Leeba MorseTheory and Practice

Final Problem of Practice

“…to be effective Jewish educators, we need to learn to speak and become fluent in the language of our children.” (Digital Wrestling)

Teens today are much more comfortable using social media to share their thoughts and feelings rather than their words. BBYO programming currently doesn’t include virtual interfacing. We should be meeting them where we are and incorporating their platforms for interaction into our lesson planning. How can we use social media the teens are already using for educational purposes?

Literary Support

“Our children are using social media to accomplish the eternal goals of adolescent

development, which include socializing with peers, investigating the world, trying on identities

and establishing independence.”1 Those four accomplishments mirror those taught in a

classroom. This is happening because, “The Net Generation children using GlobaLearn are

beginning to process information and learn differently than the boomers before them.2”

Educators can and should capitalize on this as “new media tools offer great promise for a new

model of learning- one based on discovery and participation. This combination of a new

generation and new digital tools will cause a rethinking of the nature of education-in both

content and delivery.3” I take from this that we have to integrate technology into lessons to

create an environment where students are comfortable sharing and participating which lead to

a more positive learning environment.

The article ‘Social Gaming for Change’ states that “The more time we spend interacting

within our social networks the more likely we are to generate a subset of positive emotions

known as ‘prosocial emotions’ such as love, compassion, admiration, and devotion.”4 Playing

with one’s social network facilitates the development of prosocial emotions, and strengthens

community ties, both of which are useful tools for SCG that want to promote community

1 Klass, Perri. "Seeing Social Media More as Portal Than as Pitfall." Nytimes.com. 9 Jan. 2012. Web. 1 May 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/health/views/seeing-social-media-as-adolescent-portal-more-than-pitfall.html?_r=4>.

2 Tapscott, Don. "Growing Up Digital, The Rise of the Net Generation." Print.

3 Tapscott, Don. "Growing Up Digital, The Rise of the Net Generation." Print.

4 "Social Gaming for Change." Firstmonday.org. Web. <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3578/3058>.

building.” Teens today are more virtually social than in-person but this still provides them with

positive community ties and social feelings.

As teens are already on-line, the support they need from educators is guidance on how

to make searches productive. Dr. Rich says “We should not view social media as either positive

or negative, but as essentially neutral,” he said. “It’s what we do with the tools that decides

how they affect us and those around us.”5 Social media is here and educators have to explore

how to use it. One way to do that is to use technology to update existing classroom

experiences. Heidi Hayes Jacobs suggests that educators should “replace a dated assessment

with a modern one. …We should aggressively go out of our way to search for better ways to

help our learners demonstrate learning with the types of products and performances that

match our times.”6 This is a simple way to integrate technology because in enhances rather

than changes the classroom learning and teaching.

"How is Torah taught? The teacher sits at the head of the class and the students sit

around him. The teacher should not sit on a chair while his students sit on the ground. Rather,

either everyone should sit on the ground or everyone should sit on chairs."7 This teaching from

the Rambam speaks to the equalizer that technology can be. It’s a common language that

5 Klass, Perri. "Seeing Social Media More as Portal Than as Pitfall." Nytimes.com. 9 Jan. 2012. Web. 1 May 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/health/views/seeing-social-media-as-adolescent-portal-more-than-pitfall.html?_r=4>.

6 Jacobs, Heidi H. "Curriculum 21, Essential Education for a Changing World." Print.

7 Rambam, Laws of Talmud Torah, 4:2

allows teacher and student to both ‘sit on chairs’ together. “To be effective Jewish educators,

we need to learn to speak and become fluent in the language of our children.”8

Ani Ma’amin

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/leeba-morse

Password: schoology

Solutions and technology tools

The three tools that serve as a solution to my problem of practice are Tumblr, Wordle,

and SlideShare. The teens I work with often use Tumblr as a means to share their thoughts and

express themselves. I think that Tumblr could easily be integrated into learning by having teens

type their thoughts as the lesson or program progresses – they could respond to one another

and post related multi-media in real time. I think this forum will strengthen their sense of

community with one another because this generation makes connections on-line. The final

takeaway to a technology integrated program like this could end in a word cloud of the Tumblr

posts – a way for the learners to see the highlights of their collective learning.

Wordle is a visual manifestation of ideas and expression and allows for a new digital

conversation between learners. This conversation is akin to a modern havruta. “Havruta offers

learners opportunities to foster interpretive, social, and ethical engagement and thus has great

potential for a range of people in different contexts with different learning goals.”9 Wordle

8 Lasday, Jeffrey. "Digital Wrestling." Ejewishphilanthropy.com. 30 Aug. 2011. Web. <http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/digital-wrestling/>.

9 Kent, Orit. "A Theory of Havruta Learning." Journal of Jewish Education. Print.

offers the same experience – a range of people in different contexts fostering engagement

through visual expression.

Tumblr and Wordle account for idea expression and virtual conversation; to take this

one step further I suggest utilizing SlideShare. This on-line presentation sharing format would

allow our 700 members in the Bay Area to share their ideas in a concrete and organized format.

Additionally, SlideShare would allow access to teen speeches/presentations from the comfort

of the home. The main focus of my problem of practice is teen comfort levels with social media

vs in-person sharing and SlideShare would help a teen reach many more people continuously in

their language of virtual technology.