Edtech scheme expands for schools

Jewish Interactive has added five more Jewish primary schools to its edtech development programme, Ji Prime School Partnership, taking the number now on board in the UK to seven.

Having started with Naima JPS and added Kerem, it is now working with Nancy Reuben, Rimon, Sinai, Sacks Morasha and Etz Chaim.

Jewish studies teachers are shown how to make best use of material available on Ji Tap, its main platform, as well as learning how to create their own content.

While the partnership would normally include a number of face-to-face training sessions, the organisation has had to adapt to Covid-era challenges.

“Our Prime model has shifted since the onset of Covid to focus on remote teaching methods, asynchronous learning and content creation,” said Ji’s operations director Joshua Salter.

“We work closely with each school to develop the Prime model according to their specific needs.”

(Asynchronous learning means children working in their own time rather than with a live-time session with their teacher).

“Before the pandemic we had secured support from Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust to expand our UK Prime programme,” he said.

“Our services are needed more than ever right now by schools and teachers grappling to incorporate online and remote teaching and we are moving forward swifty supporting these schools in these challenging times.”

The partnership is for a year but schools have the option to renew it, as Naima has done.

Mr Salter said it hoped to extend the programme — which has been taken up by four schools in the USA and two in Israel — to other Jewish schools in the UK.

Meanwhile, the organisation is shortly to bring out the third stage in its popular Hebrew reading programme, Ji Alef-Bet.

It has also just launched the first resources in a new Ivrit b’Ivrit curriculum, Ivrit Misaviv Ha’Olam, designed for diaspora teachers who teach Hebrew in Hebrew to young children. Developed with the Israeli organisation UnitED, it has been supported by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.