Jamie Mason Cohen (jamiecoheneducator@gmail.com) teaches English at TanenbaumChat and is the winner of the 2013 TED Education international teaching contest, “The Sole Challenge.” After years of working for Saturday Night Live in New York and directing an award-winning docudrama, “The Barber of Kigali”, Jamie is generating revolutionary strategies for educators. His blog for teachers is www.jamiemasoncohen.com.
Jamie Cohen presents here his award winning program to teach literature using collaborative tools, with suggestions for application to Jewish studies.
Following my presentation at the RAVSAK educational conference in L.A., there seemed to be a real openness of the educators in attendance to integrate new digital tools to enhance students’ experiences while they learn about texts. I demonstrated how I went from being a sage on the stage who reached many, but not all, especially those with learning challenges, to a guide on the side, who effectively tapped into the passion and potential of all of my Grade 9 students by combining three new technologies. The results exceeded my highest expectations: 100% engagement based on a survey of the students’ experience and learning outcomes that surpassed the achievement levels on any unit I have taught in ten years.
Background
After realizing in February 2013 that my teacher-centered approach to teaching the play Pygmalion reached the analytical, auditory learners but was not fully successful in engaging and reaching some visual and tactile learners, especially those with learning challenges, I decided to make a shift. I recalled what my former vice principal and school mentor, Ray Buchowski, had once said to me: “A teacher’s effectiveness is in direct proportion to the impact he has on his most vulnerable students.”
On our next professional development day, we were given the option of deepening our knowledge in an area of education of our The Guide on the Side: How to get 100% engagement with your students Jamie Mason Cohen choosing. I chose educational technology. By the end of this unit I wanted students to be able to trust themselves to explore big questions individually and collaboratively; be self-inspired to read and critically analyze a text without being entirely dependent on a teacher; do a quotation analysis; have detailed multi-dimensional auditory and visual notes for the essay exam question on the final exam; love the process of exploring a novel, even if they had been conditioned to hate reading for class; and make connections in the text to the hero’s journey projects they did prior to this project.
I woke up early with good intentions and ample enthusiasm, but by the end of the day, I was more overwhelmed than when I had started. There are over 20,000 educational apps and programs to choose from. Where do you start? Who has time to start from scratch? How do you apply a new technology to the curriculum? I stayed the course, persisted, and something extraordinary happened. I experimented with two educational technologies and an innovative new way to create a student-driven learning environment for the next unit I would teach, a novel study of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. The results have transformed my approach to teaching all texts including novels, plays, short stories, poetry, and articles.
The basic elements
There were three basic components to my project, which I did in ninth grade English classes at the TannenbaumCHAT high school in Toronto. Poetry Genius (http://poetry.rapgenius.com/) is a collaborative annotation platform that allows students to go to a website that hosts the book and easily add text or multimedia links (like video, podcasts, or photographs). It also enables students to comment on each other’s comments and start a collaborative discussion.
- Online videos which I made answered student questions about plot-based questions they had. Students could access these videos at any time and from any location.
- Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE – see www.ted.com/prize/sole_toolkit#intro), a product of the vision of Sugata Mitra, is a platform which encourages curiosity and purposeful exploration based on student interest.
Putting the pieces together
Phase 1
At the beginning of the unit I posted our text onto Poetry Genius. Students began their exploration by reading and commenting on the text, adding text of their own or links, and commenting on each other’s comments as well. Here is an overview of the unit I developed. Multimedia connections are used ingeniously by visually-oriented students to help them picture their big questions, while songs can help auditory learners make relevant associations between the big question they ask themselves, the novel, and the world around them.
At this stage, a certain amount of knowledge, such as defining words from another culture and asking plot-based questions, helped the students gain some confidence and momentum in this new process of interacting with a novel. The students made over one thousand text, media, and audio annotations on the novel Siddhartha, based on Ontario curriculum expectations and 21st century guidelines. The 24/7 access gave my students the chance to study and reflect on the book day and night, which they did – to the extent that one student with learning challenges called the experience “addictive.”
My role as teacher during this phase was to be an encouraging facilitator, providing encouraging feedback by answering fact-based questions, questioning the questions, providing specific feedback on students’ posts, and giving a thumbs-up icon on students’ online work to acknowledge their ongoing efforts. I provided students with daily ongoing feedback through written responses underneath their annotations of the text, as well as through personalized critical feedback sent directly to the student. (Note: The teacher can control what is posted through a button that either “accepts” or “rejects” each incoming annotation.)
