Project Open Book
Source: Project Open Book
Kolel, The Adult Center for Liberal Jewish Learning, is pleased to announce the launch of Project Open Book: The Kolel Resource Library. This on-line adult education resource allows Kolel to publish and disseminate its "signature" courses and events in digital format for use by institutions and groups, and to create an on-line learning environment for use by individuals.
Project Open Book takes the four areas in which Kolel has been recognized as a leader in the field of adult education:
- Basic Judaism (Gate of Jewish Life)
- Women and Judaism
- Jewish Texts
- Jewish Parenting and Family Life
and turn its courses and one-night events in those subjects into power-point presentations, guided learning modules, video and audio presentations, textual sources and facilitator guides. Individuals anywhere in the world can study with Kolel in an accessible and easy way; and organizations without the benefit of Kolel's faculty or physical presence can use its time-tested and recognized materials to fit their own communities.
With Kolel's new partnership with the BJCC, it is envisioned that these materials will be of special interest to JCCs throughout North America as well as synagogues, study groups, small communities, women's groups, and of course, individual learners who now make up an "e-learning" community that numbers in the millions.
Today, new technologies encourage user participation, discussion, and collaboration. This new site is exciting because it is truly different. Kolel wanted to 'mash up' the energy and diversity of user-generated sites (like Wikipedia and YouTube) with the professionalism and quality of traditional learning media. Of course, Project Open Book contains excellent, well-written material on variety of topics by experienced adult educators. And there are audio and video clips too. But what makes this site truly innovative is its Moodle platform which encourages participation from its users and collaboration from the community of educators.