Tomorrow’s Synagogue Today: Insights from the Author

Thank you to Rabbi Hayim Herring for sharing his expertise with us on a webinar last week and on our online book group throughout the month of June, as we discuss his book, Tomorrow’s Synagogue Today.

Over 50 people registered for our webinar to learn from Hayim and discuss the concepts he shared and their application to their congregational settings.  We discussed the very tachlis details of who leads change and how, and big (and sometimes purposefully theoretical) questions like "will synagogues as we know them continue to exist in the next few decades"?

You can find the recording of the webinar and related resources shared during the webinar here.

Our online book group — held in a Facebook Group — continues, and we welcome you to join us!  Current conversations have been around testing and piloting new ideas, what has changed in synagogue life in the last 10 years, and how do we retain a sense of sacred community while still being respectful of the desire for individualism and self-directedness?  Come on over to the book group to respond, and/or to pose your own questions too!

Monday Web Favorites: The #Unselfie Campaign, Giving Effective Feedback, and “Be the Shamash”

It's time for our Monday web favorites, and there is much light to share over Chanukah…

First up: We love the #unselfie campaign! A bit of background…as of last year, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving has been declared "Giving Tuesday," to change the focus from buying and acquiring on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, to giving back and thankfulness. (Fun fact, this was started by the folks at the 92Y in New York.) Meanwhile, the term "selfie" was chosen as the 2013 "word of the year." This year, Giving Tuesday added this cool #unselfie campaign, to get people taking pictures of themselves (or of their faces behind a sign they made) saying/showing what they're doing to give back. Taking and posting an #unselfie could be a great activity for a teen group, for a family to do together, for a synagogue staff to do as a group. It's quick and fun activity to help share the light at Chanukah, and tap into a broader online campaign/conversation.
 

And our next selection: Another great opportunity has come up for tomorrow, this one on the professional development side. The talented  and vivacious Deborah Grayson Riegel is offering a free teleconference on giving effective feedback, Dec. 3rd, 2-3pm Eastern. Click here for details and to sign up.
 

Finally: We've got one more example of a lovely campaign we wanted to share – Shira Kline, also known as Shirlala, is using the eight nights of Chanukah to run a "Be the Shamash" (the candle that lights all the other candles on the menorah) campaign. It's a great example of using your social media to highlight that sweet spot where the things you care about and the things that matter to your community come together and shine. Hosting these kinds of mini-campaigns on your Page, or through any social media outlet, helps keep you at the front of your community's mind. That way, when you're ready to tell them about an event or other offer, they're already listening.

What have been your favorite things on the web recently? Share them in comments, or with Miriam through email, and they could appear here next week! Happy Chanukah, everyone!

Top image credit: GivingTuesday Facebook Page

Thankful

What are you thankful for this week? I'm thankful for this catchy Facebook post from Shannon Hall and her team at the Sarah & Irving Pitt Child Development Center of JCC Metro Detroit. With the discovery that the most popular posts on their page were the photo collages, and knowing that the children would be focused on giving thanks in celebration of the upcoming Thanksgiving (and Chanukah!) holidays, the team developed this creative idea. Using smart phones, the team snapped a few photos of children, noted what they were thankful for, and added the speech bubbles using the free PicSay app for Android phones. For iPhone users, the free app Bubble works great, too.

Then, in order to attract more attention then they would have by posting the photos individually, they collaged three responses into one photo using PicsArt, another free app for Android, iPhone users, check out the free and easy to use PicStitch. The result was a playful, eye catching photo.

They combined with photo with an invitation to a week long game. Comment on the post and they'd ask your child next. And comment they did! Parents responded with curiosity about what their own child might say, and also added their own grateful comments. The result is a community expression of gratitude, perfect for the week before Thanksgiving.

What was the strategy behind the team's thinking? As part of their work in this year's Jewish Early Childhood Social Media Academy organized by the Alliance for Jewish Education at the Jewish Federation of Detroit, the team wanted to celebrate the children and families within their preschool program in order get the word out to the larger community about their offerings. Their strategy is to encourage their current actively involved on Facebook parents to inspire others to join the fun. Focusing on organic, fun, and engaging posts, their Facebook page has been a model of successful early childhood engagement.

