Getting Used to Show Me

Finding a Place for ShowMe

With the introduction of an iPad cart to The Frisch School at the beginning of the school year and the distribution of iPads to the entire freshman class last month, using apps will soon be second nature to any Frisch teacher. I've had an iPad since September of 2011, but since my students did not, I couldn't really exploit it as a teaching tool. This year, obviously, that has changed. After attending technology boot camp this past summer with the school's amazing Director of Educational Technology, Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, I decided to make my way slowly through the plethora of apps available to educators. One which I focused on is ShowMe.

I started the year using it in my sophomore grade and had students create ShowMe presentations about their summer reading assignment, the Gothic novel. Students worked in groups and over the course of a few days, but I realized doing so was not a good way to use the app. A ShowMe presentation really needs to be made in one sitting, and I also didn't love the app for group work. I think its features work best for a single user.

ShowMe at The Frisch Africa Encounter

When the sophomores were well into their project-based learning venture of the year, an interdisciplinary unit exploring Africa through a myriad of lenses, I remembered the ShowMe app when the students and I decided to make an audio tour of an analog savannah and jungle the grade was creating on the school's stage. The app seemed perfect for an auditory venture.

First, a couple of students and I wrote a script for the presentation, one which was based on research many students in the grade did on the African veld and rainforest. The script called for animal sounds to be heard at certain junctures, so we purchased elephant, lion and general jungle sounds from iTunes. We also needed sounds of the "Frisch jungle," students joking around and talking to each other. We recorded those sounds on an iPhone, to use in the ShowMe.

Since we also wanted the script to be read in Hebrew, the students approached one of the Hebrew Language teachers and had her write a condensed version of what we wanted to say. We had actually wanted French and Spanish versions of the audio as well, so all the languages the school teaches would be represented in the tours (OK, full disclosure: we confess we didn't plan on anyone reciting anything in Aramaic, the language in which the students learn Talmud.) However, the Africa unit was taking so much effort to put together, we couldn't spare the time to make so many different versions of the script. If we do the multi-disciplinary project again, we'll start writing the presentation earlier in the process.

The ShowMe app became the perfect venue for the presentation of the audio tour. We had three students, one male, one female, and one proficient Hebrew speaker, recite the scripts we prepared. We then set up ten iPads with earphones on the evening of The Frisch Africa Encounter, the night on which parents and teachers can experience what the students produced during the month-long project. Parents and teachers were able to wander through the savannah and rainforest, listening to the following ShowMe presentations:

The Frisch Africa Encounter Audio Tour: Male Voice

The Frisch Africa Encounter: Female Voice

The Frisch Africa Encounter: Hebrew

The history teacher on the left worked with the sophomores on their research projects,
while the Hebrew teacher on the right, among other activities over the course of the month,
 helped the sophomores with the Hebrew ShowMe 

Multi-Disciplinary Uses for ShowMe

Going forward, I plan to use ShowMe in the way I used it for The Frisch Africa Encounter. However, I want each of my students to write a script and then recite it, once I've proofread and edited their work with them. I think the app can be a wonderful tool that not only enables students to do some scriptwriting, but also to think about an audience they want to reach with their words. Developing an appropriate voice is always a challenge for students, but having to recite their work will give them a chance to think about who they are addressing and what kind of tone and language would be most appropriate for their work. I also think, in an English classroom, students should become proficient in articulation and verbal presentation of ideas; ShowMe would certainly develop those skills.

Script writing would also be appropriate in a history class, after an exploration of one or more famous speeches. Students can then be given a chance to write their own Patrick Henry speech or Gettysburg Address. And foreign language as well can make use of the app in the ways I've described. In fact, if your school is focused on interdisciplinary collaboration, students could write a speech in English or history and then work with their foreign language teachers to translate it into the language they're studying.

And who knows? Maybe next year, I'll be writing about an audio tour students wrote in Aramaic!

For more information about the Africa project, see The Frisch Africa Encounter blog post.

