5B+Collaborative+Learning+in+the+Digital+Age

One need only check out the news to see how social media has impacted on the ability to organize people—for good or for ill. From the revolution in Egypt to local youth appearing in flash mobs in South Philadelphia, the ability to communicate a message quickly and mobilize attendance at an event is made ever more possible by social media tools. The almost viral potency of these tools makes it incumbent on Jewish educators to consider the messages we want to convey and toward what ultimate purpose we utilize them.
 * Collaborative Learning in the Digital Age **

In his book, //Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations,// internet guru Clay Shirkey talks about four scaffolded stages to mastering the connected world: sharing, cooperating, collaborating and collective action. (Shirkey, 2009). While Shirkey is at least as interested in making the case here for open source vs. corporate ownership of knowledge, some committed educators have utilized his paradigm to make the case for helping students leverage their PLN/PLE’s toward social action and social change. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a co-founder of PLP, Powerful Learning Practise (plpnetworks.com ), a group that [|trains teacher cohorts]to better motivate students toward global networking and social change. (Nussbaum-Beach, 2010) However, Nussbaum-Beach and others make the case that teachers who have not themselves had an experience of professional collaborative learning with technology will be less likely to advocate for helping their students create these networks. In a [|2001 study]by Hank Becker and Margaret Riel from the University of California, the old adage “ I teach the way I was taught” was mentioned to reinforce their findings confirming the need for longitudinal professional collaborative experiences in technological learning for teachers. (Slowinsky, Anders, and Reinhart, 2001)

[|Tikkun Olam]in its more popularized meaning as a Jewish imperative for social action, might then be the natural culmination of this technological collaboration in Jewish terms for our students. Furthermore, based on what we can learn from these teacher cohort studies, classes such as TFJE and the Jewish educational networks we can learn about or create become even more important as pre-requisites for helping our students in their understanding of this Jewish activism through technology.

Debbie Aron

__References: __  Nussbaum-Beach, S. (2010, December). //21st century collaborative//. Retrieved from []  Shirkey, C. (2009). //Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations//. New York,NY Penguin books.

Slowinsky,J,Anderson T.,and Reinhart, J. (2001). Can web-based collaboration reform education?. //Technos:Quarterly for Education and Technology//, Retrieved from []