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September 2005

Lookstein Web Conference 2005-6 Season Opens with a Prayer

The first of this year's twenty-four professional development Web Conferences for educators took place Tuesday September 13, 2005. Dr. Steven Brown, Dean of The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, Director of the Melton Center for Jewish Education, and Dean of Distance Learning at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, opened with a workshop series entitled “Methods of Teaching Jewish Prayer.” In the 60-minute session he brought up issues such as students relationship with God, their impressions of the synagogue service, and getting meaning out of prayer.


Educators from twenty-five schools from three countries met real-time in cyberspace for the workshop, which was launched from The Lookstein Center at Bar-Ilan University. Following the session, they were assigned interview tasks with their students, in preparation for the next meeting on September 20.

“Schools appreciate the simple nature of web conferencing and realize how cost effective it is to send their teachers to these sessions. They can 'meet' and learn from leading educators from the comfort of their computers, in real time, and need not be away from school premises--making Web Conferences convenient and non-disruptive in the school day,” said the coordinator of Distance Learning Programs, Moshe Abelesz. “Teachers also love the idea that they can connect with and learn from colleagues from all over the world, easily from their computers," he added.

The Lookstein Center records all sessions so that schools that were unable to participate can download the workshops and view them at their own leisure for a nominal fee.

The Lookstein Center’s 2005/6 web conferencing schedule can be seen here.

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