Source: World Ort
More than 75 educators from 15 countries are preparing to beat a modern path in early July to the teaching of ancient wisdom at the de Gunzburg Jewish Education Seminars. Coordinated by World ORT’s Education and Technology Department, the four-day seminars, which will be held concurrently in Buenos Aires, Rome and Kishinev, will provide Jewish Studies and Hebrew teachers with insights and skills to incorporate technology into their lessons.
A highlight of this year’s seminars will be a videoconference link on Wednesday (July 1) between Sha’ar HaNegev High School in Israel – which is supported by World ORT through its Kadima Mada (Science Journey) programme – with teachers in Rome and Buenos Aires. The videoconference will consist of a demonstration Interactive White Board (IWB) lesson by Sha’ar HaNegev teacher Atar Polak in which teachers in the other two countries can participate and ask questions.
Information Technology experts from within the ORT network will provide much of the expertise for the seminars. In Buenos Aires, for example, Professor Guillermo Lutzky will show educators from Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Uruguay – as well as from across Argentina – how ORT Argentina’s pioneering ‘Virtual Campus’ model can be used by Jewish Studies teachers.
At the Kishinev ORT Technology Lyceum, the organization's own experts will bring colleagues and non-ORT teachers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia and Estonia up to speed on, among other things, project-based learning, building lesson plans using software, preparing video materials for class, and the use of Web 2.0 technology.
Seminar participants will also benefit from external sources of expertise, such as Rav Zvi Grumet, of Bar Ilan University’s Lookstein Centre, who will be guiding teachers from five Italian cities at the Rome seminar.
This will be the second de Gunzburg Seminar in Rome, a response to the demand created by teachers’ overwhelmingly positive experience at last year’s event – a demonstration of the effectiveness of taking the seminars to the communities that need them so that the training can be delivered in the language, and with the cultural nuances, with which the teachers are familiar.