Category: j ed tech 2.0 (Fall 2010)

Devorah Preiss-Bloom Ed.D (devpb@aol.com) is a lecturer in educational technology at Efrata and David Yellin Colleges of Education and is a consultant for Misrad HaHinukh and Jerusalem Educators Technology Solutions. She was formerly the director and producer of Multi-Media Resources at SAR Academy.

PrayerLive is a new approach to the ancient problem of how to make prayer personal and meaningful. The name PrayerLive embodies the core objective of the program: to make prayer come alive in the here and now. It is an interactive program that synthesizes technology and spirituality within the parameters of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). This article traces the conceptual underpinnings of PrayerLive and then discusses how its practical application affected the experiences of members of the prayer community of practice. (A community of practice, as defined by Etienne Wenger (1998), is a communal enterprise that involves mutual engagement and has a shared repertoire of resources and practices.)

Students in modern Orthodox yeshivot, grades 6-12, participated in this interpretive design project to increase their literacy of and participation with Jewish liturgy. The project, conducted with six different groups over the course of ten years, demonstrates the utility of applying digital tools as a means for increasing students’ interaction with their heritage and with one another. The theoretical underpinnings of the PrayerLive initiative will be explained before detailing the specifics of the project and its successful outcomes.

Conceptual framework

This study is informed by Bers’ (1998) work on identity construction environments, Perkins’ (1993) distributed intelligence theory, and by Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Legitimate Peripheral Participation theory. All three paradigms are driven by the belief that learning involves active engagement in a social and cultural context (Vygotsky, 1978). The learner should not be related to as a solitary vessel to be filled with knowledge (Freire, 1998) but rather as a participant in the construction of meaningful knowledge. People, artifacts and tools are all an integral part of the learning system that is situated in its native environment.

The mature participant in the prayer community possesses multifaceted skills. She must simultaneously master the Hebrew language, attempt to be transcendent, choreograph prayer movements, and learn how to generate enthusiasm for a text that she encounters daily. According to Perkins’ (1993) theory of distributed thinking and learning, “Complex tasks and concepts are likely to overwhelm the person solo” (p. 94).The solution he proposes to support the individual in her knowledge construction is to distribute resources outside the individual. “The surround - the immediate physical and social resource outside the person - participates in cognition, not just as a source of input and a receiver of output, but as a vehicle of thought” (p. 90). Individuals who are scaffolded within this type of an instructional setting have increased opportunities for higher order learning, such as explanation, abstraction and reflection.

PrayerLive is a CSCL – computer supported collaborative learning project with the objective of supporting the individual in their construction of spiritual and religious knowledge. It is based on the learning theory of Constructionism (Papert, 1980), an extension of Piaget’s and Dewey’s theory of “constructivist learning.” Knowledge is not pre-packaged by an educator. Rather, it is built by the learner who utilizes resources and engages in a process of discovery.

Seymour Papert, the founder of Lego Mindstorms, introduced Constructionism in the 1980’s with the Logo Turtle computer project. He theorizes that learning is best accomplished when the learner constructs an external artifact that may be shared with others and then refined. The process of constructing a representation of knowledge “leads to a model using a cycle of internalization of what is outside, then externalization of what is inside and so on” (Papert, 1990, p. 3). Through reflection, trial and error, assimilation and abstraction the learner refines her understandings. The acquired knowledge is embodied in the product of her unique process and creation.

Bers (1998), a student of Papert, has applied the notion of Constructionism for the construction of the self and for the transmission of culture. Bers’ (2000) innovation is the identity construction environment, which may be framed as an online community of practice where users voice and externally represent their narrative or story. Bers’ projects all feature the creation of external artifacts for the purposes of generating reflection, (SAGE, 1999; Con- science, 2000) developing community (Zora, 2001; Kaleidoscopes, 2003) and exploring heritage (Con-science 2000; Zora 2008)). Participants are mutually engaged in a joint enterprise, and they share a repertoire of actions and discourses (Wenger, 1998). This multi-user environment (MUVE) which involves the construction of an external artifacts serves as a powerful idea (Papert, 1980), and provides a community, for the building of affective knowledge and for reflection on the inner self.

PrayerLive extends Papert’s ideas to the religious realm. The theologian Mary Hess suggests that religious instruction incorporate digital resources and capitalize on the native technological skills of contemporary learners.

The primary way in which media education tools are useful within religious education has to do with exploring the ways in which various pedagogical interventions might open up such fledgling encounters with transcendence and create viable connections from them to elements of historically grounded religious practice… We need to help people re-encounter, re-interpret, or in some cases encounter for the first time, the scriptural – database” (2001, p. 4).

Hess sees digital resources as part and parcel of the religious community of practice.

