Paramus—JEDcampNJNY (http://www.jedcamp.org), an innovative conference on Jewish education, will be held at Yeshivat Noam on Sunday, May 4. The structure of the conference is informal, with attendees signing up to run sessions first thing in the morning.
The conference, which will be free from corporate vendors and booths, will focus solely on conversations about education. Attendees will come from all over the New York/New Jersey area and will range from classroom teachers to administrators to parents, coaches, and school board members. There will be time for attendees to gather informally to share ideas as well as a variety of sessions for them to attend, run by their colleagues and fellow educators.
The event is based on the edcamp model, also known as an unconference (http://edcamp.org). An unconference is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment; and a conversational event featuring discussions, demos and interactions between participants, rather than a group of people listening to a particular speaker.
The first-ever JEDcamp was held in Florida in 2012 and was organized by Seth Dimbert, who joined the administrative team at Yeshivat Noam this past August as Director of Educational Technology and Innovation. Word quickly spread about the event’s powerful and effective professional development and JEDcamps sprang up in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and New Jersey in 2013.
The local JEDcamp committee, an informal group of teachers and administrators from schools in New York and New Jersey, have organized a series of events this school year, including Sunday JEDcamps and weeknight symposia, hosted at Yavneh Academy in Paramus, the Solomon Schechter School of Queens, The Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn, and the Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck. The year’s series will culminate with the Spring JEDcamp at Yeshivat Noam which the group hopes will be the largest JEDcamp event yet.
“We’ve got big plans for this one,” said Dimbert, who is coordinating the May gathering. “We will have good food, a great facility and, hopefully, a huge group of excited, motivated educational professionals looking for ideas and inspiration as they wrap up this school year and start to plan for the next one.”
As with all edcamps, JEDcamp NJNY is completely free, with all refreshments and other amenities provided solely through sponsorship. This spring event is hosted and sponsored by Yeshivat Noam in addition to various educational companies who will provide door prizes and other goodies for attendees.
For additional information about this event and to register, visit www.jedcamp.org.
Organizers
Seth Dimbert, Yeshivat Noam ([email protected])
Rabbi Aaron Ross, Yavneh Academy ([email protected])
Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, The Frisch School ([email protected])
