How to teach, and not to teach, science

Though most of our day was devoted to sightseeing, that doesn't mean that we didn't focus, at least a bit, on education. Around mid-morning we visited the Bloomfield Science Museum, and there we met with Tami Yekhieli who described The Museum-College Project she developed in which student teachers from an Orthodox college in Jerusalem act as tour guides for children at the museum.

We learned from Tami that the project is a win-win situation - the college gains the ability to engender scientific knowledge among its students, and the Science Museum gets free, but supervised, guides, and also exposure to future science teachers (some of the students even get jobs at the museum). She placed the project in a theoretical framework developed by lee Shulman - it enriches scientific content knowledge, enriches general content knowledge,and helps develop a conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. When the student teachers prepare lessons for the museum they come into contact with approaches they weren't familiar with before, and they learn to be flexible. They also gain confidence in their ability to teach.

But it wasn't all theory. What's the point in a Science Museum of you can't press buttons, or do some experiments! So, we played a bit with liquid nitrogen, saw how dry ice can expand a balloon, saw how air pressure can cause water to boil at a lower temperature, and more.

We didn't have enough time to push all the buttons, but even if it's only for  a short visit, science museums are always a treat!

Viewing Jerusalem

It's impossible to visit Jerusalem, even on a tour devoted to ICT in education, and not tour the city. And that being the case, it made perfect sense that when we got up in Jerusalem on Friday, the fifth day of our study tour, we started out with a glimpse of the city. Along with our tour guide, Sharona, we drove up to the Mount of Olives, and as we listened to an overview of the ancient history of Jerusalem, we gazed out toward the Temple Mount and other sites, and got a taste for what we'd see throughout the day.

And we also took the day's group photo, getting some of our "guests" into the photo as well.

A bit of HiTech without a direct connection to education

At the end of our long day we stopped at the R&D department of HaZera, connected to Limagrain, the second largest seed company in the world. There we met with Hanne and Yossi who informed us that the company's mission is to be a leading hybrid vegetable seed company. Hanne gave us an overview of the company and described to us the role ICT plays in the company. This role includes storing information, DNA sequencing, tag profiling, being able to check whether a trait is inherited or from the environment, and more.

We learned about the breeding of tomatoes on the vine, and seedless watermelons, and more. Much of this is achieved by DNA markers that permit marker assisted selection. Most of us probably didn't understand just what all this means, but it was certainly interesting to learn that the successful selection of plants via nucleotype composition is the result of many thousands of experiments. It sort of makes you think that maybe education, with considerably less focused experimentation, is still (and perhaps happily) far from being a true science. But of course we knew all along that it's really an art.

Multi-cultural and Student-centered again ... but that's okay

Our next stop of the day was the Kaye College of Education in Beer-Sheva. As was to be expected, we heard introductory remarks (if we didn't already know, we know now that that's unavoidable). But as things warmed up Merav Assaf spoke with fervor about how it's possible to use ICT to promote more student-centered pedagogy. She showed us, for example, how a course that didn't have a "textbook" built one. The students in the course prepared movies via their smartphones, uploaded them to YouTube, and then constructed a blog in which the students were able to discuss the films and the issues raised in them. In addition she showed us an example of the "Know-Mobile" project in the town of Hura (where we didn't visit) and similar towns, of how the availability of laptops in the schools caused mothers in the community, some of whom had never been outside of their towns, curious about computers and the internet.

We also met with the President of the college, Lea Kosminsky, who described the special role that the college plays in its larger community of the Negev, and heard from Annette Kahan who spoke about the catalog of educational web sites that she's been building for the past decade, and showed us that her modest project gets many thousands of hits, including from the Arab world.

And though we were pressed for time, we took a moment for a group photo ... in which at least most of us are visible.

Hey! Real Kids!!!

We'd planned to visit two schools today, and in the end only got to one. That was very disappointing, but at least when we got to the one that we did get to instead of hearing about what happens there we had a chance to actually see it happening. One of the teachers gave us an overview of the school and its philosophy, and then we toured the school in two groups, each led by two students who not only showed us around, but also told us about their studies, and about the ways that their studies are focused around what should best be described as project based learning. After a few days of listening to explanations, it was a special treat to actually see students in their "natural" setting, and to hear from them how they study.

Perhaps most impressive to us was the fact that although we expressly wanted to focus on ICT, what we learned from the students was how naturally computers and the internet were integrated into their studies, so that ultimately, we didn't feel that we were focusing on ICT. And quite frankly, that's the way it should be. This is also what we learned when we spoke with Ido Argaman, the principal, and with Tali, a teacher at the school.

Today we still speak about "how to integrate" the computers and the internet into education. But we'll know that they've truly been integrated when we won't even have to speak about that any more.

Force Majeure

Some things are beyond are control ... like traffic jams. Our first (and hopefully only) major problem of this tour took place this morning, and it was a BIG one. After making very good time heading south from Tel Aviv toward the Negev and traffic suddenly stopped. It was a few moments later that we learned that about ten kilometers ahead of us, a bit before our planned turnoff, a truck had overturned. There was basically nothing we could do beyond inching along VERY slowly, calling and being called from the school we were supposed to visit at the Beduoin town of Hura. We already had a tight schedule for the day, and a setback such as this made it considerably tighter.

Some of us made the best of a terrible situation by getting some much needed sleep, while others took the time for some enjoyable, and heated, discussion (about education and ICT, of course).

After inching along for little more than a kilometer we reached a road block that turned us around toward where we'd come. We lost about an hour and a half that way, and by that time, when we got back to an alternative route, it was also packed. We luckily knew of yet another route, but by the time we got to it, and beyond the closed road, school was already letting out in Hura, and it was with great disappointment, and many apologies, that our only possibility was to move on to our next stop.

So, things were beyond our control, but it was still a major loss on our part.

Not just education

What good is a study tour, even about such a fascinating subject as ICT in education in Israel, if there's not time for some pleasant sightseeing and hiking? Of course that's a rhetorical question - the obvious answer is that it's not very good at all, and we have no intention whatsoever of having such a tour.

After leaving the Technion we traveled to the center of town where we met our guide for a few hours, Kobi Fleischman. Kobi told us a bit about the history of Haifa, focusing on its ethnic make-up. First, we drove up to Stella Maris.

From there we hiked down to the cave of Elijah the Prophet, forgetting for a while that we were still in one of Israel's major cities, since for much of the hike we felt that we were out in the wild (though our digital devices were never far from us).

We also viewed the city from one of its highest points, and then explored the German Quarter with numerous fascinating stories that brought its history to life. Our last stop in the city was a dairy restaurant where to our continuous surprise, the food kept coming and coming until there was very little we could do during the ride back home beyond falling asleep.

True, we should have been discussing all we'd seen and done (educationally, at least) that day, or perhaps we should have done that when we got back to the hotel around 22:30. But ... quite frankly, all we could think about was getting to sleep, since we knew quite well that we had a long and eventful day ahead of us starting early the next morning.