In addition to achieving this immediate goal, creating social content that gets people to comment increases your "weight" in the Facebook algorithm.  Your content is therefore more likely to show up in the newsfeeds of others who have liked the page, which leads to more engagement, which sets a very positive snowball in motion.

How are you stewarding a culture of thankfulness and engagement on your Facebook Page?

Monday Web Favorites: #MakeItHappen, Twitter for Nonprofits, and Thanksgivukkah

Monday Web Favorites: #MakeItHappen, Twitter for Nonprofits, and Thanksgivukkah

Happy Monday! We thought we’d take a moment to look back on the week that’s passed and share some of our favorite things that may come in handy for the week ahead. Take a look…

Schusterman #MakeItHappen Campaign:

Got a great idea to make change in your community? The good folks over at the Schusterman Foundation want to help you make it happen! Check out the video below, explore the website, and follow the conversation on Twitter to find out what’s already been submitted and accepted – and to share your idea. The campaign is accepting submissions for all kinds of projects through the end of December.

Twitter for Nonprofits

Twitter, like Facebook, went public last week. Twitter's short messages and frenetic pace can feel overwhelming, but we've found it's a great place for organization to connect with press outlets, develop personal learning networks, and find/curate great content. Have you been struggling with Twitter and not sure where to go from here, or ready to give the 140-character limit a try? Here are some great resources shared this week to help cut through the buzz and tweet like a pro.

 

Don't pass up reading 24 Best Practices for Nonprofits Using Twitter from the smart crew at SocialBrite. Here are a couple of their suggestions that we really like:

  • Don't overcomplicate Twitter
  • Use calls to action
  • Rephrase it, then go again
  • Be gracious

And finally, read through the Top Ten Twitter Dos for Nonprofits. This is a simple, clear article, with some great examples of nonprofits rocking the Twitterverse. Our favorite nugget from this one? "Use Twitter advanced search." Twitter is a great listening tool – use the advanced search to find your people and hear what they have to say!

Thanksgivukkah

By now we all know that many of us are soon to take part in a, quite literally, once-in-a-lifetime event merging Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah: Thanksgivukkah! Much delightful kitsch has been shared in honor of this special occasion…here are a few of our favorites:

JewishBoston.com's impressive collection of 101 Thanksgivukkah-themed pins on this Pinterest board.

The Thanksgivukkah Food Face-off, brought to you by The Jew and the Carrot. Which would YOU rather taste?

And finally, here's a YouTube playlist of some soon-to-be simultaneously classic and defunct Thanksgivukkah tunes, compiled by our friends over at The Jewish Education Project.

AND one bonus favorite thing from the interwebs we couldn’t resist sharing…

This picture and simple story about letting another man sleep on his shoulder on the subway, was dragged from obscurity to virality due, in great part, to the work of Elad Nehorai of PopChassid and Charidy. It’s a beautiful example of kindness, empathy, and the power of the social web.

What have been your favorite things on the Web this week? Share them with Miriam via email or in the comments, and they may be featured next time!

 

Design Thinking for Tech-Curious Educators

 

To say we do things differently in Portland (Oregon) is a given.  Unlike many of the groups participating in Darim's Social Media Boot Camp, Portland Jewish Academy's small but mighty team was made up primarily of teachers. It was therefore not surprising that with our individual classroom needs in mind, we looked for ways that this concept of social media could be used to educate ourselves, our students, or both.

Our journey began in October when we were charged with thinking about the kind of project that would be beneficial for our faculty and the children we teach.  PJA is a community day school with a Preschool, Lower School, and Middle School.  We have General Studies and Jewish Studies teachers all with differing levels of interest in and comfort with technology.  How could we identify a project that would have meaning for all of us?  Given that our team included a Lower School General Studies teacher, a Middle School General Studies Teacher, a Middle School Jewish Studies (Hebrew) teacher, our Principal, and our Technology Specialist, we believed it made the most sense for us to focus on the needs and desires of our Kindergarten through 8th Grade program while being sure to address the General and Jewish Studies dual curriculum and the various readiness levels of our staff.

ideate2.jpgIn keeping with our team's wish to develop a student-centered approach, our initial essential question centered on how we could leverage social media to enhance student learning and engagement across the curriculum.  Recognizing that our faculty has just finished our first year of our new technology integration plan and was ripe for additional opportunities for learning, we tweaked our inquiry slightly by asking, "How can professional development support teachers in their integration of social media in classroom instruction?" 

