Insanely Great?

Torah Studies with the iPad is “insanely great” because…

Can you complete the sentence? I keep thinking about this and still do not know the answer. Sure, there are advantages to having an all-around tool that can be used to take pictures, record, and take notes, but those will enhance any classroom. I wanted to know if there is anything that specifically makes the Chumash or Gemara easier for the students to learn

Recently, I bumped into a colleague from another school and inquired how the school year was going. Last year, his school piloted a 1:1 iPad program that has been touted as a highly successful model to follow. My friend has a reputation as being one of the teachers who embraced this technology and is an innovator in classroom integration. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity to ask him just how the iPads improved the learning in his Torah Studies Elementary school classroom.

He said that he uses the iPad’s every day in class. His classroom is a paperless classroom. All worksheets are done on the iPad.

“Is that better?”, I asked.

He hemmed and hawed. “Well I guess they can’t lose their papers, but otherwise it is nothing special.” He went on to explain that a lot of what he does is shtick that keeps the interest of the students, but there was nothing that made the Chumash learning better.

We continued our discussion and he expressed his frustration that though there may be certain advantages to having iPads in a classroom, there is nothing that he does on the iPad that is “insanely great” for Torah Studies, in particular. Of course, we could go back and forth and discuss the ways of creating presentations to show knowledge of the materials learned or having the students create a stop motion video to display their knowledge of the perek. But what do you use to actually help them learn the Chumash better?

Perhaps one might argue that any technology by definition does not advance the learning. Chumash and Gemara are age old materials that are not meant to be learned with new technologies. They are supposed to be learned only with a sefer and being taught the materials orally by a Rebbi or Morah. This is how they are meant to be learned. Anything else is not pure Torah and only detracts form the lesson.

According to this argument, Torah Studies teachers should not use whiteboards because that is not pure, undiluted Torah Study. They should not use index cards. It is not pure undiluted Torah study. They should not use lights. That is not pure undiluted Torah study. The only proper way to study Torah is by candlelight in a dark room.

That is obviously not the case. Torah Studies teachers are quick to innovate. They are excited about new methods and and ideas…but only when they advance the lesson. Chumash and Gemara are multifaceted materials that require an understanding at many levels to gain true mastery over the materials. Those teaching Torah Studies are constantly looking for ways to help the students understand the materials at a deeper level. Just how do you break apart a word in Chumash? Can you decipher the possuk independently? Why does the Torah use that specific word? Can you figure out what was bothering Rashi on the possuk? Those are examples of some of the skills that the students need to successfully learn Chumash on their own. Is there a way to use an iPad to give over these skills? I am still looking.

In my classroom, I use an interactive whiteboard. I enjoy being able to manipulate the words on the board and show the students how to properly conjugate the words of the pessukim. (Of course, it is possible that the iPad will soon replace IWBs because of their prevalence of apps such as Notability.) Lately, I have also been using an Elmo document camera. I love being able to put my Chumash or worksheets under the camera and zoom in. I can write on the paper or on the board. I can mark up my Chumash and show the students how I am understanding the materials. These are examples of two tech tools that will enhance the student’s understanding of the Chumash or Gemara. Both are practical advances that make the learning better. I fail to understand how using Storyrobe or Puppet Pals will make the students understand better. These are great tools for assessing understanding after the students have already learned the materials.

People often get excited about the next great idea. It is easy to fall into the trap of being caught in the moment and losing sight of the bigger picture. Each time we introduce a new piece of technology, we need to ask ourselves if this is getting us closer to our teaching goals. First, we need to define our objectives. What do we want the students to walk away with? In Torah Studies the goal is often that they should be able to learn on their own, unaided. If so, we need to think carefully before we introduce a new app into the class. Is this on the road map to helping them achieve that goal? Too often we try to fit the Torah learning into the new technology. We lose sight of our objective and drift off course. It is great that the students can tweet the story of Avraham bring Yitzchok to the Akeida.

