Technology: In Plain English טכנולוגיה: באנגלית פשוטה: May 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Email to the left, email to right - here I am, stuck in the middle!! (With apologies to Stealers Wheels!!)

On any given day, I get 200 or so emails in my inbox. Some days more, but seldom less.

While there is the occasional spam, most of my emails are requests from my schools for advice or tech support, followed by blogs and journals that I subscribe to. Over the years, I have become very particular about which emails I open first. Support requests always take priority but the very next thing I look at is my feed from eSchool News. There is ALWAYS something from them that is new, fresh and informative.

So, after dealing with a dozen small issues (switches down, DLS lines not working properly as well as a few "Kubi" sessions) I had a chance to grab a coffee and read a great article from eSchool on: Do one-to-one laptop programs work.

The short answer to this question is: yes... but as those of you who regularly read my blog know, I constantly advocate that it requires great planning and always, always, always the teachers must have great technical support and professional development. Oh yes, and the program must NOT be created for the sake of adding technology! It MUST be for the sake of enhancing the learning experience!

So, if you are "newbie" to my blog site, here are some relevant blog posts that I have written on that topic over the last while:

Give them a read and let me know what you think!

As always, your comments are solicited on the blogsite.

Yossie

P.S. Here is the link to song I referenced in the title...

Yossie Frankel

Tech Specialist - CIJE

Checkout my blog: www.technorebbe.com

Twitter @yossiefrankel

YouTube Channel: YossieFrankelChannel
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/yossiefrankel

Thursday, May 26, 2016

What's a flight got to do with it? (with apologies to Tina Turner)

I hate "red-eye" flights - with a passion!!

I will do everything that I can to avoid them but with a packed schedule, sometimes there is just no choice - Ya gotta fly at night. When that happens, the reason for the journey had better be worth it. Well, as I write this post at 3 AM on a Jet Blue flight back to Los Angeles from New York, I am happy to say that it really, really was.

I was at a CIJE sponsored training session on an amazing educational app called Ji Tap. Made by the folks over at Jewish Interactive (http://jewishinteractive.org), teaming up with the people at Tiny Tap (http://www.tinytap.it) Jewish Educators and students can now create quality interactive games, digital story books, puzzles, quizzes and interactive presentations - all with Jewish graphics and fonts. The part that absolutely blew me away was how amazingly easy it was to use. On my first use of the app, I had created my very own Jewish themed, fully interactive e-Book in under 3 minutes!!! - REALLY!!

Rather than spend a bunch of words to explain, you just need to watch this short, one minute video.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0BjSC7uoV79dUJia2hfdlcyY2M/view?usp=sharing

Click to play video

Now, wait.... THERE IS MORE!!! (I feel like a TV-Infomercial announcer!!)

Not only can you create amazing content! Not only can you have your students create content!! Not only can use other people's created content (when they share it) but the folks at Jewish Interactive have added a platform to push out these creations and track the answers/data for FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS!!! Yes, you heard right - it tracks individual's responses as they play each game, read each book, answer each quiz and match each answer. And if that weren't enough, it reports the data back to the teacher on a well designed student achievement dashboard!

So, if you are a Jewish Day School teacher or a Congregational Supplementary/Complementary teacher, you need to stop what you are doing and download this app!

I have to sign off now as there is turbulence and the pilot has turned on the fasten seat belts light. Did I mention how much I hate turbulence? Sigh...

As always, I solicit your comments on the blogsite.

Yossie

P.S. For CIJE schools, if you would like more information, please contact Faigy Ravitz, Technology Integration Specialist, at fr@thecije.org

Yossie Frankel

Tech Specialist - CIJE

Checkout my blog: www.technorebbe.com

Twitter @yossiefrankel

YouTube Channel: YossieFrankelChannel
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/yossiefrankel

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

From Godzilla to YouTube - Reality may not be what you think!!

When I was a kid, I loved to watch the original Godzilla movies. Not the new CGI stuff mind you, but the character (pictured below) from the 50's and 60's.

What I used to giggle at the most were the horrid audio dubs... you know, where the actor's mouth moves and the words that come out just don't match the movements. Ultimately, this mismatch of visual and audio drove me to an appreciation for watching foreign movies with subtitles rather than dubbing.

Well, now there is a technology - developed by folks from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg - that allows a face actor "take over" the face of someone on film and control all mouth and facial movements. It is called "Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment." The first time I saw this demonstrated I though "cool - no more bad dubs!!" but then a weird feeling began to settle in the pit of my stomach.

What if this technology was used on YouTube Videos where politicians, or other public figures, had their faces hijacked - or maybe better said as "face-jacked" - and people started falsifying statements made by these celebrities.

Imagine, a video where Senator Sanders seemingly endorses the US presidential campaign of Donald Trump and you can't tell that it is false! Imagine terrorist groups "face-jacking" world leaders and then using those faces to spread their terrorist propaganda. Now, more than ever, we really need to teach our students to be critical thinkers and examine everything that they see - especially on TV or on the web - through a critical, cautious lens. (In the case of Mr. Putin above, we know it is fabricated as he never smiles!!)

Here is a link to the demo video put out by the Erlangen-Nuremberg university.