To boost intrinsic motivation, I held a tea and cookies podcast feedback party at the end of the unit, in which both classes were invited during our Project Support Period to hear me highlighting one annotation from each student. Most students attended. Public acknowledgement and encouragement from a teacher is essential for students to flourish and gain confidence. It also gave specific praise to their efforts and courage in taking the risk to make public their annotations for all students to see and collaborate on.
There is an element of risk-taking in using a digitized online platform for students because students are writing publicly for their classmates to see and to comment on. However, this is a risk worth taking, as the majority of students felt empowered by the process of putting their ideas into a public space for their peers to interact with. (One suggestion to deal with the risk is for teachers to model appropriate online writing etiquette in how to respectfully disagree with a classmate about a particular point.)
Phase 2
After the students explored the text on their own, I embedded short video recordings and podcast responses on the right column of each chapter of the online novel. These ten-minute videos and podcasts show me looking into the camera with a backdrop of India or recordings of my voice answering students’ fact-based questions that they submitted to me each class. All in all I made more than two hours of lectures and podcast recordings in 10-minute increments ideal for visual, tactile, and auditory learners and students with learning challenges.
Phase 3
Once the students annotated the first two-thirds of the novel, I introduced the SOLE, which is broken up into three components: Big Questions, Discovery, and Discussion. Students ask big questions motivated by the text such as: What is a mentor? What does water symbolize? How do you know you have reached the ultimate state of wisdom?
I organized the students into groups of 2-3 and provided them with samples of big questions from the SOLE Tool Kit (www.ted.com/pages/sole_toolkit). Each group agreed on a subject and created its own big question. Class time was spent working in small work groups researching curated, online content prepared by the teacher in advance. The students engaged in an intellectual pursuit of their curiosity-based questions.
In our school, we are always looking for ways to do cross-curricular teaching. This was an opportunity to interview teachers in various departments, such as Tanakh and Jewish History, in order to modelhow to ask and answer big questions posed by the text. These videos were also posted on the site for students to see prior to starting their SOLE.
At the conclusion of the unit, each student explored his/her group’s big question through an online multimedia quotation analysis. Finally, each group discussed their findings about the question and presented it to the class in the form that suited their needs: class discussion, a series of vine (https://vine.co/) videos, interview, etc. (In other iterations of this method we brought in featured speakers from around the world via Skype or Google Chat to provide expertise on main subjects or themes in the book and big questions.)
The unit culminated in a student-driven discussion on their questions through the learning style of their groups’ choice: oral discussion, presentation using mind maps, photographs or videos, relating the questions to meaningful objects, or expressing their answers through dramatic means.
Throughout the blended learning unit, students were able to move freely in class, working on their laptops, school computers, and smartphones. They were encouraged to discuss passages with their peers initially, then with their teacher, and then take the discussion online.
Reflection on the approach
Anecdotal evidence in the hundreds of classrooms that have used Poetry Genius to annotate texts demonstrates that students’ enjoyment of reading and their level of engagement resulted in positive and quantifiable impacts on their skills and practice in terms of reading and writing comprehension, digital literacy, and cultural literacy, according to Jeremy Dean of Poetry Genius. I saw ample evidence of this in my classes.
The combination of digital annotation of a text and SOLEs during class time was a unique, meaningful way to approach a challenging text and let students explore big questions through questions and analysis. In Siddhartha, the student’s relationship to the text was transformed because multimedia is embedded into the text. Instead of the dusty, old copy of Siddhartha with some highlighted notes on each page, the online version my class annotated contains hundreds of individual text and photographic annotations, such as a fig tree displayed to show what one looks like with a reference to a scene from The Lion King, a map of ancient India, the words to a classic Canadian poem dealing with father-son relationships with a brief analysis connecting it to the scene, and a first-hand YouTube video from a local living in the Indian village where the story is thought to have taken place. Additionally, there is a video of me standing in front of a setting in India, answering fact based questions students can access during this unit and later in the year for review of the exam. Essentially, Siddhartha has been transformed into a contemporary illustrated version of the original text which only enhances the layers of close reading the students have done.
I recently spoke with a professor who believes that technology has no place in the classroom. He thinks it is a crutch rather than a tool to engage students. Further, he believes that students need to develop patience and discipline to sit for long periods of time to closely read texts, as has been the predominant method of study for centuries in Jewish learning. He said that texts like Shakespeare were not meant to be interpreted through animated videos or novelty apps. There is validity to this belief in the short-attention span age of texts and Snapchat addiction. One could also make the argument that the authors of classic and ancient plays did not create their works with the intention of them being scrutinized for literary devices and constructed themes in a fluorescent-lit classroom, culminating in a formal test, as is still the norm in many high school classrooms. Instead, these authors may have envisioned that teachers of their texts would adapt to the times and utilize the innovative technologies of the day to enhance students’ engagement with their words. The integration of innovative technologies does not mean the replacement of closely reading a text or diminishing the importance of the knowledge one attains through reading a text. Students still closely read the text online, but instead of reading it in one dimension they are making ongoing multi-dimensional connections through visual and auditory media.
