Transmedia Jewish storytelling

For the last month I've been busy in learning and expanding my knowledge on Transmedia storytelling and incorporating it into Jewish learning. With this purpose in mind, I took the time to search, select and request from an international Transmedia storytelling mogul to be my mentor and guide me throughout my Transmedia learning and transformation journey of being a Jewish educator (consumer) and become a Jewish educator/ producer of Transmedia experiences (my take on being a prosumer).
I am most happy and honor to say that this extremely kind and brilliant person has agreed to help me. However at this time I will not reveal his name.

Here is some of what I've learned. I am happy to share it with those of you who might be interested in applying this exciting format of storytelling into Jewish education.

1. First thing to remember is: "The story and your goals for the project are the Key part in the planning stage.
2. Simultaneously, you must envision what do you want people to feel, think and what are the education learning goals you have for your project. 
3.  Only then, choose your media (social networks, games, movies, communication tools, etc).

I will be posting a lot about this on my blog. I am also going to collaborate with two other Jewish education professionals who had expressed their interest in exchanging ideas on implementing Transmedia storytelling in the Jewish classroom.
We had planned to have our first Wizq session/meeting today but unfortunately I am a little under the weather right now. We will reschedule it. If you are interested in joining us, feel free to contact me and add you to our group.

It is important to point out that a person or teacher who is not a film maker/producer, electronic artist/ designer, or a digital media specialist, still is able to produce a Transmedia storytelling project. Although to be successful at it, requires full collaboration from a team.

My crazy teaching style- Now has a name!

With out knowing and instinctively, I've been using a "Transmedia interactive learning style" for a long time. Some of the tools I had used on different projects with my students had been: cell phones, instant messaging, visual media, TV anchor, green screen story production and more recently, GPS tracking.

Mission Impossible: a very incipient example of Transmedia storytelling creation in a Jewish education project.

Four years ago, when I was still working on Day school, I created, planned and organized a middle school project called "Hamerraglim- mission impossible" about the 12 spies sent by Moshe to eretz Canaan on sefer Bamidbar.
Students got a text message from me (at their cell phones) with instructions for a scavenger hunt/role play Jewish learning experience. Students had to run around the building following the text messaging and a map provided to them. At that time our cell phones did not have GPS capability (not everyone had an IPhone) so I managed to give them a map I made on Google maps.

This multitask hands on activity had also multiple individual learning goals (based on student's learning intelligences). Some of these goals were:

To Elaborate on the following Midrash Tanhuma (Parshat VaYakhel 1) on a person's name:

את מוצא שלשה שמות נקראו לו לאדם, אחד מה שקוראים לו אביו ואמו, ואחד מה שקוראין לו בני אדם, ואחד מהשקונה הוא לעצמו. טוב מכולן מה שקונה הוא לעצמו. -מדרש תנחומא ויקהל, א. There are 3 names by which a person is known…

The name which his parents give him.The name which others call him the name which he gives himself. 

The report from the spies (the minority report made by Yehoshua and Caleb, and the evil report made the rest of the spies). Through out the activity, students needed to research on their tanach to answer key questions on the story.

The life of a merragel (a spy) learning about spy coding: text message came in a special spy code format and students needed to decode it (we had previously worked on class on this). Plus they learned about famous Israeli and Jewish spies (one of my favorite subjects). Kivunim (directions) and biblical geography (in Hebrew) of eretz Israel.
 This project is very extensive and although students were able to complete all requested activities, the feedback did not reach the level I was expecting. We did not have enough time to complete all was planned and we did not have time to finish it in other class periods.
Today, I will change many parts of this project to use time more effectively.

During the planning process of this project, I imagine how my students should feel and think throughout the throughout each stage of it, and that really allowed me to select the tools we need. In this respect, the activity was a huge hit with the students. I still remember the shocked faces of some parents, school visitors and colleagues (except from Andrea Hernandez, 21st century technology specialist extraordinaire, who was ready to join us in) when they saw us sending messages to each other, running and hiding (as a real spy) throughout the whole building and during school time!
Oy vey!


What's got into my head now
 One of my medium term goals, beside learning more about Transmedia, is to start working on two of classroom projects that my students and I had worked on.
I will Re-direct the learning goals for both projects and I will change their current formats (book and video) and create an extension of them into a Transmedia storytelling format that students in different places could follow. I believe that I will probably need funding support at a certain point on my project. I'll keep everyone posted.
To have a feel of how Transmedia is changing storytelling, check out this links.

"Inanimate Alice"

The three little pigs in a Transmedia format

New Jewish Education From the Inside Out.

I've been giving a lot of thought of how to help teachers to get excited about all the new technology tools and resources they will be utilizing this school year. On a recent teachers training, with only 45min to spare, I shared with them great Jewish education websites, beautiful animations, relevant videos, cool tricks etc. I know that at least for me, just learning about these resources will immediately motivate me to exploring them right away.
But, even thought non of the teachers expressed otherwise, I have the feeling that for some of them, specially those who had barely step in the technology world, all of this could come across as bit intimidating. Then I wonder, am I really reaching my goal of get them excited about it?

