Can Open Source work for Jewish Education?

My friend and mentor Shalom Berger of the Lookstein Institute for Jewish Education in the Diaspora at Bar Ilan share a link to Tzvi Daum's blog with a bunch of us, curious about our response to his challenge. As a synagogue rather than day school educator, I don;t believe he is speaking directly to me, but the questions are valid regardless of setting.

I have some thoughts, which I will share at another time. I am more interested in yours. In addition to his three highlighted questions, what do you think about open-source Jewish learning? Is there an upside and/or a downside to increasing our reliance on the digital lens for Jewish teaching and learning? And what should the balance be? (If you choose to respond in your own blog, please post a link in the comments to this blog and to Tzvi's.)

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Quick, what do Mozilla Firefox, Linux, Moodle, Openoffice.org. Audacity and Filezilla all have in common?
Answer: They are all examples of great open source software available for free on the web. In general, open source products are developed by people around the globe who contribute their time and expertise to develop a product which is then made available for free to the public at large.

Recently there has been some discussion about exploring an open source model for Jewish education. It sounds idealistic, everybody chipping in their little part, the question is - how practical is such an idea?

As someone who has actually tried to organize an open source project or two for Jewish education, I would like to share what I learned from these experiences and what I see the challenges to be.

One particular project I tried to launch revolved around developing some Judaic Studies curricular materials. (I have blogged about it here in the past.) My thought was to start with something small that educators can collaborate on over the summer. I thought the free time in the summer and the limited materials that needed to be covered would make be a good first candidate for an open source project. However, sadly enough the project never got off the ground. I will be the first to admit that I was probably the source of the problem, however there are some lessons I took away from this. I view these as challenges which need to be overcome in the future.

Challenge #1
Are Jewish educators even online?

The first step in any open source project is finding like minded people willing to contribute their time and expertise. Where does one find such people? Techies use the internet to find each other. Where do you find other Jewish educators online? I posted invitations on Lookjed, I created a Facebook group...I even tried faxing an invitation to all schools in the Lookjed directory. However, at the end of the day, I question what percentage of Jewish educators were even aware of such a project. Many Jewish educators have ideological opposition to using the internet at home. If you can't find a big enough pool of contributors your project is almost dead in the water unless it is very small and specific. Although I thought my project was small and specific, obviously it wasn't small and specific enough.

Challenge # 2
Do educators have the time and technological expertise?

Even if we can find Jewish educators online, how many of them feel comfortable using technology collaborating tools? It is one thing for people who make their living as developers to use technology to connect and collaborate on the development of software, but can you ask them same of educators? Put another way, asking techies to use tech is somewhat different than asking non techies to use tech. Do we have any good examples of successful open source educational curricular projects out there on a national level? There is talk of open source textbooks, Wikipedia might be a close example but they are not exactly the same. I have seen some attempts for Jewish educators to get together on a wiki, but I am unaware of any great results in terms of team collaboration and project successes. With time the tools will presumably get easier to use, but the steep learning curve for contributors remains a challenge.

Another related thing to consider, is the time factor. While the average software developer probably makes a decent salary and most likely has a small family as the average American does, those involved in Jewish education are often making a minimal salary and work two jobs to support a larger than average family. That does not leave a lot of free time to dedicate to projects. Some of us are a little crazy, but the majority are not. Working on a project requires dedication and at a certain point one needs to ask themselves why am I doing all this work for free?

Challenge # 3
Who is leading and/or sponsoring the project?

Speaking of free, when you read about most of the successful open source projects you will notice two things they have in common. The first is, they are almost all led by a group at the top who are dedicated to the project on a nearly full time basis. Second, these people at the top are usually SPONSORED in some way. They are not working for free.

For example: Openoffice.org is supported by Sun Microsystems, presumably because they want to chip away at Microsoft. Moodle headquarters is supported by hosting services who use the Moodle trademark and contribute a portion of their profits to the head team. Linux developers make their money by offering support. Sourgeforge.net which hosts open source projects for free makes money by selling their platform software to businesses. Even Wikipedia has its own foundation and can easily make money by advertising. The point is, very few large projects are developed wholly by people with altruistic intentions. Filezilla was started as class project and released as open source because the developers didn't think anybody would pay money for it with so many commercial options available. Audacity is about the only project I know of that does not have a steady source of funding other than donations. It is a small project to be sure.

Thus, I think even if open source were to be used in Jewish education, at least the core team would need to be sponsored in some sort of manner and given organizational support. Sponsoring a core group would most likely get a project off the ground to the point where a greater mass of contributors can join at a later time and be guided to what their role can be.