Reflections on The Frisch Africa Encounter

I was perusing my Twitter PLN as The Frisch Africa Encounter ended, and so I was reminded of an important step in the PBL process: reflection. The sophomore grade and I had been doing so much hands-on and non-traditional learning throughout the Africa project that I decided to survey my class of sophomores the old-fasioned way: by having a class discussion and -- gasp! -- writing their reactions on the whiteboard. Ken Robinson, forgive me.

Above are the pictures I took of the responses. Since I don't want to strain your eyesight, I'll rewrite them here:

1) Image of Africans changed -- Kelvin [a boy from Sierra Leone who repurposed tech garbage into technology he needed and then spent three weeks at MIT under the sponsorship of an MIT student] was innovative. American kids don't have to be innovative, because we have everything given to us.
2) We [American teenagers] become more productive eventually, because we have education. We also remain healthy because we are vaccinated and can eat good food and have clean water.
3) We have more time, because we're not consumed with gaining the necessities of life [e.g., food, water].
4) We were unaware of the religious persecution in Africa.
5) Somalia can't fix itself because of its religious leaders.
6) We live much farther from the natural world [than do Africans].

Here's the consensus about what's good and bad about African vs. American life:

Bad: We're disconnected from the natural world, from our origins. We're addicted to technology.
Good: We're able to advance with our technologies and capitalism.

One student summed up the wrap-up session with this: "I didn't really think that I was learning anything while the project was going on, but now that it's over and we discussed it, I can see how much I actually learned." [Should I just give this student an A for the rest of the year?]

The students also assessed the way they learned throughout The Frisch Africa Encounter. They loved the type of whole-body learning they engaged in. I teach one section out of seven in the sophomore grade, and my students are Honors students, but a history teacher surveyed her non-Honors classes as well, and the student responses I saw also revealed how much the kids loved the type of engaged and active learning they were doing. They also loved contributing to the project using the skills and passions they had: art, music, writing, technology, fundraising, etc. In short, students understood they were learning in a new way, and they liked and appreciated learning by doing rather than learning by lecture.

The class and I have returned to our discussion of The Poisonwood Bible, which we had not been able to finish before the night of the Africa event, on December 18. I'm happy discussion of the book was interrupted (I gave up a lot of class time to the whole-body learning the Africa project demanded). Now that the students have absorbed the lessons of the overall unit, they can analyze the book with a more discerning eye. 

Example: At the end of the book, a character who has died and has become one with the African forest narrates and sends the message that the white, Western world has to, in essence, get over itself and understand where Africa is coming from and that its values are different from Western ones. 

A student asked why we should at all help Africa. Why did we do the project? Shouldn't we just leave Africa alone already? It was interesting to see the students reprocess the project and arrive at the conclusion -- again! -- that helping means giving Africans the opportunities to live in the same healthy and productive ways that Americans do, but doesn't mean arriving, as Nathan Price in The Poisonwood Bible does, thinking that our American way of life is inherently better than the way the Africans live. We also discussed in a deeper way than we had at the beginning of the unit the Western world's exploitation of Africa and its resources and our obligation to make reparations, so to speak.

Students continue to be enthusiastic about Africa. One day I walked into my classroom to find "We love Africa" written on the board. Another day, a student announced that the Discovery Channel was showing a documentary about animal life in Africa. He found the trailer online, we watched it and gave ourselves homework to watch the documentary. I couldn't be more pleased about the enthusiasm for learning that has developed. The students want to learn not because they have a test, but because they're excited about this new world that has opened up to them and want to understand all about it. They see that though they learned a lot already, what they've learned is just the tip of the iceberg, and they want to know more!

I'll end with one more student response: A boy came up to me after our reflection session and said he was overwhelmed. There is so much to do in Africa. "How can we possibly make any difference? There's so much work to be done," he said. I recited a saying from Ethics of our Fathers, a famous compilation of Jewish wisdom: "It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to exempt yourself from doing it." We then discussed how the sophomore grade had already begun the work of helping Africa by engaging in the fundraiser for Innovation: Africa. 

