Teach children to be their own Internet filters

"For it's one, two, three strikes...never mind."

I learned may things about many things while a Jim Joseph Fellow at the Lookstein Institute for Jewish  Education in the Diaspora at Bar Ilan University. One of them is to "Listen to Dr. Eliezer Jones." He is usually funny and nearly always right. This past Sunday Orthodox Jews did what the New York Mets couldn't - they filled Citi Field. And they did it to hold a rally against the internet (the rally was advertised on the web, curiously. I dismissed the whole thing when I first heard about it as just another example of an insular part of the of the Jewish people becoming even more insular. Today, my friend Eliezer and a colleague of his from Yeshiva University made me think again. And again. They taught me something (more than one something). Let them tel it as published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency...

By Eliezer Jones and David Pelcovitz · May 21, 2012

OPINION

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Tens of thousands of Jews filled Citi Field in Queens on Sunday and heard from haredi Orthodox leaders that the Internet should be avoided in the home at all costs and used sparingly at work, and then only with a filter blocking content that could be damaging spiritually.

Debate as you will what some may see as draconian edicts to protect the Jewish community from moral corruption. But at the heart of the matter is a question that should concern us all: How do we keep our children safe on the Internet?

We know that we cannot work around the Internet. Research from the Pew Foundation indicates that 54 percent of children say they go to Google first when they have a question, as opposed to only 26 percent who say they go to a parent and 3 percent to a teacher. Rather we must figure out how parents and teachers can make this important tool work safely and effectively for our kids.

The difficulty is that even the simple solutions are incredibly complicated. Powerful filters can block illicit images and material, but those filters often block out the good with the bad and limit far too much useful information. This solution has been discussed and debated on our own campus concerning Internet access in dormitories.

Some yeshivot have considered avoiding technology altogether and sticking with books and blackboards. But that would leave students without the digital competence required to succeed academically in college and beyond, not to mention that it would rob teachers of increasingly exciting and effective educational tools.

The only real answer is that as parents and teachers, we must instill in our children a strong value system based on Jewish morals and traditions that allows our children to become their own filters when exploring the Internet. That would be far more powerful than any protective software.

The onus is clearly on us because it seems that children will listen to our rules, at least when it comes to the Internet. Only three in 10 young people reported to a Kaiser Foundation survey that they are given clear rules about how much time they may spend using a computer, watching TV or playing video games. The average child with no rules spends more than three hours per day on such media. Those who are given rules spend considerably less time.

Yeshiva high school students said they would be receptive to rules. More than half of those surveyed by researcher Debbie Fox, director of the Aleinu Family Resource Center, a program of the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, said that they would welcome more guidance from parents regarding Internet use.

These same students, in fact, said that they would be far stricter with their own future adolescent children regarding responsible Internet use than their parents, and would monitor their children much more closely.

The dangers of the Internet are not limited to challenging content. A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that about half of students in grades seven through 12 said they do their homework with media open that do not pertain to their task at hand. In other words, about 50 percent of middle and high school students are doing homework with divided attention. And while some kids may believe that they are being more efficient, multitasking has been proven in adults to cause higher levels of stress and lower levels of efficiency.

While some kids can multitask well, it's up to parents to actively determine if their children work more efficiently while doing so or while focusing on their work without interruption. Parents should collaborate with their children to test whether they are more efficient when not being interrupted or distracted, and then meter their background activity accordingly.

The greatest challenge of all, however, may be making sure that our kids completely separate from the Internet at times.  According to the Pew Foundation, 75 percent of American teens prefer texting to in-person contact with friends. Perhaps it's no coincidence that this generation's empathy levels among adolescents are significantly lower than those of previous generations.

It may seem that adolescents in every generation feel isolated and tuned out at some point or another. But it turns out that their computer habits may be compounding the problem. Parents need to teach children that some of their relationships must include direct face-to-face interaction without the distraction of text messages and cell phone calls.

While some of what occurred at Citi Field this past weekend might seem foreign, we must work to ensure that our students and our children can grow up as highly moral and successful Jewish digital citizens.

(Dr. Eliezer Jones is the educational technology specialist at Yeshiva University's Institute for University-School Partnership. Dr. David Pelcovitz is the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus chair in psychology and Jewish education at YU's Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration. For more information about safe Internet rules and guidelines, visit www.yuschoolpartnership.org/parentguidedigitalage.)

