Jewish Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Nipagesh Blog^₁ (2013)

Sarit Yaakov writes about Inbal Gal, special education teacher at the Alon Elementary School in Haifa, who introduced her class to the Nipagesh² safe private social network for elementary schools before the summer vacation. After teaching the students how to sign up for Nipagesh, change profile pictures and create new pages, they went home and began to communicate with each other, create new pages and exchange ideas about their vacation plans.

Inbal's students come from all parts of the city and can't easily maintain social contact with each other, some of them are verbally challenged. She looked for a way to allow them to maintain contact with each other after school and allow all the students to communicate. She decided to introduce them to Nipagesh a week before the summer vacation so they would be able to utilize this closed secure social as a platform for communication and learning about digital citizenship in a secure environment.

During the vacation she remains in contact with her students on Nipagesh, following their activities and communicating with them. They were greatly motivated and actively communicated between themselves as well as with Inbal via the network.

Inbal is now planning new activities using Nipagesh for the next school year. Among her ideas is to have her students create games on Nipagesh and then have them play each other's games. She hopes they will be able to make contact with other students from distant schools on Nipagesh during the next school year.

Nipagesh has served to excite Inbal's class and draw them into a safe yet challenging digital environment, where they will practice some of the skills necessary for good digital citzens.

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[¹, ²] Sources unavaiable by 2019. See Al Monitor article.