In sum, then, as much as I love opening my students' eyes to new ideas and new ways of learning, I continue to be touched, awed and humbled by the responses they have when learning about the world they inhabit. 

To read the blog post about The Frisch Africa Encounter, go to:

The Frisch Africa Encounter

The Frisch Africa Encounter Update: Presentation on Ethiopian Jewry

Sophomores learned about Ethiopian Jewry this week
during The Frisch Africa Encounter

Jewish Heart for Africa is now Innovation: Africa

Preparations for The Frisch Africa Encounter are well underway, with students taking over my office to plan their Green-a-thon fundraiser and the activities for the night of December 18. The students have decided to sell coffee in eco-friendly cups in order to raise money for Innovation: Africa (formerly known as Jewish Heart for Africa), an organization that uses sustainable Israeli technologies to improve life in Africa.

As we're running our interdisciplinary project on Africa, Innovation: Africa was busy at the UN. Founder of the organization Sivan Ya'ari spoke at the UN on December 5:

Innovation: Africa at the UN on December 5

Integration of Ethiopian Jewry into Israeli Society

Sophomores this past week learned a song in Hebrew class about Ethiopian Jews and their quest to come to Israel. That lesson was to prepare students for a presentation from my sister Smadar Goldstein, an online education provider who runs her company JETS from Israel. She was visiting New Jersey this past week and was able to give her presentation about Ethiopian Jewry in person (last year, she presented the information via a webinar). 

Students learned that Ethiopian Jews had been exiled with the Kingdom of Israel and hadn't known about events in Jewish history such as the destruction of the First Temple, Purim, Chanukah and the creation of the Talmud. When the Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel, many wept when they discovered the temple had been destroyed! Students also heard from an appealing and endearing couple, Asher and Esther Fredman, and the challenges they faced as an interracial couple. The presentation discussed many of the challenges Ethiopian Jews have faced in Israel as well as the successes they have enjoyed. For example, everyone in Israel now celebrates SIGD Day, an Ethiopian holiday. 

Here are a few pictures from the Ethiopian presentation:

Presentation on Ethiopian Jewry

When students return to Hebrew class this week, they'll discuss the issue of Sudanese refugees in Israel. The sophomores will see the complexity of this very contemporary problem: on the one hand, we want to help the refugees from Sudan because we've been persecuted and driven out of so many lands ourselves and so can identify with their plight. On the other hand, we want to make sure Israel is the haven for Jews it needs to be, since Jews all over the world are safer because Israel exists. In this part of The Frisch Africa Encounter, sophomores will hopefully learn about some of the thorny problems confronting Israel today. 

The Frisch Africa Encounter

The Frisch Africa Encounter

The Launch

Yesterday, I launched The Frisch Africa Encounter with the sophomores at The Frisch School. This is the second year I'm running this month-long interdisciplinary program, though I launched it this year with the help of current juniors, who were the first in the school to experience it. Launching with the help of students, I discovered, is fantastic. It not only empowers the students creating the launch, but the sophomores who were first learning about what's going to be a month-long exploration of the African continent were much more excited to hear about the program from their peers as opposed to from their boring and generally useless teachers.

The Satire: Is our Wealth Hurting Africa's Feelings?

The juniors and I started the program with a clip from The Onion, not only because the sophomores begin the year learning about The Canterbury Tales and satire, but also because the clip is hilarious. I've watched it about 137 times already, and I still find it funny.

The sophomores also found it pretty amusing, and after we all stopped laughing, we discussed the problems in Africa that the video raises in its satirical way. I pointed out that this was the second year in a row a hurricane has hit the East Coast and wiped out power immediately before the students have to try and imagine what it's like to live in Africa, where many people live not only without electricity but also without proper plumbing, water and basic medical care. I then showed the sophomores this graphic:

The sophomores immediately understood what was wrong with this picture.