When Tweeting Depletes: How Social Media Can Disconnect Us

The conversation continues courtesy of eJewishPhilanthropy (What? You still don;t subscribe? Shame!). Here I am, Mr. Digital Oleh, agreeing that digital is not the only solution. Maybe not even the best solution. Like a knife or a drill, it is a tool. We need to learn how to use it well and when to put it back in the virtual tool box and use other tools. Discuss...

When Tweeting Depletes:
How Social Media Can Disconnect Us

November 11, 2011

by Ami Hersh and Leor Shtull Leber

As people who barely remember a time before the Internet and who use Facebook (too) often to stay in touch with friends from around the world, we are not ignorant of the power of social media and technology in connecting people and ideas. However, we question the direction we are taking when we rely too heavily on technology and we fear the authenticity of our relationships when they are based on “@s” and “#s”

We admit we are guilty too. Once we were sitting around a table with friends, each of us on our own laptop. Somebody walked in and asked if he could join and do homework with us, and we awkwardly apologized that we were actually in a meeting – it just so happened that our meeting involved us all sitting in a circle in silence working collaboratively on the same Google doc.

Still, we use the word “guilty” because of the value of personal relationships with which we were raised. We both recently attended the JFNA General Assembly in Denver and were shocked to see the technology culture present and the (over)use of smartphones during sessions. We were encouraged to play with our phones instead of focusing on the speakers. People barely looked up – a great success according to the “Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!” message of the conference. What happened to turning off your phone for a lecture? Further, one of the winning innovative ideas at the Jewish Futures Conference called for the elimination of meetings: young people don’t want to waste their time meeting in person when smart phones can do the job.

Well, we are young people who have smart phones. We still cherish the face to face time of meetings in person – and look forward to disconnecting by turning off our phones during those meeting. Email and social media are important and effective tools, but we must be conscious of overuse and of replacing genuine in-person relationships, both when we are distant and even when we are together in the same room, by tweeting instead of talking.

As it says in Mishlei 27:19, “As water reflects face to face, so the heart of man to man.” The beauty of interpersonal relationships is the ability to look into the eyes of another human being and connect deeply with them through conversation and expression. As you stare into the eyes of another human being created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, you are able to let their souls reflect and interact with your own. The whole world can open up before your eyes. Social media is spectacular, important, and quite useful when utilized in its proper time and place. Let us not however allow the over-presence of social media to dilute our in-person enduring relationships.

Ami Hersh is a senior rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the assistant director of Camp Ramah in Nyack. He can be reached at Ami@campramah.org

Leor Shtull Leber is a senior at Brown University concentrating in Cognitive Science and a Student Representative on the Brown RISD Hillel Board of Trustees. She can be reached at leor.shtull.leber@gmail.com

Answers to Open the Door

Peter Eckstein is one of my favorite colleagues. Not only is he a professional and a deep thinker, but he likes the Grateful Dead so much that Terrapin is part of his e-mail address! He called me recently to talk over some ideas about using technology in our work - it was one of several calls he had with a bunch of colleagues. Hopefully you received an invitation to the survey from JESNA or some other source, but if not, click here. This is the beginning of a conversation. For all of our sakes, I hope you will join in! Here is his post about this from his blog, The Fifth Child. (His blog is definitely worth following!)

Pesach is a time for questions.

So, in the spirit of the season, I would like to ask you some. I’ll start with one: How do Jewish educators learn to use 21st century educational technology in the Jewish classroom? This will lead to a few more. What follows is a survey with 15 questions (an auspicious number for Pesach). The goal of this short (5-8 minutes) questionnaire is to find some answers to the question of how and what we learn.

My friend and colleague Barry Gruber recently posted a piece about the smorgasbord of opportunities to learn what the ‘net provides. He’s right – it truly is a blessing. I wonder if this cornucopia is so bountiful that there will be many who, like the 4th child, will be so intimidated by all the resources available that they will be daunted by the act of beginning to learn. They won’t know where to start. They won’t know what to ask. If this is the case, what should we do about it?

Ergo the survey. This is an independent project to explore the nature of on-line Jewish professional development related to the utilization of educational technology. It’s focus is to find out how we Jewish educators learn about these new tools, where we learn from, and if we need to make these learning opportunities more accessible. I'm hoping that this information will help shape the way Jewish educators can easily learn more about the use of digital tools in their classrooms.