We were delighted to be matched with Boot Camp Coach, Andrea Hernandez, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida.  Andrea's school had been successfully using a "Ning" for faculty idea-sharing as well as a blog entitled "21st Century Learning."  Seeing these forms of social media being used so effectively as a sharing tool, we considered reframing our question once again.  This time we wondered, "How can we use social media to promote sharing and professional development among our teachers?"

"Design Thinking for Educators" became our model for creating a project based on our essential question.  Being at its core a method that emphasizes collaboration, optimism, and experimentation, it seemed like the perfect construct for moving our work forward.

Design Thinking begins with a period of DISCOVERY, so with this idea in mind we decided to develop a survey to determine what our teachers want and need when it comes to integrating technology.  In our informal conversations with our colleagues about our project, we found that the term "social media" was limiting and sometimes confusing.  Thus, our team began to view "social media" as any collaborative, new media tool that supports learning in the digital age.

Teachers were asked to comment on prior professional development experiences as well as their current use of equipment, ease of use, impact on student learning, and technical support and training.  Ultimately, 25 faculty members responded to our January 2013 survey. 

As part of the INTERPRETATION phase of the Design Thinking for Educators model, we found it most surprising that teachers were less interested in using social media for idea sharing (as we had proposed) but rather wanted to learn about student resources.  Our teachers are looking for "how-to" workshops featuring the use of various Web 2.0 tools for learning and the opportunity to share successful digital age teaching practices "face-to-face."  They are interested in a wide range of topics and are generally open-minded about trying new things.  Not surprisingly, the teachers see time constraints as the number one challenge for participating in this kind of professional development but are willing to do some learning online outside of the regular school day.  To paraphrase Field of Dreams, it is clear that if we build a professional development program that focuses on real classroom applications, they will come.

ideate1_0.jpgIn April, we honed our essential question once again.  This time we asked, "How might we support teachers in professional development on our journey towards digital age teachers and learners."  We then participated in the next phase of the process: IDEATION.  Using brainstorming rules outlined by Design Thinking for Educators, our Darim Team began to generate a list of ways to go forward with our professional development initiative.  We then took this brainstorming process to our Lower School and Middle School faculty knowing that their collective wisdom would help guide our next stage: EXPERIMENTATION.

Within weeks of beginning our Social Media Boot Camp work, our team ultimately did away with the conventional understanding of what social media means to most.  We were no longer talking about Facebook or Twitter, Blogs or Wiki Pages, but rather we were widening our lens to include all the potential that learning in the digital age represents.  Our project evolved into something quite different from the other participating schools but one that is just right for the needs of Portland Jewish Academy.  As we look ahead, we hope to create the kind of training that our faculty desires to make learning in the digital age relevant, engaging, and meaningful to teachers and students alike!

Elana Cohn-Rozansky is a member of the Portland Jewish Academy team that participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

Creating Conversations and Giving Everyone a Voice: Talent Recruitment at Hillel

Instead of simply posting job openings, we use this space to highlight the great work happening at Hillels around the world, where students are engaged students in Jewish life, learning and Israel.  As a result of all this, hired, we have completely changed our outlook on how social media functions for our organization.

In the spring of 2012, Hillel’s Human Resources team set out to play a more active role on social media to help us better recruit for Hillel, share job listings, tell our story, and grow our presence online.  Under advisement from our new Digital Media Manager, Monica Herman, we worked to define strategies we could use in the social media space. We quickly realized that it had to be about conversations. While this seems natural on our personal Facebook accounts, it’s actually something that can get lost in organizational social media. Followers want to be engaged in the conversation with your organization, not just reading posts, no matter how fabulous what you have to say may be. 

