Stepping Through the Door Together - Now's the Time

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!”  I feel like the white rabbit.  You know, rushing hither and yon, trying to figure out how to get where I need to go without being too distracted by all the tweets, network posts, and blogs I follow; not to mention the old technologies like the printed word and emails. There is so much information available to us.  If I miss a day of twitter, I feel it’s a catastrophe.

I’m not a technical neophyte.  I sort of know what’s going on.  Can you imagine being someone who has never tweeted, doesn’t know what a wiki is, thinks a glog is a type of fruit, and is trying to just stay afloat in this ever changing new world, let alone explore the Jewish educational cloud?  There are so many resources and new technologies that appear daily.  It’s easy to be intimidated.  There are probably fantastic teachers in the front lines who are so afraid of trying to figure this stuff out that they retreat into their old tried but true habits, becoming increasingly irrelevant in the classroom.  I know that there are folks who left both the JEA and NATE conferences with a sense of despair at not knowing how to proceed. Those who were unable to attend either conference are even more lost.  I believe that the time has come for us to help our teachers, especially those working in congregational/supplemental schools, break out of their shells to find a new comfort level in tomorrow.

We can lower the level of stress associated with learning new edtech skills by creating an accessible portal through which our teachers will learn to use the tools they need to move forward.  We are all searching for scrapes of knowledge wherever we can find them.  There’s too much out there that’s spread all over the place. We no longer have the one conference a year where we all came together to learn.  Now's the time to get organized again!

This is what I propose:  Let's create a new trans-denominational platform for Jewish educators of all flavors to gather virtually or, if practical and affordable, f2f  to explore the possibilities that tomorrow presents.  This collaborative cloud-based venue would be a forum that would promote dialogue, teaching and learning. It would be a consortium of all professional development providers that would “push” the opportunities to learn to us all.  I’m talking one-stop-shopping - a mall for Jewish education. It would be one venue that would offer educators and knowledge seekers ALL the opportunities and resources to enhance the field of Jewish education:  A 21^st century virtual Pumbadita, if you will - an on-line center for Jewish learning that would be comprehensive, all inclusive and easy to access.

This idea will be made real as a result of cooperation and collaboration between all Jewish education service providers, both those affiliated with a movement, like NATE and the JEA, as well as others like JESNA and PELIE. We all need to work together.  We need to move forward now.

I’ve started to have conversations about this vision with individuals affiliated with different groups and organizations. People are interested in seeing this come to fruition. I believe it is now the appropriate moment to widen the circle and have an expanded group of those who care about the future of Jewish education come together and brainstorm how to make a new Jewish Professional Learning Network happen.  Dr. Jonathan Woocher, the Chief Ideas Officer and Director of  the Lippman Kanfer Institute, has indicated that he is happy to host such a web meeting.

This is a concrete call to action. If you are interested in joining in the conversation and taking part in a virtual brainstorming session, email me, Peter Eckstein at terrapin@mindspring.com

If not now, when?

If Not Now, When - Blurring the Lines for the Future of Jewish Education

The dust is settling after the January JEA and NATE conferences.  Synagogue educators of all stripes and flavors are returning to our old haunts: Congregations and real life. A taste of what is possible still remains in our mouths, though. We need to ask: How do we keep the spirit that we felt in Mt. Laurel and Seattle, alive?  How do we move forward?  What’s next?

Now is the time for us to translate what we started to learn last month into our everyday routines.  What this means, IMHO, is that we need to work harder to create our own Professional Learning Network (PLN). We have learned that we don’t have to be in the same room/city/state/continent to learn from each other.  We have learned the real strength of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now we need to take the next step and get involved in these networks, learning from each other and building something brand new.

The laboratory that was NATE or JEA was great:  A controlled environment where the best of the brave new world could be displayed in all its cyber glory, pointing a way to what could be. But we all know that when we’re on our own in our offices back home, life has the annoying habit of happening: Distracting us with emergent issues like the kid and her mom who goes to soccer practice instead of the B’nai Mitzvah family program; the teacher who can’t get it together enough to turn in a legible lesson plan, let alone any; the board member who doesn’t understand why religious school teachers should be paid a reasonable wage. We all face these issues daily. We must not let them get in the way of our moving forward to build a vibrant edifice that IS the Jewish future. We can’t let the mundane get in the way of the sacred: L’mavdil ben kodesh l’hol.

Let it be proclaimed through all the lands and Second Life: The tools we need to learn how to construct tomorrow’s educational systems are available in the cloud, from teachers and thinkers at #jed21, from networks, sites and blogs like the Jewish Education Change Network, YU2.0, Welcome to the Next Level, The jewish-education Daily and many many more. They are a mere mouse click away. 

Yes, these resources are there to teach us, but what we need to do is to organize, to work together, regardless of affiliation or movement. This is my Unified Field Theory for Jewish Education: One “place” where we can all “meet” and discuss and build. Rather than the disparate links that can become overwhelming to us and especially to those who didn’t attend either conference, we should create a clearinghouse that will enable us to learn from each other.  We don’t have time in our ridiculously busy days to follow every tweet or blog. I know how traumatic missing 12 hours of tweets can be. We congregational/supplemental/complimentary school educators need to (If I may mangle my friend and colleague Ira Wise’s blog title) get to the Next Level and create one forum that will be OUR Professional Learning Network, irrespective of denomination or movement. 

I’m ready to work on this experiment.  Anyone want to join me?

And if not now, when?