The Need to Help

Frisch students are often immersed in social causes -- in fact, they're now busy gathering supplies for victims of Hurricane Sandy -- but the next important step in presenting the program was explaining the necessity of concerning ourselves with those less fortunate who live so far away. My six student representatives from the junior class were up for this task:

This is their script:

Mrs. Wiener: But out of all the countries in the world, why should we care about Africa?

Simmy: Almost immediately after Israel was formed, its leaders began addressing the needs of those on the African continent. 

Golda Meir believed the lessons learned by Israelis could be passed on to Africans.

Ariela: Golda Meir said, "Like them we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves." [Ed. note: this information was taken from the website, Jewish Virtual Library]

Marni: But the need to help the other, the stranger goes back further than that, to the Torah itself, which tells us:

"V'atem ye'datem et nefesh ha-ger ki gerim ha-yitem b'eretz Mitzrayim."

Talia: "And you know the heart of the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

That phrase appears 36 times in the Torah, more than love of God or keeping Shabbat.

Mendy: OK, we should help! But how can we help? Lots of places in Africa need our attention. For example, Darfur:

The Darfur genocide began in 2003 and has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Millions have been displaced or forced to leave their homes. 

Max: Since 2010 there have been peace talks, but the situation in Sudan is still unstable. 

Then we showed this video:

The Fundraiser for Jewish Heart for Africa

After agreeing that we didn't want to help Darfur by educating Africans about who Matt Damon is and how much he's doing to help Darfur (watch the video), I let the students know that we would be conducting a Green-A-Thon, a program in which the students will raise money by performing green acts. The money students raise will be donated to Jewish Heart for Africa (JHA), an organization that uses sustainable Israeli technologies to improve life in Africa. Follow the link below to a page on JHA's website and watch the funky video on the left side of the webpage to see what the sophomores watched (the video on the right is pretty cool and informative, too). 

Link to Jewish Heart for Africa page

[Note: JHA will soon be known as Innovation: Africa.]

Frisch chose to work with Jewish Heart for Africa, which was recently granted consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council, because the organization accomplishes two very important things:

* it improves life in Africa by using sustainable technologies, that is, technologies that enable Africans to be self-sustaining and that are green

* it improve Israel's economy and Israel's standing in the world

The Month-Long Interdiscplinary Unit

Once the sophomores understood why they should be concerned with Africa, the juniors and I were ready to tell them that over the course of the month, they'll learn about Africa:

* by completing a research paper in history class on some aspect of life in sub-Sahara Africa

* by reading either The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or Little Bee by Chris Cleave

* by learning about the integration of Ethiopian Jews into Israeli society in a webinar with Israeli educator and my sister Smadar Goldstein of JETS 

* by creating an artwork made of recycled materials and that makes a political statement about life in Africa, with Mrs. Ahuva Mantell, Frisch's art teacher 

* by studying how Judaism advocates for minority rights

* by putting their work onto a digital media platform for a night when they share what they've learned with their parents and the Frisch community. 

The Green-A-Thon will also be a vital part of the month, as Frisch aims to light up a school building in Africa with the money the students raise. Our Green-A-Thon fundraiser has actually been named Lights for Learning.

The Juniors Share The 2011 Frisch Africa Encounter

The juniors wrapped up the program by showing the video they created about what they had gotten out of their Frisch Africa Encounter:

The Month Ahead

I'm now busy gathering a list of students who want to be on an Activities Committee for the evening. Last year the Activities Committee built an African village for the students and parents to visit. I'm also putting together a Green-A-Thon Committee and a list of students who want to create artworks -- from recycled materials, of course -- instead of a digital media project. 

Stay tuned for more details as the month unfolds, and feel free to attend The Frisch Africa Encounter on December 18, 2012!

For More Resources:

Contact me at Tikvah.Wiener@Frisch.org for a way to access The Frisch School wiki, where you can find additional resources for this interdisciplinary project.