ACRE Blog

I was honored to be asked to facilitate the text study at tomorrow's conference.

New technologies around social networking are getting a lot attention these days. These communication methods are relevant to the ACRE (Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education) mission in two distinct ways:

1. New initiatives in providing continuing rabbinic education are likely to experiment in using these technologies, possibly as part of the learning, but almost certainly in promoting programs and initiatives.
2. Helping rabbis figure out how to use/not use social networking tools in their own rabbinate is likely to be a topic that continuing rabbinic education programs will teach. Add one dose of new opportunities for outreach combined with a heaping portion of new modalities for boundary violations, add to that a serving of confusing technology and what do you get? The need to help prepare current rabbis for all these changes.

But understanding what role social networking might play, either in promoting ACRE or in curricula itself is not on the agenda of tomorrow's conference. It's a cultural back-drop of sorts.

What is on the agenda is a learning session. JESNA's Steve Kraus and I thought that using Twitter as an ancillary modality to catch comments generated from the study would be an interesting experiment in using Twitter without changing the goal of the hour. We plan on having a projecter which would, in real time, display "tweets" (comments posted to Twitter) that are relevant to the discussion.

What positive outcomes might come from combining Twitter with text study?

1. Insights will be captured for more sharing/reflection
2. People not attending the conference will have a way to participate in the learning, potentially enriching them and the conference attendees

Our goal is that the text study stands on its own. The Twitter part is about enrichment. If people find that the Twitter background noise distracted them from study, this will be good information. It's an experiment. I'm looking forward to it.

Click here to read the text and see some questions for discussion.

Include: #acrecon in your tweets so that others following the discussion will see your tweet.

Click here from some basic Twitter instruction. (It's a long article, but the most important stuff comes first and is well explained.)

Read other tweets tagged with #acrecon.

--Rabbi Shai Gluskin