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Sorry to those of you for whom this post is repetitive.
I am using computers to give my students at the Solomon Schechter Day
School of Greater Boston the ability to do research in Rabbinics. The
kids use the computers and some Web-based tools and a fairly complete
Rabbinics library to do research. Then the students choose which of the
many texts they find on their topics they want to comment on and they
write their own translations and commentaries. The results vary, but
every child did produce some pieces of interesting and high quality work.
Take a look at
(http://www.uscj.org/ssds/boston/main.htm )
If you want to actually read my year-end report on how it has worked (along
with a description of the various challenges), take a look at this link:
(http://www.uscj.org/ssds/boston/report.htm )
There is no link to the report from the RabLab site (it's not really a
public document), so don't expect to find one.
That report and the FAQ document at the site describe the different pieces
of software.
Briefly, Davka's JCL has plenty of mistakes, but is far and a way the
easiest Rabbinics CDROM for the kids to use, and it has a great selection
of texts for the price. Their Soncino Classics Collection is much more
expensive, has fewer texts, and has English (which is an advantage for some
and a travesty for others). On the positive side, it uses the exact same
interface as the JCL.
Bar Ilan Responsa is great but expensive, (a network version costs $2500)
and besides having wonderfully accurate texts (from better versions), it
gives you the texts of the Responsa which are not found in any other
collection. Unless you have lots of money or you have a really heavy
emphasis on learning to study she'elot uteshuvot, a single-user copy is
probably good enough. Of course, getting the network version might make
having that curricular emphasis possible.
DBS 7.5 is a wonderful resource with all kinds of texts that are not found
anywhere else. The interface is a little clumsy, but the selection of
texts and the reasonable price make it a real metzia.
There are a bunch of other resources, but I have not found them terribly
useful, especially in a lab setup.
Davka and TES give significant discounts to schools.
Links to the vendors can be found in the FAQ of the Online Bet Midrash
website.
Anyone who is coming to the Boston area is more than welcome to come and
visit the RabLab and try out any of these products. Just email me
directly.
B'vrakhah,
Jeffrey A. Spitzer
Director of the Rabbinics Lab (http://www.uscj.org/ssds/boston/main.htm )
Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston
Jeffrey@Spitzer.net</HTML>