Part of my job is helping teachers with the logistics and technical aspects of  learning and using new tools and resources. At times, this task could be a little challenging specially when the resources are not ready when you need them or when there is non existing time for proper training. Ultimately, with time anyone can learn how to operate any technology tool.
Mistakenly, some educators think that once they are able to use one or two new technology tools, they had done their share with 21st century learning. Assuming that technology equals 21st century learning is wrong. Rabbi Akevy Greenblatt elaborates more on this idea on his post "Technology Does not Equal 21st Century Learning" which I highly encourage you to read.
Parents and school's boards are pushing teachers into using more innovating ways of teaching;  teachers must now blog, or plan lesson plans around Smart Boards, IPads and IPods. .
What people do not realized is that even thought we are living in a golden technology age, technology is only one way of innovating and engaging students in the class.
Technology has created a bigger gap between pedagogy and methodology of teaching:
Good teaching will be enhance with technology. However, technology will only worsen bad teaching.

Organizations of every kind believe that providing updated systems and new structures will guarantee "a change" in culture. They are wrong. What they are really missing is to foster a change in "behavior" a change from within.
In order for change to take place, people must first experience the need to change. You can not make someone change their ways unless they experience change from themselves and from within themselves. And yet, not everyone is either willing or interested on changing and this is a fact.

Change
I have always been someone who loves, looks for and welcomes change. I had have the opportunity to live, study and work in different countries and change has always highlighted my life's journey. However I have realized that this "journey of change" could be quite lonely (at least, it used to be before the invention of web networks).
Every time I learn about or do something differently, I get so excited that I want to share it with the world; I want the world around me to see it the way I see it; I want to help people to experience it the way I experience it and this, is really not the way to go.

My Jewish education teaching style has always been very organic, out of the box and respectfully away from old  methods. I had tried to create joyful experiences for my students and have my students as partners in the planing process. Over the years I have worked with several peers in the Jewish education world and they have not been very supportive in adopting a similar teaching style because, as they had expressed, it involved a lot of changes and extra work.
So, I get it. Not a lot of people embrace changes as openly as I do.
Then what is it about change and doing things differently that attracts me so much?
Today, I am able to answer this: It is overall excitement and anticipation, it is the intense feeling of being interested on something, it is the tingling in my stomach when I create something, work on a new project, take on a new challenge or embrace something new.

Author Mitch Ditkoff, co-founder and President of Idea Champions writes on his blog "The Heart of Innovation",  that "The origin of innovation is fascination". He also thinks that a person who is fascinating about doing something, "does not need to be motivated". He continues: "All that a person needs is time, some resources, meaningful collaboration, and periodic reality checks from someone who understands what fascination is all about".(Read more on his post "Innovation from the inside out with fascination".

I could not agree more with Mitch's wise words:

Fascination for Jewish education is what keeps me working in this field. 

Fascination on technology is what made me look into it as a new career path for me (even though I held my first computer at 30yrs of age). 

Fascination in working with children and learning from them is what has made me worked in education for this long. 

Fascination on working with my peers is what has made me want to help them, work and provide training for them.

Fascination on art and creativity has made me a "hunter" for finding ways of doing things in a beautiful and esthetic way.

Back to planet earth

We'd like to think that everyone working in Jewish education is fascinating by it. Unfortunately as we well know, this is not the case. Some people had became Jewish teachers by accident; only a few of us had became Jewish educators by choice. Therefore, after reflecting on the idea that innovation comes from fascination, I wonder, how can we instill or spark innovation on people who are not fascinating with what they do? Is there anyway that we could do this? Should we do this?

While I leave you with this post as some food for your thoughts, and hopefully I could be honored with your feedback, I think that we could start by innovating the ways we teach innovation and 21st century learning skills: Let's start from the inside out.
Let's give teachers the opportunities of self-discovering, lets give them the opportunities of finding out what they think and what they love (and I am not talking about teacher's surveys). I am talking about engaging them and providing them with tools to do so.
No time to do that during school time? No problem, start a Facebook group page and have them do this in their own time. Start small but think creatively.

This is actually what I will be posting on our Facebook school's teacher group page today:

From "Innovation from the inside out with fascination" 
(An excerpt from Mitch Diktoff  book "Awake the Wheel")


THE SEED OF FASCINATION
1. On a piece of paper, create three parallel headlines -- "What Fascinates Me," "People I Admire," and "What I Would Do If I Knew I Couldn't Fail."
2. Jot down at least five responses beneath each headline.
3. Look for intriguing, new connections between your responses. Any insights? Has?
4. Jot down your new ideas.
5. Circle your favorite idea and brainstorm it with a friend. Then pitch anyone who's influence can help you launch your ideas for how to bring more fascinating projects into your work life.


Let's keep the conversation going. Share the practical ways that you foster innovation and self reflection in your teachers.
Have a wonderful and fascinating day.