I don't want to sound pessimistic or be the naysayer who says it can't be done, but until I see a successful open source Jewish educational project I remain unconvinced about the viability of using open source to solve Jewish educational needs. I know for example, the Jim Joseph Foundation made a grant to 14 fellows to build online communities of practice, I am curious where that will lead to after two years of training.

To be determined.

Tzvi Daum
http://www.torahskills.org/
http://www.twitter.com/torahskills

PS I don't consider the various lesson planning sites such as chinuch.org or SJED as examples of successful open source models. For the most part these are sites where users just contribute lesson plans they created. There is no collaboration between contributers and the result is a jumble of lessons with hardly any rhyme, reason or methodology to it.

Information Literacy…Authentic Conversation..Globalize Curriculum…

This is from the Langwitches Blog of November 28th, 2009, one of the many wonderful resources I have discovered (like Columbus discovered the Indians, these resources were already there, just wondering when I would bother to board my caravel and bump into them!)

In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute:

Alan November tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more, read Alan’s article, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm. http://novemberlearning.com/resources/archive-of-articles/digital-learning-farm/.)

Find more videos like this on NL Connect

This description caught my attention and I started playing the 13 minute video clip. The following thoughts from November resonated with me deeply as I watched and listened:

…[We need to ] convince schools, that we have to globalize the curriculum. We ought to have authentic conversation across the curriculum with people around the world over the Internet. Sadly, most schools use the Internet only to get information. People learn by having conversations and testing each other and trying to figure this out together. We are social beings. Engage kids socially across the web….

Authentic conversation with people from around the world… That is what I keep in my mind as the following project is evolving as a collaboration between myself, sixth grade students, their Social Studies and Hebrew teachers.

Students are participating in a Jewish History Fair. Their topic is “Jewish Communities Around the World.

In the old days...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24707395@N02/ / CC BY 2.0

In the old days… students would have been given a specific topic, sent home, to the computer lab or the library to “look up” information. They would then have to write a report, print out images, glue them on a backboard and “present” that to parents and visitors at the History Fair.

In the 21st Century...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the 21st century, we need to be looking for and addressing something more…

Information Literacy:

• Online sites and books are still valid information sources, but are they enough to engage students and give them “authentic” sources?
• Being able to get, evaluate and work with information from a variety of sources, such as books, almanacs, blogs, wikis, video, audio, interviews, etc.

Networking Literacy:

• Learn about accessing a network of people who can contribute information from their own experiences, on location and customized (personalized) to our own criteria, not the one a publisher or author chose?

Communication skills:

• being able to interview through a variety of media and communication methods and be familiar with their distinct etiquette.
  • face to face
  • e-mail
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • video conferencing (Skype)
  • texting
  • telephone
• being able to present the information obtained through a variety a media (video, images, audio)

The topic is “Jewish Communities Around the World”… what better way to allow authentic research to take place than go directly to those communities around the world…this is when it comes in handy to have a network of willing and able people literally AROUND THE WORLD! I was off to send a twitter alert to my PLN.

Cry for Help to my PLN

I received instantly responses. We will have Jews born or currently residing in different countries/continents being interviewed by our students. At this point we have Jews from 12 countries and seven continents who have agreed to be interviewed (Canada, USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, Denmark, England, Scotland, South Africa, Israel, China, Australia) plus two people stationed (currently or in the past) in the Antarctica.

Here is the initial e-mail, describing the project, sent out to these contacts:

The 6th graders at the Martin J Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida/USA are starting to research for a Jewish History Fair. They will be looking at different Jewish communities around the world.
Students will research with books and via the internet to develop questions that they want to ask Jews who are living on different countries and continents. We want them to interview with /through different media. Some interviews will be face to face here in town, but we would also like to give them the opportunity to conduct interviews via skype, email and twitter in order to strengthen information and media literacy.
One of our main objectives is for students to see commonalities among different communities.

Would you be interested in participating and willing to be interviewed? We would send questions ahead of time, if the interview is conducted via Skype or twitter? This won’t happen until close to the beginning of December.
Please get in contact with me, so I can answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much in advance!

After I received confirmation of their willingness to participate as an interviewee, they were then asked to send us a short biography:

We are continuing to work and prepare with our students for the Jewish History Fair: Jewish Communities Around the World. Thank you for agreeing to participate as an Interviewee.
As students are formulating interview questions, they would benefit from having a short biography from you, describing your background and involvement as a Jew in the country you were born in or are currently residing.
The bio only has to be a few short sentence to give our students just a little background.