We determined who we wanted to hear from, and what we wanted to talk about. For Hillel’s HR team, that was job seekers, former and current Hillel professionals, graduating college seniors and graduate students, potential professionals, partner agencies, placement professionals, and the wider Jewish community.  That’s a LOT of constituents and a lot of different messages!  We have found that, when we tell our story through the voices of those we impact, many of our stakeholders join the conversation in meaningful ways.  They get to tell their story through the lens of Hillel.  The organization is no longer the only voice, which is a good thing!  Showcasing your organization’s diverse population and encouraging your people to share improves relationships and communication for everyone.

For example, we launched a blog post series highlighting why our professionals love what they do.  This forum enables them to tell their stories and share what resonates with them about their jobs.  The professional benefits from great PR for their local Hillel and provides them with a platform to talk about their journey and what their career means to them.  We know our stakeholders enjoy hearing directly from someone on campus about how they are making an impact or working through an issue. Colleagues also share these stories with their own networks, and comment on their peers’ experiences. In addition, from an HR perspective, potential job seekers can learn from these posts how they could fit into an organization like Hillel, and even contact the professional directly to learn more. Far better than the HR recruiter posting 10 reasons why it’s fun to work at Hillel, right?

We identified the specific social media channels that were better suited for different types of conversations than others.  Originally, we used Facebook to post every new job as they came up. Now, we use a dedicated Twitter profile for that, and direct active job seekers there for real-time updates on what’s new. We also follow job-hunting resources and share links, tips and strategies on the interview process and how to manage a job search.  Updates from @Hillel_Jobs are also shared with the broader Hillel Twitter account, @HillelFJCL, raising visibility to a broader group of stakeholders. Using LinkedIn, we explore the benefits of working for Hillel, and share and discuss relevant articles and trends in the job market and hiring practices. Candidates can also find me, a real face, in case they’re interested in learning more.

With this new social media strategy in place, we’ve broadened our presence across multiple channels. Hillel's Facebook page engages directly with students, parents, professionals, partner organizations and supporters. Instead of simply posting job openings, we use this space to highlight the great work happening at Hillels around the world, where students are engaged students in Jewish life, learning and Israel.  As a result of all this, we have completely changed our outlook on how social media functions for our organization.

We don’t have all the answers yet, and there’s much more that we will learn around this, but we’re excited to be engaged in the conversation! We’d welcome a discussion about what’s working for your organization and what challenges you’re facing around this issue.

Aviva Zucker Snyder has been the lead Talent Recruiter for Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life since 2009, after starting her career in Jewish student life, and later as the Executive Director at University at Albany Hillel from 2002-2008.  You can find her on LinkedIn, where she spends a lot of time networking.  When not online or on the phone, she’s either training for a half marathon or running after her almost-5 year old, Noa.

 

Learning to Like Facebook

 

“How do you get people to ‘like’ you?” is not usually a question of much concern to a group of academics, but that’s exactly the challenge we took on when our team at American Jewish University’s Graduate Center for Education endeavored to create a new communications channel to expand our online community of alumni, students, colleagues and friends through Facebook this year. Without a communications department or dedicated staffer to build our social media presence, it’s been hard to consistently lean in to our Facebook ambitions without getting carpal tunnel. That being said, we’ve come away from Darim’s Social Media Boot Camp for Educators with some great strategies for managing and promoting the page, with the valued input of our fantastic coach Debra Askanase:

1) Develop and implement a content calendar.

2) Keep experimenting with different kinds of content, and check the analytics regularly to monitor what the fans want.

3) Based on #2, we discovered that our fans love and share photos, videos and announcements of awards the most.

4) Post regularly and consistently to keep up the flow of traffic.

5) Don’t feel sheepish about buying likes (which we haven’t tried yet).