Teaching is leading. We educators create an environment for our students to construct their knowledge base. The tools that are being developed today and tomorrow empower us to achieve this goal. The complicated part is that we need to learn how to use them. There’s the rub. What’s the best way for the educators, who can’t go to conferences or don’t have local resources provided by central agencies, to learn how to take the next step into the world of digital Jewish learning?

Questions. There are many. And the answers may lead us to an understanding of what we can do to build a solid base of Jewish educators who can comfortably engage their students, speaking a common language. This is why I’m asking you all to take part in this adventure.

I must thank Jonathan Woocher and Rebecca Leshin of the Lippman Kanfer Institute for supporting this project and providing the platform to make it possible. I also want to acknowledge the many educators in the Jewish cloud who have contributed ideas to help create this survey. There are too many to mention by name, but I do want to thank you all for you assistance.

So please click here to access this professional development survey. Answers can be signposts leading us in the direction of creating Jewish futures for our students. We just need to start with the questions. Together let’s find the answers.

Reflections on our Jewish Digital Future

This is a comment on a cross-post of cross-post. It is appropriate in light of the content. eJewishPhilanthropy posted an abridgement of a posting on the Project InCite blog by Lily Lozovsky.The image at right will make sense further down!

Reflections on our Jewish Digital Future Right now, we are living through a fundamental shift in the structure of our society. Digital media and portable connective devices are transforming our world by eliminating the transaction costs that once acted as barriers to offline activism.

… Our digital tools are stretching the limits of human potential, expanding the capacity of the individual and the collective to affect scalable, rapid change in our communities.

… Jewish institutions cannot afford to carry out their missions on the ground without simultaneously engaging with thought leaders and activists in “cyber space”. If we are doing a phenomenal job, our success will be reinforced and extended by the community online. If we are not, well, there is cause to worry.

Online, the authenticity of an organization’s impact and relationships is king. We have entered what I like to think of as the ultimate audit – of individuals, businesses and institutions. We are no longer simply what we say we are. Rather, we are the sum of our searchable reputation; ratings, followers and reviews that tell others the truth about what we have to offer. This is both powerful and frightening.

The critical mass of people trafficking across the web creates a filter beyond anything that a lone editor or institution could guarantee. If we are ineffective or irrelevant, if we are not part of the conversation, or fail to deliver on the claim that we are making – people in our networks will know. They will talk. They will tweet. The internet has empowered people with a voice.

And they are speaking up whether institutions give them the microphone or not.

The organizations that we care about cannot continue addressing the internet as another place to post their brochures. It is time to change our metaphors. We need to see social media as a networking event or a Kiddush luncheon, one that we cannot afford to miss, even if we arrive on Jewish time. 

I am the guy who keeps talking about not tossing the synagogue baby out with the analog bathwater. (Wow. That is a hideously stretched metaphor. You know what I mean, yes?) Some would expect me to refute Lily or in some way try to lessen the impact of what she has said.

Not going to happen.

She nailed it in one. Nothing she says suggests shuttering the shul or closing the JCC or making the community all virtual all the time. She talks about how essential it is that our institutions learn to occupy the space in 2.0 rather than a 1.0 manner. 

I look at my synagogue web site and see that it is web 1.0 - the read only web. We are not interactive. It is a fine place for members to catch up. It serves as a great way for prospective members to begin to get to know us. Many people have told us how helpful it was in their decision to join. But it does little to bring our members together other than telling them when to meet in real time. Most synagogue pages are the same. We are working on this. I hope everyone else is too.

We have had some success in building community online using resources other than the web page. Facebook has really begin to be useful. One of our rabbis invited me to work with her in establishing a temple Facebook group. We have 243 members of the group and we have reached the point where members are doing most of the posting and they are having conversations about lots of things. Not just about events at the temple, but about getting together to do things with one another or with their children. One of our teachers, who grew up in our synagogue noticed something interesting on a library book Date Due card:

"Today at Sunday school one of my kindergarteners took this book out. I started filling out the information and I read up the list to find Mallory Gibson who was 7 years old (back in 2000) when she took the book out. I was a Madrakah in her class when I was in high school and she was in kindergarten, I taught her when she was in Kitha Chet (8th grade), and now she's graduating high school. Makes me feel old! Also, Todd Markley, who is a Rabbi now, from the temple, and is well known across the east coast also took this very same book out. He took it out in 1983! History in our own temple! :-p"

She snapped the picture at the top of this posting and posted it to the Facebook Group. The  conversation at right then ensued. Heidi is a parent in our school and came to our community somewhat recently. Claire is long-term member who has adult children and grandchildren. She has served on our board and is part of a team of volunteers that makes our library work for our members.