Our projected time line to work with the students is as follows:

1. Introduction to project
2. Introduction to different media, students will be interviewing. Talk about required etiquette of different media…differences…similarities…
3. Student introduced to biographies of interviewees
4. Assign Students an interviewee/country/continent
5. Students will research background information that will help them form an notion of the community interviewee has grown up/is residing
6. Students will develop questions for the interviewees that will be send ahead of time
7. Setting up up date and medium of interview to be conducted
8. Students will interview
9. Students will connect the information gathered to create their own understanding of Jewish communities, especially commonalities, around the world.
10. Students decide in what shape and form their will demonstrate what they learned.
11. Students will produce final product to be displayed with globe and History Fair.

I am getting very excited to observe students and their research outcome as the actual interviews are being conducted. I wonder what media students will prefer and get the most out of? I wonder if certain student personalities/learning styles will naturally gravitate towards one or another media?

Can "Open Source" Teach Us How to Change The Game?

This posting about PresenTense paints an interesting picture of how we might reimagine the work of synagogues, centers and agencies in the Jewish Community. They are changing the rules of engagement to fit the needs of a new age. I got it from eJewishPhilanthropy.com, but they got it from author Debra Askenase's blog, Community Organizer 2.0. She tweets as @askdebra.

Where is The Open Source Organization?
Posted by Debra Askanase November 5, 2009

Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “The Non-Profit Quarterly Report.” In this post, I argued that nonprofit organizations should offer online quarterly reports, and mimic the transparency exemplified by Jonathan Schwartz’ online quarterly reports. (Jonathan is the CEO of Sun Microsystems.) John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design and social media advocate, argues that “in many cases complete clarity should be a leader’s goal rather than complete transparency.”

If you combine the concepts of organizational clarity with transparency and inclusionary decision making, then you create a new type of organization:

The Open Source Organization

One organization has stepped up to the plate to show us how it’s done: PresenTense Group.

The PresenTense Group calls itself an “open source organization.” Co-founder Ariel Beery defines an Open Source Organization as one that “enables all members to add to it, change it, modify it and improve it. Everyone benefits from the intellectual property of the organization’s members. The whole point is to make it as collaborative and idea-generated as possible.”
In mid-September, I received this email asking me to participate in a discussion of what PresenTense should be concerned about in the coming year:
There were three ways to participate in the discussion: I could have walked down the street to the Tagging Party, viewed the Party live via webcam, or clicked on the link and “tagged” the key ideas that I care about. This is an example one of the most inclusionary processes I can imagine, as well as superior utilization of technology for stakeholder inclusion and engagement.
This is just one example of how PresenTense adheres to its open source philosophy. Here are others:

All projects begin with an open call for a steering committee. For example, an idea for a magazine section about “philanthropy and the Jewish world” grew into a new steering committee. Steering committees solicit information and input from others.

Every aspect of programming is open sourced: each issue of PresenTense magazine, the PresenTense Institute, and the speakers.

The yearly workplan itself is open sourced via PresenTense networks. PresenTense uses the input to create a general plan, asks for comments, and incorporates comments into the final workplan.

PresenTense plans to offer further transparency by posting quarterly staff reports online, and asking for feedback and comments.

Technology is critical to being as inclusionary as possible when sharing and soliciting information. Whenever possible, PresenTense utilizes technology to include stakeholders. All educational seminars are “live tweeted,” and most are filmed and streamed live. According to Beery, “the main challenge is figuring out the the information technology issues related to open collaboration.”

And what arose from the Tagging Party and discussion? These ideas were fed into its blueprint for the year to come, which is available for viewing online here. You can also read an article about their commitment to being an Open Source Organization here.

Transparency + Clarity + Inclusionary Decision-Making =
The Open Source Organization

When will nonprofits become open-sourced? What is the critical technology needed for open participation? What is preventing nonprofits from moving towards and open source organization? In the spirit of this post, I’m looking forward to your comments and a discussion of this concept – and incorporating your ideas back into the blog post!


Further food for thought:
Asking Questions about Transparency
Leaders Should Strive for Clarity, Not Just Transparency

Debra Askanase has 20 years of experience working in nonprofit organizations, from Community Organizer to Executive Director. She is the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses. She blogs about the intersection of social media, nonprofits, and technology at communityorganizer20.com. Debra is an occasional contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.


image courtesy of ExtraFunky