Jewish Interactive, the London-based provider of digital resources for Jewish education, has launched a new platform to make it easier for teachers to find and design content.
Jigzi.org will enable educators to access a library of some 13,500 “Jigs” — Jewish interactive games — as well as create their own material in a handful of clicks.
Jewish Interactive chief executive Chana Kanzen said: “It’s been two-and-a-half years in the making and we hope it will be used in every Jewish school. Our in-house development team has worked directly with teachers to meet their needs.”
A survey of Jewish teachers conducted by the organisation across the world found that 90 per cent had changed their use of their technology as a result of the pandemic in the past couple of years.
The new platform, which is free for professionals, will “allow teachers to create highly interactive Jewish educational experiences utilising very modern technology so they can create content in just a few clicks.”
The library includes resources developed by Jewish Interactive itself as well as other providers and spans learning the aleph-bet to grappling with Gemara. As well as an expanding bank of Jigs, there are videos, podcasts and ebooks to draw on.
While teachers found there were some advantages to remote learning during the pandemic — such as offering more individualised tuition and getting children to work independently — they also encountered drawbacks such as tools that required high internet bandwidth.
Jigzi’s developers have tried to avert some of those lockdown problems.
“Teachers found that some tools they used before Covid didn’t work,” Ms Kanzen explained. “If children needed a password and email, it could be frustrating because children forgot passwords.
With Jigzi, teachers can take a game and generate a code and the student can type in the code and play the game — they don’t need to log in.”
Sensitive search filters will help teachers to locate the content that is suitable for their school, according to age range or language.
Features such as a built-in Hebrew keyboard and a Jewish image generator will help them to create their own content.
“Let’s say you are teaching the days of the week in Hebrew,” Ms Kanzen said. “You can type in the data and generate four or five games with one press of the button.”
The site, when complete, will have five areas. Two are currently operative — the content library and the content creation feature.
Heading down the track are classroom management tools which will help teachers to create courses and monitor student progress; a community section enabling professional development; and a customisation facility, which will allow teachers to tweak existing resources.
“For example, if you see a game you like, you can change the pronunciation from Sephardi to Ashkenazi,” she said.
Jewish Interactive, whose resources have been downloaded in more than 100 countries, is running training sessions on using the new platform.
“We are looking forward to working with teachers to improve it and are really excited about what the future holds,” Ms Kanzen said.
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