Teaching Talmud with Technology

EdTech

I just had a remarkable conversation with a remarkable teacher about the remarkable things he and his remarkable students are doing with remarkable tools at a remarkable school. Can I tell you about it?

The class is Grade 9 Talmud and the school is, of course, Hillel. The teacher is Hillel’s Rabbinic Head, Chaim Albert, and the tool they are using is our new Mobile iPad Lab.

For their latest unit, Rabbi Albert identified two kinds of learning goals: content goals and skill goals.

  • The content goal of the lesson included identifying the tractate, chapter name, chapter number and page number of a particular page of the Gemara, as well as the location of the major commentaries and other content on the page.
  • The skill objective was that, given that location information, the student be able to locate a specific piece of content on a specific page among the almost 13,000 pages in the Talmud.

How did Rabbi Albert accomplish these goals?

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#FETC Appreciation Flash Mob

EdTech

Today is the last day  FETC 2012 and it’s been great. I’ve attended great sessions, learned interesting things, met awesome, motivated, exciting educators and seen cool products. And, this year’s conference has had a brand-new feature, the FETC Mobile iOS App which has been invaluable for getting around the show, finding great sessions and keeping track of details.

So, here’s my proposal. I’d like to thank FETC and 1105 Media for putting on such a great show in general and, specifically, for adding the App this year. To do this, let’s all get together at 11:50 am today, Thursday, for a quick flash mob photo.

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