@Yitzchok There is a reason we didn’t bring a sheep #readytobeakorban

@Avraham tie me down so I don’t flinch #nervous

DM @Avraham @Avraham Don’t touch the boy #justatest

But does that advance their understanding of the Chumash? Does it bring them the skills and knowledge necessary to open up a Chumash on their own? I would argue that it only shows that they understand the story line. Sure, you can ask them a deeper question that they need to think about and have them discuss it on a VoiceThread. Perhaps that works for High School. You can put everyone online and have a collaborative discussion. In Elementary school where the goal is skill building, it is hard to make the argument that the iPad is “insanely great”. It is definitely a nice tool to have in the class, but it is not the amazing tool that it can be in the Secular Studies classroom.

Just to clarify – added 4/21/13

I am not saying that there is no purpose for an iPad in a Torah Studies classroom. You can still use it for all the amazing things that you can use it for in a Secular Studies classroom. I am just saying that right now there do not appear to be many apps or tools that will enhance a Chumash or Gemara lesson and make it easier for the students to understand the content.

In addition, I had small idea for a use that I think does have a purpose. I have been using an Elmo document camera to project the actual page of Chumash on the board. I love that I can write on the board or I can write on my Chumash. Very often I have the students come up and mark up my Chumash. The annoying part of everything is if I write the comments on the board with a marker and the chumash moves slightly – all the answers on the board are suddenly in the wrong place. If I mark up the actual Chumash, then they are always in the same place, but there is no room for mistakes. Last week on of my second graders put quotation marks on the bottom of the words in the same place you would put a period or comma. Also, there is the distraction in class taken when you need to turn the page and line up the new page and make sure that it is perfectly situated on the board.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to take a picture of the page of Chumash with the iPad and project that on the board using one of the many whiteboard apps. Then you can mark it up as you desire. You have the ability to erase and nothing will move. You can put the iPad on anybody’s desk and let them put answers on the page. That seems to be better than what I am doing now.

I welcome your comments and thoughts.

There’s An App For That

     In the Education Technology course I am taking there has been a lot of focus of late on using the myriad of different web productivity tool available online. There are many useful tools that save a lot of time and effort. Tools that are a low cost way to help us accomplish in our teaching and in our everyday lives. On an almost daily basis we use these tools without even thinking about the service they are providing to us. It has been fun to try out different tools as they are introduced in the course. The truth is that I enjoyed trying out Web 2.0 tools even before I started the course.

     As I went through this week’s chapter, I felt a nagging feeling of being bothered. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Perhaps it was that every quote was from before 2010…. but a lot of the statements were still accurate. Spending some time thinking about it, I realized that I haven’t been trying out as many Web 2.0 tools on my computer because there is usually an app for it on my phone. Lately I have spent less time on my la[top and more on my iPhone. Most of my email is sent from my phone. I tweet from my phone. I bank from my phone. I can blog from my phone. I video edit from my phone. I take and edit pictures from my phone. I shop from my phone. Just about any new Web 2.0 tools in on my phone via the App Store. 

    When the course textbook was written way back in 2010, the iPad was yet to be introduced. There were only 140,000 apps in the App Store – not the million apps that there are now. People didn’t use mobile devices to access the internet the same way. Just look in the news. Computer sales are down. Tablet sales are up. The iPhone and iPad are game changers. Yes, we still use the web tools, but now they are called apps. 

    If I had to pick my productivity tool…I would say it is my phone. I don’t need to surf to a website anymore. I just click on the app and it is right there. I can do everything that I need to do on it. My computer doesn’t go on in class that often anymore. My phone is my camera. My phone is my voice recorder. My phone is my iPod. If my personal classroom setup was a little more advanced, I would be using Apple TV to project my iPhone screen onto my Smartboard.  All of Web 2.0 is on my phone. I find that I don’t take out my laptop unless I need to type for a larger amount of time and do not want to use my thumb to do it. 

         My phone is replacing a lot of the things that I used to do on the computer. It is not exactly Web 2.0 and it is certainly not free. However it is the portal to all things Web 2.0. It is an all in one productivity tool giving me easy access to the tools that I use on a frequent basis.

     Looking back on my textbook that was written just a couple of years ago gives me an appreciation for how fast technology is advancing. It is so easy to forget. Of course we remember the good old days before cell phones. But do we really recognize the progression we have made. Do we see how much it has made our lives easier. Sometimes we need to take a second to appreciate what we have. We need to find the time to stop and think about the evolution of technology and to find a way to help ourselves remember where we were and how far we are going. But if you can’t find the time….there is probably an app for that also.