Lave and Wenger ‘s (1991) theory of situated social learning, Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) states that becoming a community member is the direct result of participating in a social, cultural activity system that they call a community of practice. Newcomers must participate peripherally in “an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their life” (p. 98). To qualify as peripheral participation, an exercise must meet three criteria: “mutual engagement with other members, to their actions and their negotiation of the enterprise and to the repertoire in use” (Wenger, 1998, p. 100). The knowledge of a community of practice is distributed among members of the group, in its artifacts, in its history and in its rituals.

The theory of distributed cognition (Perkins, 1992) in conjunction with Lave and Wenger’s (1991) LPP theory provides the rationale for incorporating digital tools for the purpose of increasing participation in both the social and meaning-making spheres in an under nourished community of practice, such as the female modern Orthodox prayer community. The rich technological surround provides the toolkit and a canvas to support the learner’s increased peripheral participation.

The PrayerLive model also integrates the guidelines for spiritual education into its conceptual framework. These include creating a safe non-judgmental atmosphere, involving the imagination and a flexible, respectful and spontaneous instructor.

Research study

The central question of this study was how CSCL, in a techno-spiritual intervention, might be an effective methodology for meaning-making and for increased participation in a community of practice? Pre- and post-activity profiles, video recordings of the collaboration and group meetings, field notes, personal interviews and the completed multi-media projects provided rich data for analysis.

This study was conducted during summer vacation in a rural sleep-away camp. The camp is very similar, demographically and religiously to the Jewish day schools where previous phases of this project took place. The target population of the research was 11 and 12 year old girls, who have attended modern Orthodox Jewish day school since grade one.

To establish a base line for the research, a pre-activity survey was designed and administered. An analysis of these surveys indicated that the cohort, who have prayed daily in school for at least eight years, have ambivalent feelings about their participation in prayer. On the one hand, they feel free to call on God to help them when they or someone they love is sick or in trouble. This is a universal phenomenon (Pargament, 2001; Gallup, 1999) that is more prevalent for girls than for boys (Tammimem, 1996; Goldmintz, 2003; Pelcovitz, 2008). On the other hand, the majority does not pray on Sundays or on days off and do not like praying alone. The girls may not pray voluntarily yet prayer functions as a tool in their lives and they believe in its power. On both the pre- and post-surveys, three-quarters of the sample very strongly agreed with the statement “I believe that prayer has the power to make a difference in the world.” This corroborates other research findings (Mattis, 2002) that females have faith in prayer as a system for coping and for intervention.

The group felt angry about being forced to pray in school. They felt that praying on demand left little room for personal readiness and the right mood. One of their chief complaints was the rapid pace of the prayers that are led by the males in their synagogues and schools which prevents their thoughtful concentration and consideration of the words. Despite these negative feelings the group was interested in learning more about prayer and never missed any of the sessions.

As an introduction to PrayerLive, participants viewed and discussed examples of illustrated prayer in various media. The classic Jewish hermeneutic tool of PaRDeS was introduced to guide their critique of these pieces. They practiced distinguishing between the literal and metaphorical representation of the text and suggested alternative interpretations.

Each pair of participants, after selecting a blessing from the Amidah, transferred the Hebrew in single phrases, poetry style, to their computer screen. Next, they composed an original English translation and placed it next to the Hebrew text. They were instructed to concretize and personalize the meaning of the textwith the addition of an image that would explain the deeper, non-literal meaning.

The digital environment provided a joint work space and rich resources that the participants drew on to transmediate, or represent meaning across multiple sign systems (Suhor, 1984 ; NLP, 1996). Hebrew and English siddurim, the Internet, clip art, and an array of computer applications were all housed within their digital surround. This enabled the reification (making an idea into a thing) of meaning that could be continually reviewed and changed in response to self-evaluation and feedback.

The search engine, Google, played an unexpected role in the instructional process. The search for images on the web stimulated the girls’ thinking about the meaning of the text. Dalit said, “When you see a picture on the Web you can say ‘hmm… I never thought about this one before. Maybe we could use it.’ But while you are drawing you have to do the exact thing that you exactly wanted.”

Susanna emphatically stated, “I hate Google more than anything. The key words are the hardest things.” In the videotape we witness Susanna and Adiva struggling with various forms of the word “kindness.” It was difficult for them to find synonyms but from a pedagogical perspective it was higher order, associative thinking and thus a positive exercise.

The results of this study corroborate the findings that use of CSCL specifically enables meaning-making (Suthers, 2006). Throughout the study, the dyads were observed watching their presentations, reflecting, evaluating and then modifying its elements. The PrayerLive presentation was an exteriorization (Vygotsky, 1978; Papert, 1980) of their internal thoughts and understanding of the prayer which made it “more accessible to subsequent reflection and meta-cognition” (Bruner, 1996, p. 22).

