The General Assembly. Biden. Netanyahu. 4,000 Jewish professionals and lay leaders. High trief food options. Kippot at Café du Monde and on Bourbon St. Where to start?
Most notable for me: technology was everywhere. From Shalom Sesame and the engagement of pre-schoolers, to teen programs, to engaging with marginally affiliated Jews in small communities, technology is in everyone’s solution set.
Kol haKavod to JESNA and the Jewish Education Project for the Futures Conference. Among the most thought-provoking presentations were those at this 3-hour session. Their site is a rich source of information.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about after spending 3 days in New Orleans.
There’s a “technology gap”. A recent Behrman House survey of households with children under age 15 revealed that 89% have high-speed internet connections, and 77% ”frequently” use the internet as an educational resource. Yet only 36% of schools use available online resources in Hebrew learning. We need to close the gap between our use of technology in our personal lives and what we offer the children in our schools.
Information is everywhere and it can be scary out there. By the time I open the morning’s NY Times I’ve read most of it elsewhere online. Now I need a new skill: the ability to sort all this out and decide where and how I want to get my information. There are so many options. It’s hard to know which ones to choose, let alone how to use all of them. And it’s my job to make sense of it for myself, no one else’s. Yet there’s a bit of a thrill in deciding for myself what information I want to get, and when, and how. And increasingly, those who learn in our schools are demanding just such an active role in building their learning experience. Parents and students alike.
The pace is faster. Change isn’t new; it’s been with us forever. But the pace of change is accelerating. We need our new skills fast. We can learn this stuff, but it never feels as though we can learn it quickly enough to feel comfortable before things change again. And in many cases, we barely crawl along compared to of the learning pace of the children we teach; they’ve grown up with this stuff. All this change can require new ways of thinking. Even reading isn’t the same anymore. See the article “Is Google Making us Stupid” in Atlantic Magazine for a discussion of how people think differently when reading online vs. reading the printed page.
But there is a way forward, and there are resources. The key is to take these things in small bites. A great place to start sorting them out is with Lisa Colton’s GA presentation “10 Rules of Social Networking.” It’s linked here—take a look.
And, I’d like to continue this conversation, publicly or one-on-one. Let’s think about these questions: (1) What am I doing to cope with the pace of change? ‘ and (2) What are my greatest fantasies and concerns about technology in my own life and work? Email or call me, or post a comment on this blog. It’s a good way to being to explore this complex, rich, and sometimes scary new world.
