they refuse? An important factor to educational technology integration is student access. Obviously if technology is to be used to promote less frontal teaching and more student centered and constructivist learning where students construct meaning themselves with the assistance of technology platforms and apps then every student needs access to a device but this is not as simple as a laptop or iPad for every child.Two important factors must go with any one to one initiative, a technology supported physical infrastructure and educational plan. Devices cannot work in a vacuum. To support them one needs to have a strong wireless network with access to high speed internet with sufficient firewalls and filtering so every student can be on a device in a given classroom at the same time. Teachers also need things to work the first time. If the activity is a fail because the Internet was too slow or some students could not connect then they will likely be averse to try the activity again.
Likewise, every device must be supported. If the teacher tries a whole class technology centered activity and 5 of the twenty students do not have working devices, the teacher will likely never try the activity again. Devices need to be supported by an active technology staff and loaner devices need to be readily available for students when devices fail, break, or are lost.
More importantly, technology must be supported by a strong educational plan coupled with an educational technology infrastructure. Teachers and administrators need to be on board for the benefits of technology integration. It can’t just be, give students devices and wait for “magic” to happen. Teachers require training and ongoing support. There has to be systems in place to support the learning activities. This is usually called an LMS or Learning Management System where students can digitally view the learning activities and supported resources, submit their projects, and receive feedback.
Finally, to implement technology effectively one must hire educational technologists to provide the just on time support and professional development teachers need to effectively integrate technology on a consistent basis. This technologist should be a teacher who speaks the language of teachers who uses technology, not a “techie”. Without this, technology will be underutilized and lasting classroom change will not happen. Without all of these plans in terms of physical infrastructure and educational buy-in and support, the iPad for every student program will fail.
One stark example is the Los Angeles iPad fiasco where they gave every student an iPad in 2013 only to halt the program less than two years later. A key lesson from this case was an obvious one, it's not about the technology, but about the learning. As Michael Horn quoted in Wired magazine describes:
“Districts are starting with the technology and not asking themselves: ‘What problem are we trying to solve, and what’s the instructional model we need to solve it?’ and then finding technology in service of that.”
In the case of my school, our one-to-one iPad program helped us realize that while a device in the hands of every student was a lofty aspiration, students really wanted to use their device, not one provided by the school. Our program has transformed into a Bring Your Own Device or BYOD program where every student is expected to bring a device, minimal standards for each device are given, but the choice of device is up to the student and her family.
Other Panel Presenters
During his time, Kuty Shalev told the fascinating tale about how he became involved with Aleph Beta. It began eight years ago when he went to a shiur given Rabbi Dovid Fohrman and fell in love with his Torah and wanted to market it. He described how they started a fast, nimble startup similar to his regular technology startup experience with Clevertech in which they tried many methods, failed, and tried again until they came up with the idea to create professionally produced videos of Rabbi Fohrman's Torah insights. Even now, they carefully monitor the analytics of every video to make sure they are engaging to users. If they see viewership drops off after 2 minutes, they recreate the video with new hooks. Kuty's experience with Aleph Beta illustrates the need for more high quality content in Jewish edtech sphere rivaling anything in the secular market.Amy Amiel talked about the importance of having edtech leaders and ultimately edtech coordinators in schools to help successfully integrate edtech. She described how the Samis Foundation visited Frisch three years ago and were greatly impressed with their integration of technology into every facet of the education. To match the Frisch model in Seattle, they created a cohort of teachers who were given training and compensation to learn with an edtech coach. In the last two years, these teachers have become the edtech leaders in all Seattle schools many attaining the position of edtech coordinator so they could assist others as well in meaningful technology integration.
Ari Kelman focused on the lack of research defining success in Jewish edtech which is based on difficulty measuring success in Jewish education in general with few standards and benchmarks.
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| Panel on Jewish EdTech at High Tech High |
In the question and answer segment, one point that was emphasized repeatedly was the importance of the education coming first. I had the privilege to study with the master teacher of the Jewish people Nechama Leibowitz in the last year of her life. Nechama used to say that the students will remember nothing you teach them. But they will remember the feeling they had in your classroom, the relationship with you and their classmates, and the love of learning communicated in so many ways. I believe that schools will play this role even more so in the future since much content knowledge might be able to be outsourced to technology through flipped and blended learning to allow the teacher’s class to be even more about the conversation, the analysis, the connection to learning, the projects, the experiential education and the list goes on and on.
Shabbos is coming so I will reserve my account of the wonderful projects I found this week when I returned to Frisch for a future post. Each of my experiences this week illustrated one of my favorite quotes from Chris Lehmann of the Science Leadership Academy.
Technology should be like oxygen, ubiquitous, indispensable, and invisible.
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| Via @justjeremy |
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