Do You Celebrate the Christmas? - No, we're Jewish!

Do You Celebrate the Christmas? - No, we're Jewish!

For students of Hochberg Preparatory Jewish Day School in Miami and the Mabbuim elementary school of Southern Israel, the highlight of their year-long "Friends Across the Sea" school partnership program came last week when the kids were able to "meet" each other via live video chat.

Throughout this past school year, the 5^th and 6^th grade students have been working on shared projects which are facilitated on the MyHaiku Learning Management System.  Each month the classes would explore new subjects that were posted in English and in Hebrew on their shared LMS platform. The curriculum included a wide range of subjects such as Jewish diversity, seeing the world through a Jewish lens, and information about similarities and differences between worldwide Jewish communities. The students were also encouraged to personalize the subject matter as they discussed their own families and their views of Judaism and Israel.

  

Although the communication through the LMS was active and engaging, the students in both classes frequently voiced their desire to develop a more personal relationship with their "friends across the sea."  JETS therefore set up a virtual meeting via  web conferencing software. The students could see each other and connect by chatting, both by SKYPEing on the big screen and using a back channel to type to each other on Today's Meet. In addition to the opportunity to actually meet each other, the format allowed the students to practice their language skills and learn more about their peers' lives.

 A significant amount of the chat centered around the students' shared interest in sports, but other subjects included the weather, families, holiday celebrations and school. The students were enthusiastic about their meeting and have already asked for a second video chat opportunity.

Anat, a teacher at Hochberg Prep, was pleased with the chat results. She wrote:

"I thought it went very well! Students on both sides were asking each other questions and gave answers and sang songs to each other (ours - sang in Hebrew 'Mi Shema'amin Lo Mefached" and theirs - sang in English 'We are the World'). The atmosphere was very friendly and fun! They asked about what we do during Shavuot, our daily schedule, what sport we like, etc. Our students asked someone if they had a Bar Mitzvah, and what they do in the summer and for Lag Baomer... They really enjoyed comparing notes and cheering for each other! It was really fun to watch! Thanks for making this happen! I really felt that it brought the students closer together!  Y'shar Koach!!!"

Shutafut, WIKIs and Friends Across the Sea

For many years, students in American Jewish day schools have learned Hebrew by memorizing words, completing grammar exercises, and reading contrived textbook stories. Israeli students study Hebrew in a similar fashion. Now however students in both locations can open classroom laptops or tablets and connect with their peers across the ocean in collaborative activities that allow them to use and expand their language skills in a more meaningful and authentic manner.

The JETS Shutafut program twins American and Israeli schools in a partnership program that strengthens the students' language skills as it allows the kids to "meet" their peers online and learn from them by collaboratively learning an online curriculum.

The Shutafut program is facilitated by the WIKIspaces platform. Using Wikispaces, each student focuses on a page of activities to which s/he contributes by joining in discussions, submitting original material, editing, and answering questions,. The activities and assignments are posted in both English and Hebrew to facilitate language acquisition of both English-speaking and Hebrew-speaking students. Every time a student signs in, s/he can see the comments that his/her peers "across the ocean" have submitted and comment on them and/or submit more material.

JETS teachers update the WIKIs weekly, adding more material and working with the classroom teachers to monitor each student's progress.

The partnership schools include Vancouver Talmud Torah partnered with Alai Giva (Kibbutz Kfar Giladi), Calgary partnered with Hagome (Kfar Blum, Birmingham (Jewish and public schools) partnered with Rosh HaAyin, and Edmonton Talmud Torah partnered with Emek HaHula.

Shutafut projects allow students to explore a wide range of topics including their own families' backgrounds and ethnicities, their respective communities, mutual responsibility, Jewish peoplehood and more. Each unit contains numerous activities that encourage the students to use available web tools to express themselves in various modes as they examine the subject matter and practice their language skills. Students are invited to post their thoughts in the WIKI's discussion sections, participate in polls, add note to the collaborative linoboards, comment on videos, create audio and visual presentations, use google docs to prepare interactive documents, and more.

The Shutafut project brings students together to learn about each other's lives and worlds.

Lior Lechner, English teacher, GVANIM School, Rosh Ha​’ayin, Israel "7-grade pupils from GVANIM School, Rosh Ha​’ayin, had the opportunity to interact with students from a different country and culture in the Shutafut School Partnership Program.  To my great joy, despite the distance and the language barrier, we discovered that the Internet is a wonderful tool which allows easy communication, and contacts were made between boys and girls who have never seen each other.

Students communicated regularly and continuously through the WIKI. They wrote about their hobbies, movies, computer games, family, heroes and even the Holocaust. They were enthusiastic to meet the students who came to visit from Birmingham, Alabama. My students said it was a unique experience for them. I was happy to guide this connection between the students and I have to say that it couldn't be done without the help and the guidance of Semadar Goldstein and Rabbi Yoel Cohen from JETS."

Alex P., 6th grade, NE Miles Jewish Day School, Birmingham, AL "I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to kids in Rosh Haayin. It is so much fun and I'm having a great time posting and messaging on it.  Thank you again."