“Let the children play”
A very common scene these days is family gatherings where each one is staring at a different screen, and someone else is complaining about it. Not to mention typical conversations about the number of...
View ArticleThe meaning of LIKE
Morning, noon and night, we click on it. We want to see every post that we upload get the highest number of them. It’s even used outside Facebook. And people have even given their children its name....
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גם בהשתלמויות מורים משחקים
תהליכי למידה של מבוגרים, ובמיוחד בקבוצות גדולות, מתאפיינים פעמים רבות בתפיסה פורמלית ופורמליסטית, בה מעורבות הלומדים מוגבלת, ודרכי ההוראה בהכשרות אלו מייצגות לרוב הוראה פרונטלית או חד-כיוונית, המעודדת...
View ArticleLiteracy in the digital age – A series of posts (part 1)
Pictured: Sculpture “The Book and the Written Word” by Boris Zaborov, at the Technion. Photo by Dr. Avishai Taicher, from the PikiWiki website. About 60 years ago, in 1965, Avraham Shlonsky wrote the...
View ArticleWhat is the connection between Minecraft, economic models, and learning from...
It’s no secret that economic models are regarded with a measure of suspicion (and sometimes even derision) within certain circles. It is claimed that such models are too simplistic, that they offer...
View ArticleHow to turn a professor into a superstar
Is animation merely something cute or cool, or does it add something to our ability to absorb information? Recently this question was investigated by Richard Wiseman, a British professor of...
View ArticleThe Flipped Classroom – Outcomes from the Joint Study Process
As part of the work of the focus group made up of a number of teachers involved in or interested in the “flipped classroom” model, we participated in a multi-stage process in which we attempted to...
View ArticleLet your fingers do the walking
History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo. Look at your keyboard – why are there little bumps on the J and F keys? This question, of course, involves a...
View ArticleThe Internet is a Video Machine
What do you do on the internet? Surf websites, right? Not exactly. If we look at the question of “what do people do on the internet” in terms of content, not of technology, an interesting picture...
View ArticleWhat did I learn in Chemistry class? How to develop chemistry with girls
I saw this short animated movie recently and I found it particularly enchanting. The movie is the work of Andrew Park, from English studio Cognitive Media, the same Andrew Park who was responsible for...
View ArticleThe beauty of creation
Teaching the Computer This week, a group of 13-year-old students visited my studio. They were working on an assignment on the subject of the cinema. I showed them how I create animations through a...
View ArticleDigital Children’s Literature (Part 3) – What, and If?
The digital age has had an influence on the world of literature as a whole, on adults’ and children’s books alike. At the same time, in my view, the question of whether or not to create digital books...
View ArticleThe “I’m a PC Too” Age
Are tablet computers going to take over the world? It’s clear that tablet computers are moving into all areas – taking the place of laptops on the one hand, and that of large smartphones on the other....
View ArticleAnd, again – the Internet is a Video Machine (this time with honors)
In my previous post, I argued that the internet is a video machine, and that most of the traffic on the internet is made up of video (as opposed to text). I didn’t think that this would generate as...
View ArticleThoughts on Education and Technology, or: Bring Back the Repeats!!!
A question that I sometimes ask at workshops for teachers and school principals is: “Tell me about a positive learning experience that you had as children.” When I try to answer this question myself,...
View ArticleThe New iPhones
As in previous years, Apple’s CEO stood on the stage and announced the new generation of iPhones. Details of the launch, the phones themselves, the new services, and the specifications were already...
View ArticleThe Unexpected Illustrator
Who has been in the situation, because of work demands, of having to scribble a diagram on the board, in front of a roomful of watching eyes? Among the various professions, teachers probably hold the...
View ArticleDon’t just type “Hi”
Let’s admit it – keyboards and touch screens don’t exactly go together. The popular Facebook pages that describe funny, or semi-funny, errors (search Google for something like “damn it, error...
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The Computer as a Crutch
Once I knew a man who learned the whole of his personal telephone book by heart. He set out to memorize the telephone numbers of his hundreds of acquaintances, and discovered, to his surprise, that he...
View ArticleInnovation and its Disappointments
When I say that I have reservations (or even criticism) about the idea of innovation, people react with surprise. First, how could there be even the slightest flaw in innovation? After all, it is our...
View ArticleHow I invented e-mail (without brainstorming)
If you are reading this post, you must certainly also attend conferences. You will also know that, alongside “conferences” there are also “un-conferences.” These are events which bring together...
View ArticleA Data Tsunami struck our lives
Whether we are aware it or not, our lives are increasingly being affected by data-driven decisions. A tsunami of information has struck and overwhelmed our lives; as digital users, we consume and...
View ArticleThe Secret of Success: Forget the Everyday Compromises
Between my last post and this one, I won a prize (first prize, in fact, in a video competition sponsored by the Israel Film and TV Producers Association and YouTube), and as part of the prize I...
View ArticleA Not-So-Imaginary Conversation with an Israeli Startup Entrepreneur
A: An Israeli founded a startup! B: So what else is new? A: Not just an Israeli, an Israeli professor founded a startup! B: Big deal, everyone’s a professor around here. A: No, a real professor! B: A...
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MINDBLITZ – When startups, culture and education meet
For MINDBLITZ, the final event for the MindCET Fellows program, we wanted to do something that reflected the spirit of MindCET – constantly striving to think creatively and innovatively about the way...
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Lingua.ly wins the Israeli competition for startups in the EdTech field
Lingua.ly, CodeMonkey, Symbolab and Cloudents will take part in an international competition with the final to be held in September. In October, the third intake into MindCET’s accelerator program will...
View ArticleGlobal EdTEch Startups Awards announces the winners of its local competition...
The Global EdTech Startups Awards is a new competition led by a group of prominent education innovation organisations from across the world. The competition’s goal is to identify, highlight and...
View ArticleSon, don’t scalp tickets
I was a little boy, disappointed that all the tickets to a movie that I wanted to see with my father had sold out. But then someone wanted to do us a favor: a generous fellow came up and offered to...
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