Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a conference entitled, "Technology and Jewish Education: A Revolution in the Making?"Sponsored by The Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner and JESNA’s Lippman Kanfer Institute. JESNA is known for their Jewish Education 3.0 project which is what intrigued me enough to be a part of this conference. 

This was my first experience with this rather diverse group of Jewish educators, Jewish communal workers, and lay leaders all interested in educational technology. I found the presenters and discussion to be stimulating. You can read highlights of it on Twitter using the hashtag #je3conf.

Here are my initial thoughts about what I learned.

1. There is a strong interest in creating rich online resources for Jewish textual learning. This is not just true of the Orthodox Jewish population as many participants from various religious backgrounds expressed this same desire. They don't just want to read articles about Jewish learning. We have enough of these online on various websites like Aish.com or Torah.org. They want resources to learn text. For example, they desire Hebrew text which can be hyperlinked to translations, cross references, video, and audio files when clicked and the ability to use this text in real time chavruta learning using annotations on the page and skype.