While we are proud of what we have developed so far, a challenge is that there are members of our community missing out on our shiny new vehicle for sharing content, good and welfare and relevant education news and links. Not all of our constituents (alumni and Jewish education professionals) are on Facebook. Not everyone who is on Facebook uses Facebook for professional interests. Not everyone who is on Facebook checks Facebook. And so on.  We are still wondering: how many of our constituents use Facebook for really engaging with professional content?

Personally, I entered Darim’s Boot Camp committed to a pretty solid boundary between the personal and professional when it came to Facebook, resisting the invitations to post professional content and reserving my Facebook use for sharing photos of my kids with actual friends and (and viewing photos of their kids). Now I’m kvelling over the latest accomplishments of our students and alumni, sharing education news items and op-eds of interest, reflecting on the teachers who have inspired me, and posting photos of my students and campus, all with a couple of quick clicks on the Pages Manager app on my droid.  My new use of Facebook has become a vehicle for work/life integration in surprising ways.

So after a few months of work, the Graduate Center for Education’s Facebook page now bears the unique stamp of our learning community and the personalities and professional interests of the faculty leadership. We discovered that Facebook is a medium that can easily convey our institutional culture of intellectual curiosity, passion for creative education, sincere caring for members of our community and deep appreciation for the hard work and commitment of educators. We can be serious and playful in one space.

We’re a boutique graduate school of education, and we take a lot of pride in the warm and nurturing yet rigorous and professional learning culture that defines the “in-person” experience of being an AJU student. With the help of the Darim Social Media Boot Camp, we have slowly begun to transmit that culture online through our Facebook presence. Our next step is to share the love with an ever-growing circle of fans! You don’t have to be an AJU affiliate to join; anyone passionate about Jewish education can “like” us at www.facebook.com/educationmasters.AJU.

 

Dr. Miriam Heller Stern is Dean of the Graduate Center for Education at American Jewish University. Follow her on twitter @mirhstern. The Graduate Center for Education participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

Using social media to enhance student learning

Q: What do you get when you cross a former social media nerd turned marketing guy with a couple of tech-savvy teachers and instructional technology coaches, plus an expert at integrating social media technologies into Jewish education?

A: A toolkit of social media case studies highlighting how teachers can use common social media and Web 2.0 tools and technologies to facilitate student interaction, collaboration and learning.

At Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a community Jewish day school in the city of Chicago, we came into the school year with a healthy knowledge of what social technology tools were out there and a thought that we'd like to identify a few of those tools for widespread teacher and student use. Thanks to our participation in Darim Online's Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, we're heading out of the school year with some key technologies identified and faculty members who have designed learning experiences around those technologies that are scalable across the organization. In fact, after some in-house professional development, we already have teachers trying new things that have worked in other teachers' classrooms.

Specifically, we've recognized the power of simple platforms including Twitter, Skype and YouTube to both facilitate interaction within our school community (among students and teachers, for example) and to facilitate interaction with students, classrooms and experts in other states and countries.

A handful of case studies highlight how our faculty members have used these technologies to drive cross-cultural communication, collaboration and learning. If you've never heard of or conducted a Twitterview, or an author-Skype session or mystery-Skype session, or if you've never Explained Everything via a Youtube "flipped classroom" video, we can help…

These things don't just sound fun—they are fun, and, per the title of this blog post, they enhance student learning. Once teachers see what these tools can do and hear from colleagues about the excitement created around learning by incorporating these technologies, we're pretty sure they won't hesitate to try their hands with social media. Here at BZAEDS, after hearing from another faculty member at a professional development session about an eighth grade / author Skype session, one of our third-grade teachers set up an author Skype for her students, much to their excitement and enjoyment.

So if you'd like to hear more about our success with a social media toolkit of case studies, or read more about any individual case study and see photos or videos that accompany these, please don't hesitate to reach out to that former social media nerd (if you check my Twitter timeline you'll see how rarely I use it anymore–even Facebook is no longer a regular thing)—he's here to help!