Application to Jewish text study
Some may argue that this type of technological integration negatively changes our students’ relationship to texts. Although it does represent a transformation in finding a more equal balance between student-driven demonstration and teacher-centered instruction, annotating a text through Poetry Genius is very similar to what Jewish educators have been doing for hundreds of years in Jewish learning environments. It’s a modern version of the traditional method of study groups guided by a rabbi or scholar through close reading. The means to add annotation and study may be different, but in practice, there is nothing radical about it; technology has just made a traditional learning strategy more accessible to this generation of students by continuing the discussion of a text outside the physical limitations and time constraints of the classroom.
Imagine thousands of students from Toronto to California simultaneously annotating the Talmud. Embedded in the sidebars or columns of the digital version of the Talmud would include short video commentaries from the leading rabbis and scholars with expertise on specific passages to guide students. This learning scenario is happening now at Harvard through a massive open online course the university is running through a distance learning program called HarvardX, not with Jewish texts, but with other religious texts. There is no reason Jewish educators cannot do the same with classic Jewish texts to provide Jewish learners throughout the world the opportunity to engage with each other through our core texts. In the words of Poetry Genius’ Jeremy Dean, “Online collaboration of a text harnesses the power of social networks to read and study a text together.”
Leviticus 19 or the Haggaddah could be transformed for today’s learner in exciting, modern ways, not by compromising the content of the texts, but through the enhancement of how a student engages with it and the tools through which a teacher provides context and commentary. If the Torah is meant to be “meditated on day and by night,” as Joshua wrote in 1:8, then this kind of online platform provides students of the Torah or other Jewish texts an interactive tool to extend their study beyond the limitations of a school to wherever they have access to internet and a mobile device.
There is evidence that study circles devoted to the annotation of mystical Jewish texts date back to Talmudic and Geonic times. This type of organized collaborative study continued through the generations as an Italian rabbi, Obadiah of Bertinoro, noted during a trip to Jerusalem in the early 16th century, of how “even a hired laborer would not go out to his affairs in the morning after services, before studying the Torah” (Yaari, 1943, p. 208). Study groups expanded through 17th century Poznan (Poland) under the influence of Shabbetai Horowitz. The social, collaborative nature of Jewish learning is the same; what has changed is that there are now innovations in educational technology that have the power to enhance our students’ connections to the social nature of traditional learning.
In my Siddhartha unit, one student connected 70% of his annotations to what he was currently learning in Jewish studies and Tanakh. He wasn’t making connections between two cultures; he was applying Jewish thought to help analyze specific decisions characters were making in the story. In one passage, he quoted his Jewish history teacher in a written annotation. What began as defining the role of shepherds in ancient India led a student to do a de facto interview in the hallway with his Tanakh teacher about the symbolism of shepherds in Jewish texts.
Concluding thoughts
Sixty percent of the educators I spoke with at the RAVSAK educational conference had no experience with blended learning, while a few heads of schools said that they were considering launching a fully online Jewish studies course next year. I have only begun to explore the tip of the iceberg of the benefits of blended learning, such as the kind I developed for my class.
Teachers are often taught to prepare for a class by putting most of their focus on meeting the curriculum expectations rather than beginning with their students’ needs. Utilizing blended learning techniques I reversed this process, and the results were a game changer. By focusing on meeting the needs of those with the most complex needs, the majority of the students’ needs were met. In terms of the curriculum expectations, not only did I meet the required specific expectations and the assessment of learning criteria for this unit, the blended learning unit provided evidence of learning well beyond the limitations of the general expectations in the curriculum. One of my learning-challenged students’ strategy teachers told me that this was the first time a student offered to show him what he did in class rather than waiting until he coaxed it out of him.
The number one benefit in incorporating blended learning using innovative technology into Jewish schools is that it will create a learning environment that will engage every type of learner in your class and transform the quality of the students’ experience and learning environment. Both students with learning challenges and gifted learners will work more effectively at their own pace in a way that best fits their learning style.
Yaari, A. (1943). Iggerot Erez Yisrael [Hebrew]. Gazit: Tel Aviv.