Nice use of video by a non-profit. I’m sure it was­n’t cheap to pro­duce, but prob­a­bly did­n’t cost as much as you’d think.

Hilarious.

What if Mordechai, Haman, and the Wizard of Oz held a rap bat­tle? That’s the ques­tion or stu­dents asked.

The video is a project of one of our Emtza “pods.” Emtza is our seventh/eighth grade project-based pro­gram at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, where I work. (You can read more about the pro­gram in my pre­vi­ous post on the topic.)

As part of my job at Temple Isaiah, I devel­oped Emtza, a project-based pro­gram for our mid­dle school stu­dents. When I say “I devel­oped,” what I mean is that I had a basic con­cept, an idea sapling. I handed that idea to an edu­ca­tor hired to run the pro­gram, Jessie Downey, who devel­oped the idea fur­ther, bring­ing it into the realm of real­ity and giv­ing it some real “umph.” Then she handed it to her amaz­ing staff of teachers.

This video — one of two — is a piece of evi­dence that we were on to some­thing. It’s a prod­uct of our stu­dents, who cre­ated it from scratch. They had a lot of sup­port from their teach­ers, but it really is theirs. I hope you get a kick out of it… I sure did. (Click “More” for an expla­na­tion of how the Emtza pro­gram works.)

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This is the only orga­ni­za­tion I’ve ever played in or been in. I came here with Jackie [Robinson] and Gil [Hodges] and Duke [Snider] … and played with great peo­ple like Don [Newcombe or Drysdale?] and Tommy [Davis], Willie [Davis] and Maury [Wills].

Sandy Koufax (via BLS)

Videoconference between Confirmation class and class­mate in London. Technology helps stu­dents cross oceans with­out even trying.

According to Zentall, an activ­ity that uses a sense other than that required for the pri­mary task — lis­ten­ing to music while read­ing a social stud­ies text­book — can enhance per­for­mance in chil­dren with ADHD. Doing two things at once, she found, focuses the brain on the pri­mary task.

Know that it is OK to do two things at once: carry on a con­ver­sa­tion and knit, or take a shower and do your best think­ing, or jog and plan a busi­ness meet­ing. Often peo­ple with ADD need to be doing sev­eral things at once in order to get any­thing done at all.

Awesome way to start the new year. Shanah Tovah. (Taken with Instagram at 7‑Eleven)

No one can deny the pop­u­lar­ity of the Farmer John pork-laden Dodger Dog, or its all-beef, but still non-kosher, alter­na­tive. A report from the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, a project of the American Meat Institute, which pro­vides data, research and recipes to food man­u­fac­tur­ers and reporters, states that the Dodger Dog was the No. 1 best-sell­ing Major League Baseball ball­park hot dog in 2011, and it is expected to be the fourth-high­est-sell­ing this year.

Now, if it is true that indi­vid­u­als develop a sense of con­nec­tion to and con­cern for a larger col­lec­tiv­ity in the ways that I’ve described – through the prac­tices of story, lan­guage, and love – then we should notice that peo­ple­hood edu­ca­tion does not con­flict with other sub­stan­tive, con­tent-rich Jewish edu­ca­tional efforts but rather com­fort­ably co-exists with them.

Smarter Stand is my friend Dotan’s project on Kickstarter. Simple, bril­liant, insanely useful.

Check it out.

Spotted in the ele­va­tor on June 9
(Taken with Instagram)