So the technology has allowed us to bridge generations and bring people together. A similar conversation about a family making Shabbat on vacation and another member who posted daily pictures and commentary from the congregational trip to Israel last month.

So I agree with Lily. We (Jewish institutions) need to get MUCH better at embracing and using the available means to bring our people together, both digitally and in analog. It is both/and, not either/or. Lot's more work. But let's face it, no one went into Jewish education to avoid work.


Let's build something together!

Cross-posted to Welcome to the Next Level

From Sinai to Cyberspace, Pt. 2: Thawing out

This post comes from Peter Eckstein, a colleague from Florida. These are his thoughts on the just ended JEA conference that focused on technology and innovation, and chaired by JJF Fellow Barry Gruber. It is cross posted from his blog, The Fifth Child.

As I reflect on the Jewish Educators Assembly conference that just ended, the lyrics of an old song pops into my head: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”  It’s not that we’re clueless when it comes to us knowing what Jewish education will look like in the future; it’s just that we’re not sure in what direction we’ll be traveling.

So…maybe we are a little clueless after all.

Let me back up for a moment. The close to 200 participants at the Conservative movement’s education conference were exposed (many for the first time) to web 2.0 platforms that foster collaboration and have the potential to build community in new ways. For many of those present, the learning curves were steep as questions were posed, such as: “How do I set up a twitter account?” and “What is a Personal Learning Network?”  Lisa Colton (@darimonline) presented the challenges facing Jewish professionals as we reach out to a new generation of Jewish parents. Caren Levine (@jlearn20) introduced tools that enhance professional development, all within the context of social media, and opportunities of cloud based collaboration.  David Bryfman (@bryfy) stressed the importance of stepping out of our professional and institutional comfort zones as we look at existing structures, re-visioning them through a process of re-prioritization. discovering  new opportunities we never dreamed of. 

So in this embarrassment of riches with which we were blessed at the JEA, we must ask the hard question:  What is truly necessary in our work and for our constituents? And here is where we get to the hard stuff.

Who are our constituents? Parents?  Kids?  How are Baby Boomers, Gen “Xers” and Millenials different from each other?  How do we rise to this challenge of being effective in reaching different generational cultures? How do we cope with the democratization (or is it the rise of the consumer ethic) of knowledge? More than any other time in history, not only do people have a greater exposure and ability to get answers to ALL their questions; they also demand a say in what they want to learn, and when.  We seem to be on the cusp of a reordering of the traditional dynamic between parent, teacher and child.  Pam Edelman, from Yerusha, presented a model of Jewish education that is sort of a combination between home-schooling and the scouting merit badge program.  It exists outside of current institutions, and was born out of young families’ frustration with organized Jewish life today.  Is this a fad or a trend?   Should we, as Jewish professionals, feel threatened by this new phenomenon, or embrace it?  

The new tools that enhance collaborative learning (like Voicethread and Google Docs) and building school communities (such as interactive school websites like Activit-e) reflect the reality that relationships are central to building authentic Jewish lives. What this means is that the digital tools we have available to us today are only means to create a 21st century Klal Yisrael. This idea of unity certainly isn’t new.  It’s just that the way to achieve it, is.

 Ultimately, the question that underlies all others, in my mind, is what will Jewish communal life look like the day after tomorrow?  The idea of Social Networking was ubiquitous at the JEA conference. It’s all about relationships and how technology can be a tool to enhance the growth of community. As others have said before me, it’s not about the tech, it’s about the people.

As I write these words, I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting for my flight to take off in the driving snow.  At the same time, the final keynote address is being given back at the conference.  Robyn Faintich (@Jewishgps) is live-tweeting it at #jea59. The speaker, David Bryfman has asked the participants to close their eyes and “think about the future: What COULD Jewish life look like in your imaginary vision.  Who are the learners? Where? When?”

