darim online

Milwaukee Jewish Day School is a non-diversified school accepting Jews from across the board. We have an excellent education program deeply rooted in tradition and innovation. We have a large emphasis on digital media and technology such as iPads, smart-boards, computer Labs, and a green screen studio. With so many students and parents using technology photo’s and videos have never been so important.

We’ve always had an Annual Campaign, but for the first time as a result of the Social Media Academy we decided to try something different, and accept donations online.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. 

I figured between having a Facebook account and teenage daughters, I would be ahead of the game in this process.  Yet even with my familiarity with social media tools, participating in the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy really put me into the shoes of our students. 

Darim is hosting a blog carnival (a series of posts from various guest bloggers on a topic) on "Connected Congregations".  The following post from Shel Holtz (originally published on his blog and shared here with persmission) as such profound implications for how synagogues can be supporting and connecting and empowering their community and individual members. 

There’s a lot of buzz about the increasingly image-driven nature of social media. At the forefront of this discussion is the latest hot social network, Pinterest. But it’s not only this virtual pinboard. Everywhere you look, memes are being generated to better marry words and pictures, kinetic typography videos are turning letters into animations, and infographics illuminate otherwise meaningless statistics. Pictures are the most highly engaged content on Facebook. Where is all this coming from?

Jewish tradition has always supported technological innovation. In fact, with apologies to Apple or Android, it was Moses who introduced the world to the first tablets. Kidding aside, the events at Mt. Sinai as described in the Book of Exodus do provide us with a clear understanding of the role of technology in Judaism. As leaders in our respective Jewish communities, we take upon ourselves the responsibility of presenting the values, tenets, and traditions of our religion in the most understandable and accessible medium possible.

Guest post by Debra Askanase, Community Organizer 2.0

Today the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund announced the winners of the exciting process that help catalyze our community to focus on new media, our missions, and our strategy for the digital age. It was a fascinating experience to read the applications of the final 30, think deeply about the criteria of the fund, collaborate with an extraordinary team of advisors, and work with three visionary foundations. I am honored to have been part of this pilot year, and I hope that this initiative, and others like it, will continue.

in collaboration with guest blogger Rick Recht The ultimate form of ‘cool’ in the Jewish world is when your non-Jewish friends also think it, whatever IT is, is cool. Well, cool just happened – twice. [If you've seen the videos, feel free to skip below them to the bottom of this post. Unless, of course, you can't help yourself but watch them again.] On December 4, the CNN.com top headline picture was a snapshot from a viral video by the Maccabeats, male a capella group from Yeshiva University.