Source: Jewish Educational Leadership. Spring 2014 (12:2) pages 28-31
Mekorot Blended Learning seeks to improve both the quality and affordability of Jewish day schools by producing curricula in Judaic Studies for students in grades five through high school that are teacher-led, student-centered, differentiated, and employ Blended Learning. Better education and lower cost creates a virtuous cycle of sustainability.
In this article, we will explain our Design Thinking approach by defining the problem to be solved, presenting the motivation of the persons who want the problems solved, our idea for solving them, our prototype (Mekorot Learning), and our plans for testing the proposed solution.
There are two intertwined problems Mekorot seeks to address: educational improvement and financial sustainability.
Mekorot has developed several units in Sefer Yehoshua in two versions—one for lower middle school, where Yehoshua is typically taught, and one for high school targeted at students who want to review Yehoshua or did not learn it in middle school. Mekorot has launched pilots in the Spring of 2014 to assess our learning model as we prepare to produce full-year courses.
Summary
Our commitment is to provide the best possible education for all families that choose it. We have an unprecedented opportunity to greatly improve Jewish day school in ways that will benefit all stakeholders – students, their families and the professional educators – and position our teachers to have a dramatically greater impact on our children. We welcome your comments and interest at our website.
Read the entire article in Jewish Educational Leadership.