Section archive - Technology & Computers

Rabbi Karen G. Reiss Medwed of Hebrew College wrote a guest blog post about a substitute class that she taught at Prozdor High School. The ninth grade students learned about Mitzvot with the help of phone texting. They answered questions via their cell phones and communicated with their 'lifelines' to discuss points raised during the lesson, involving parents, friends and other contacts in the animated discussion of Mitzvot. The students loved this lesson. They loved using their phones, but more than that, they loved the learning.

World ORT's Kadima Mada will be administering a unique distance learning program for children treated in Israel’s 27 main public hospitals. The program was established in 1993 by The Kav Or Association in two Israeli hospitals and has since grown to serve children in hospitals across the country. The new program has two broad primary objectives: to standardize the equipment and technology in the participating hospitals and to enhance the distance learning component by revamping the Kav Or website to make it into a ‘virtual school’ using videoconferencing technology.

Synagogue Web sites are — after an agonizingly slow start — coming of age. Rabbis are blogging and posting sermons on YouTube. Members are signing up and paying for classes online. And several synagogues have launched virtual yahrtzeit boards — complete with e-mail reminders. With the High Holy Days past, many synagogues are contemplating ways to fill their pews on a regular basis. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the key to building a physical sense of community may well lie in enhancing a synagogue’s online community, social media experts say. That’s why, despite the slumped economy, more and more congregations are realizing the importance of investing in fresh, easy-to-navigate synagogue Web sites (preferably equipped with “donate now” buttons).

The multimedia company, 4Wall LLC, has released the Jewish Internet Metric Study which takes a business-oriented, top-level look at the Jewish Web using the practices of the renowned consulting firm McKinsey as a guide. With this analysis the community can better understand the business issues, the competitive situation, and the hurdles and opportunities for sustainability on the Web. The sudy focused on three areas of the Jewish Internet: news-based sites, educational and informational sites, and the search experience for Jewish-based terms.