The girls responded emotionally when they watched their presentations. Statements like “Oh, I love that one,” “this is my favorite,” or “this is so cool” were consistently heard throughout the videotaped collaboration. This outpouring of feeling indicates a personal affinity and pride for both the multi-literacies (Street, 1996) that they had constructed and for their personal and social participation in the community of practice.

“We don’t usually get to work with another person,” Susanna said. “We discussed the deeper meaning of stuff together. We taught each other different stuff. It was a lot of fun picking out different things together to make our project better.”

Collaboration on the project facilitated the animated exchange of ideas and feelings between participants. Aviya said, “I’m not the only one that feels confused about davening or doesn’t understand. … In all other tefillah studies everyone has to think of davening the same way, as opposed to here where it could be whatever I think. You gave us a topic and we were able to change it. Show what we felt about it. And we were able to present it anyway we wanted.”

“Other ones [computer projects] that I did in school for Torah you just write facts,” Leeyah said. “This one was interpretation, translation it was relevant. It made prayer more personal – like, I should say this, it will help me – it felt close to me, I’m doing it for myself.”

Rabbi Dr. Steven Glazer (1999), editor of the book The Heart of Learning, suggests that spiritual education “is about intimacy with experience” (p. 2). The knower and what is known achieve an intimate relationship through the co-participation “in a community of faithful relationships with other persons, creatures and things” (Parker, 2003, p. 8).

Another result of the collaboration was that the cohort learned the dynamic nature of sacred text. Oshrat said, “The best part of working with a partner was my opinion against hers and hers against mine because it made us open our eyes and actually think.” Serach realized that if a text is interpreted by two people, “it is like having two separate texts.” Layla remarked, “I was surprised that there were so many ways of looking at things – like that’s awesome and I never thought of it that way. And it is true.”

Working with a peer and appreciating her insight highlighted that there was no right or wrong way to interpret the words. Thinking about the words and making them meaningful which is consistent with the notion of not making one’s prayer fixed was more important. When the group convened for the gallery session and shared multiple interpretations, they experienced the familiar adage that there are “seventy faces to the Torah” (Bamidbar Rabba, 13:15).

Siddur literacy

The cohort reported, on the average, understanding about 40% of the tefillah. The Hebrew learned in school does not create automatic prayer literacy. This was demonstrated by Serach, a fluent Hebrew speaker, who was unable to decode the words of prayer without my pointing out similar words in Modern Hebrew.

The lack of fluency affects their ability to connect to the meaning of the words. Kalila reported that when she began the project she understood the two first words of the blessing barech alenu but never paid much attention to the rest. Her project, as well as her explanation during the gallery session demonstrated that she not only grasped the literal meaning of the blessing but that she had command of the symbolic and abstract meaning as well. In the interview she said, “In the morning I used to just sit there. I think maybe it [the project]… kind of started me thinking now that I understood that bracha maybe I’ll even look at the other. It helped my tefillah be much more sincere because I started thinking about the words more.”

Oshrat related similar sentiments. “I used to not know the meaning of the tefillah and now I do… which made prayer more interesting for me. I began to take parts of davening more seriously and I started to daven more.”

The task of constructing meaning using a variety of elements taught the participant’s how to relate to the prayer text in new ways. “Sometimes when I am davening I think about how a bracha would look if I were using it in my presentation,” said Serach. “For example what picture would I use? When we did the project we would always put out pictures that related to the literal meaning and then when you would come around you would always make me think about the deeper meaning. So, when I’m davening and thinking about how the bracha would look in my presentation I think about what you would say too.”

Dalit explained that her favorite part of the project was, “Bringing the brachot (blessings) to life. We tried to find pictures that were relevant to present day life and that carried a message.”

“It’s not a bracha that I would especially feel close to,” she said of the blessing that she worked on, “because it’s like land and crops and stuff which isn’t really a part of our life. [But] I read it and then I remember that I did this bracha and it has something to do with me.” Dalit referred to one of the images from their presentation and said, “like the grocery bag, you can relate it to your own life and how it affects you.”

“This is a great way [to learn], connecting art to Torah” Leeyah remarked. “Everyone loves art, everyone likes creating something and playing with these things…When you want to teach someone something you relate it to something they like and they will be able to relate to it.”

Oshrat agreed that the addition of images and design elements to the text affected both her feelings and her meaning making of the blessing. She said: ”I learned that the words can be more than just words that they have meaning that we can connect to our lives. When you make things that are real with pictures it gives you more kavannah – it is scary.”

This article provided a brief sketch of the positive consequences that the participants of PrayerLive experienced. The idea of applying CSCL to the religious or spiritual realm proved to be a successful endeavor. Learners increased their legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice while being supported by distributed resources in a digital venue. Although the study presented in this article deals with a very specific population and denomination, the techno-spiritual instructional model may be adapted to other disciplines desiring to build communities of practice and to educators interested in developing the inner lives of students.

References

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