Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers

Our hope is that this blog will become a forum in which people can exchange ideas on how to recruit, develop and retain exceptional Jewish educators through mentoring and e-mentoring students, teaching candidates, and teachers in our day and supplemental schools. The present focus of this blog is to empower Jewish teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, consultants, and staff developers to integrate web technology (i.e. web tools and apps) into their teaching and teacher training.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Introduction to the Groupmap, a web tool that facilitates student collaboration

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will begin our discussion of Groupmap, a web tool that facilitates student collaboration, that can be used for Judaic instruction and the mentoring/teaching of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers or Ipads. Given parental and school approval, and the development of specific guidelines, smartphones can be used to enhance instruction as well.

Note: Although Groupmap can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

Note: Groupmap can be used in a face to face and virtual classroom.

What is Groupmap?

Groupmap is a web tool that facilitates student collaboration.

Note: Groupmap is free for a 14 day trial period.

Where is Groupmap located on the internet?

http://www.groupmap.com

Where can I find tutorials demonstrating how to use Groupmap?

Click on the links below to find tutorials on using Groupmap:

On the next blog post we will discuss how Groupmap, a free web tool that facilitates student collaboration, can be used to promote instruction in the blended learning classroom.