Derek Gale is the Director of Communications at Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago.  They participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

80-20: Work on Whatever You Want

Netbooks, Document Cameras, Google Apps, Educational Apps, Student blogs, we floated all of these ideas around as we tried to come up with where to focus our technology training this summer. There are so many opportunities it is often overwhelming. With training being a fundamental component of our technology plan at the Stanford Eisenberg Knoxville Jewish Day School, we struggled to determine a school wide technology goal for the coming year. As we spoke and brainstormed, inspiration from the NAJDSC, and our recent participation in the Darim Online Jewish Day School Social Media Academy came together, and an idea formed based.

One of the famous benefits of working at Google is the 20 percent time program. Google allows its employees to use up to 20 percent of their work week at Google to pursue special projects. That means for every standard work week, employees can take a full day to work on a project unrelated to their normal workload. At Hewlett-Packard, 3M, and Google, "many" of their best and most popular products come from the thin sliver of time they granted employees to work on whatever they wanted to.

We decided that instead of us choosing a school wide goal we would allow each teacher to choose a technology based project that they’d like to implement in their classroom. We’d take the money we would have spent training and pay our teachers to spend the time to research, create and implement a project that they were passionate and excited about. We have a treasure of knowledge, experience and skill amongst our staff and with so many learning opportunities readily available on the internet we know we will have a rich, informative and exciting journey. The program has no outcome benchmarks but process requirements. The focus is on the experience. Because we are offering the freedom to “work on whatever you want” we are also offering the freedom to fail, without failure there can be no innovation or true experimentation. Regardless of whether the project plays out as we hope it to we know there will be valuable lessons learned from the process.

In addition to choosing and implementing a project there will be a reflective and reporting process where teachers will reflect, share and teach each other about their project and what they have learned. Not only will teachers benefit from their projects and experience they will learn from everyone else’s research and projects. And at the end of the project we will have a staff where each teacher is well versed and experienced in different areas of technology and available to support each other in their area of expertise.

Miriam Esther Wilhelm is the founding Head of School at the Stanford Eisenberg Knoxville Jewish Day School. She has enjoyed the journey of taking the school from a start up to a growing and thriving Jewish Day School.
 
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. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy
 
The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.
 

 

 

 

See3C: Scheck Hillel Reinvents, Stays Connected

 

As a school who strives to be on top of the latest and greatest forms of social media, this year was the time for Scheck Hillel Community School to explore one of the most popular outlets used today: Instagram. With one click on the app, you can quickly see what is going on around campus and in classrooms. In the past, Scheck Hillel has used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to the community and share what is going on at school. Now we have taken the jump not only with a school account (@eHillel) but also individual classroom accounts to reinvent photo sharing, making it easy for families and students to stay connected. Instagram also links to other forms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. This allows our followers to branch out and explore eHillel across the social media world.

instagram.jpgIn the classroom, Instagram has taken a different turn. Students as early as third grade are excited and eager to explore the social media world with their iPods, iPads, and iPhones. What better way to do it than linked to school! With followers in many grade levels, we are sharing our classroom with the rest of campus. Parents are slowly but surely starting to follow and engage in Instagram by liking and commenting on photos. Siblings and former students are among our greatest followers, and are encouraging their teachers to jump on the bandwagon.

photoclose.jpgAs a third grade teacher, I was unsure of how Instagram would impact my class. Would parents be interested? Would students want to follow their class?  My worries were quickly erased as I have only seen a positive response! Students are excited to be involved in writing captions, adding filters, and creating appropriate hashtags to share our photos. Another third grade teacher was persuaded to create a page when her students started to follow my class page @see3c. She found that her students were eager to get involved as well. Teacher Jennifer Cohn, @3bpics, says “Students are commenting on photos after school. It gives them a chance to go back and reflect on what was happening in school that day.” Scheck Hillel’s third grade was recently empowered with a couple iPads for each class, so the students can get involved with our Instagram page more easily. It has become a class activity and the students are deciding what is important to share with our friends in the community. We look forward to sharing our achievements as we engage more teachers and classes to connect to social media!
 

Jenna Kraft is a Grade 3 teacher at Scheck Hillel Community School in North Miami Beach, Florida. Taking a lead beyond the classroom, she recently co-authored Scheck Hillel’s Social Media Guidelines & Policy with the School’s Advancement department.

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. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy
 
The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.