"Social Media" in teaching Limudei Kodesh

I don't know if this will work. It depends on the blocking in one's school. Is it possible to have limited twitter? If the answer is yes, I have some ideas.

Imaging teaching Parashat Korach. Then have the class tweet the major points ... for example: one hashtag could be @Korach; others could be @Datan, @Aviram, @eshet Ohn ben Peles etc...

they could tweet the Perek...with reactions from other members of Bnai Yisrael (some will be left to imagination)...this can all be tweeted from the seat on ipad or laptop and projected on screen, so all the tweets are coming up as they are written...can you imagine how involved the class would be in learning. This could be a reward for learning the Perek well.

or the Meraglim imagine the meraglim tweeting their "spying out the land"...

My imagination is running away with me...

Yosef and his brothers, selling him

or blogs...kids could write blogs...

Moshe's blog..from when he grows up in Paroh's palace, to killing the mitzri, to going before Paroh (let my people go), the makkos, etc etc...instead of a "diary" which is just one kid writing it and maybe reading it to class, whole class is involved...each child could write a different section of Moshe's blog...and everyone could comment...and again, it could be projected in front of class with real time comments coming in.

or Yehoshua's blog..capturing eretz canaan...

or yosef's blog..from when he was sold until family comes to mitzrayim.

Just some ideas to incorporate web 2.0 into limudei kodesh. I would love to hear your ideas, comments, critiques. As I said, this is just "off the top of my head."

More to come, just thought of some other applications. Will try them out first before blogging.

Getting Started

I realize that I've been sending out lots and lots of emails to my fellow teachers at my new school, Ohr Chadash, with suggestions of websites/blogs/iPad apps. I'm beginning to feel like a nudge, so I decided to start a blog, post all suggestions to the blog and then just send them links to my blog when I post. It's much easier for me this way also.

Where am I getting all this great material to suggest? From Twitter!! I discovered twitter, among many other great discoveries at http://www.isteconference.org/2011/ last week...4 days of educational technology...great experience..maybe I'll write about it some other time. Back to Twitter. I've heard about it, used it a bit, but didn't realize the potential until I started using it as @orhchadashtech. That is, what is called, my hashtag. If you go on twitter, join, make your own hashtag and start following me. Then you can follow some of the people I follow. Most of the people I follow are in education, use technology, specifically 21st Century tools, Web2.0 tools, Jewish Education. I read their blogs, which give great real live classroom advice to using technology in the classroom, follow their links, many of which lately, were sessions many of us attended at ISTE. It's overwhelming, but I've learned so much in the last week and a half. Try it, you'll be pleased at how much you can learn. Each post is only 140 characters, so I'm learning not to be so long-winded, a problem I have with email and blogs.

The name of this blog: EdTechBubby...I have been teaching for over 40 years...have used technology in the classroom for about 1/2 of that time...I've gone from Apple 2 computers, to pc's projecting Chumash lessons made on powerpoint, to smart boards, to being a full fledged computer teaching at the now former Yeshivat Rambam. There I taught grades K-5. We used Microsoft Office and I can truly say the students I taught are proficient in many aspects of Microsoft Office, depending on what we covered in their grade. Now I am the newly hired tech teacher at the new Ohr Chadash Academy, Baltimore. I say tech teacher, and not computer teacher, because we have enough iPads for grades 4-6 and I am working on trying to integrate them into the classroom, maybe even establishing 1:1 classrooms.

The Bubby part...I am a bubby of 7 very tech savvy grandchildren...I can say I've learned a great deal from them...texting and emoticons from Eliana, great powerpoint tricks from Ezra and much much more...from all of them. I hope I can transmit what I learned from them and from my edtech colleagues to all my students, and colleagues at Ohr Chadash. I hope to share what I learn, via this blog and Twitter. Remember follow me on Twitter @ohrchadashtech.