Jewish Education through Technology – 2000 (JET-2000).
In September 1999, World ORT launched a new project entitled JET - Jewish Education through Technology. The primary aim of the project was to provide an integrated framework for training and retraining teachers from Jewish schools in the CIS and Baltic States in the fields of modern technology, ICT and pedagogical methods. The JET project was designed to revolutionise teaching within the schools and raise the profile and academic achievements of these institutions.
There are currently over 300 Jewish organizations and institutions within the education sector in the Soviet region including schools, universities and adult education colleges. Collectively, these institutions employ over 3,300 staff members1 to teach over 25,000 students2.
Unfortunately only a small fraction of these institutions are able to provide in-house training for their individual staff members. The overwhelming majority of Jewish schools in the CIS and Baltic States rely upon external organisations such as the St Petersburg Jewish University and the Pedagogical Club/New Jewish School (NJS) to orchestrate training for staff members from Jewish schools.
However, externally organised pedagogic seminars employ experts in the field of Jewish Studies and focus exclusively on Jewish subjects and themes. This has limited benefit for the staff and students of Jewish schools in the CIS and Baltic States, as all Jewish schools (a total of 56 institutions employing 1,850 teachers and educating over 11,600 students annually) are state run educational institutions in which Jewish disciplines are taught alongside a general state designed curriculum. That is why the Project was so important.
Saint Petersburg ORT-Gunzburg Resource Centre was entrusted with a realization of this project.
The Centre organizes a series of seminars, sequentially solving a number of educational tasks.
The 1st seminar is preliminary and presents the project as a whole. Usually it is organized for heads of schools involved to this part of project.
The next step is the organization of educational seminars for teachers of the schools.
Participants become proficient in technologies such as School Desk-Top publishing, Web-design, Internet and multimedia technologies; they also study subjects of Jewish cycle such as Jewish history, art and cultural background. Every seminar is concluded with a specific participants' project such as school magazine, a CD-ROM or a Web-site.
1Jewish Educational Institutions in the CIS and Baltic States. 1999/2000 Reference Guide. Petersburg Institute for Jewish Studies. Publishing house. St Petersburg. 2000
2As above