Next week the Reform movement's educators are meeting in Seattle for their conference: called "Imagineering Jewish Education for the 21st Century". They too are exploring the frontiers of technology and Jewish education. I can't help but think that we are at a serendipitous moment, when we all are on the same page of Talmud. We all know what needs to be done, we're just trying to figure out how. I believe now is the time for Jewish futurists, educators,and leaders from all movements to come together and explore tomorrow. If I may borrow Jack Wertheimer's imagery, we need to break down the denominational silos and finally collaborate.

We don’t know what next week will look like.  Before us are possible paths. In this age of cloud computing, virtual communities, and social networks, we need to take the leap of faith and move forward, not knowing exactly where it will take us, but being confident that by embracing the future, we will ensure a Jewish context for all those who will live in it.

Remarketing Jew Education

This week the Jewish Educators Associatian (JEA) is having their annual conference. This coming week, I will be joining my colleagues from the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) at our  annual conference in Seattle. Both the Conservative JEA and the Reform NATE conferences are making technology and futuring the centerpiece of their learning. It is very exciting. 


In The Networked Non-Profit, Beth Kantor and Allison Fine point out that when it comes to Social Media, the important word is SOCIAL not MEDIA. In other words the technology is a tool for bringing people together, and in our case, making Jewish learning happen.


Joel Grishaver has posted what I think is a very interesting idea about futuring on his blog, The Gris Mill, and I am glad he wrote it now so I can think about it while I am learning in Seattle. - Ira Wise

Remarketing Jew Education

by Joel Lurie Grishaver

We are at an interesting moment in the world of parenting. This parenting chaos directly impacts the way we present ourselves as Jewish “schools.”

The first voice is Amy Chua, author of  "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,"  who says give your child no room to do anything but succeed. The other voice is Wendy Mogul, whose long overdue second book, “The Blessings of a B-Minus,” cajoles us to accept our child as human beings. Both books are now coming to prominence. One is about high achievement, the other is about resilience. Both take a swipe at the long over emphasized issue of self-esteem.

Chua wants us to be tougher on our kids and demand “perfection.” Mogul understands that “failure” is a useful growth opportunity. Both of them wind up as commentary on new reports about the failure of American schools to even teach the difference between facts and opinions and the overall failure of American Universities to make any impact on the learning of many of their present students. Richard Arum, lead author of the study, “Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (University of Chicago Press) came out in January, too, is the third voice putting the foundations of the way we parent at risk.

Believe it or not, all this comes back to the role and optics of Jewish schools, particularly Jewish supplemental schools. Who we are as a school has a lot to do with what our parents believe a school is.

We are simultaneously being told be like regular schools and become technological. At the same time we are being told, don’t be like a school at all (we’ve had enough of that) be a camp or a program or something interesting (and do that using a lot less time). What is common knowledge every where but in our classroom, is the universal belief that the present Jewish schooling system is a total failure.
Here is a radical idea. We ought to play to our own strengths. We know that the Jewish tradition centers on learning how to close-read texts. (Think reading comprehension!) That we use a thing called “Talmudic Logic” that teaches you how to evaluate evidence, reason, and know the difference between fact and opinion.

Jewish schools can and should do camp pretty well. We need to get better at technology. For sure, our tradition centers on building both self-esteem and resilience. But, what Judaism really is good at is learning—deep learning.

In the future, when the alternative (for example) is 10 minutes of Skype a week plus one informal event a month probably involving families, we will brag:  “We help our students become better learners.”
Camp will do camp better than we do. Other schools will always have more money to spend on technology than we do (and Web 2.0 apps only go so far). But what we can really brag about is “let us teach your children the Jewish tradition and they will do better in life.”

We will incorporate the camp selling point: “You children will make friends to last a lifetime.” We will have the technological appeal: “We allow your children to remix the Jewish tradition.” But our unique promise is about learning skills. Right now we teach not language but mechanical reading. Language provides useful insight. Mechanical reading is self-serving. We are geared to teach names and facts, but “meaning” and “insight” are what are precious. We have to work to make our classrooms both challenging and responsive, and those are goals we can achieve. It is perhaps the only truth that will keep us in business.

To stay on the weekly schedule, to make it worth the carpool time, Jewish Schooling has to have advantages. The good thing is that we own them: Friends, Remixing, Creativity, Resilience, and Academic Excellence. We know how to do this—we simply need to become good Torah teachers and not a pale imitation of secular schools.

Cross posted to The Gris Mill and Welcome to the Next Level