Innovative, self-sustaining model will produce digital educational content, support alternatives in Jewish education
Behrman House, the leading publisher of textbooks and digital learning materials for Jewish schools in North America, announced a partnership with Israel’s Center for Educational Technology (CET) to create jLearningLabs, a new development laboratory that will create digital materials and educational technology for the Jewish community. These materials will be designed for schools, students, teachers, and adults and will help them explore Jewish learning and practice anywhere, anytime, in formats and venues they prefer.
jLearningLabs will develop digital technology from mobile apps and desktop applications to games and other software. After a start-up period financed with seed capital, jLearningLabs will become a self-sustaining organization tasked with developing successive generations of educational technology. jLearningLabs will initiate, structure, and guide new technologies as they are created, prototyped, and fine-tuned. Once they prove viable, these projects will transition from an incubator/development phase into mainstream commercial availability in the educational market, and the resulting revenue stream will support future digital ventures.
“jLearningLabs will create a new breed of digital content that brings Jewish language, culture, and real-time experiences to life for our educational community and beyond,” said David Behrman, president of Behrman House. “The beauty of jLearningLabs is that it will ultimately become an independent, enduring development enterprise that will apply commercial principles to assessing the viability of digital projects and will develop educational technology for our community in an economically self-sustaining manner.”
Tel Aviv-based CET is the largest textbook publisher and developer of advanced communication technologies for schools and the broader community in Israel. Its materials are used by 75 percent of the Israel school population each year, and many of its products have been adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Behrman House and CET began working together in 2012 to create content for the Behrman House Online Learning Center (OLC). The OLC is a first-of-its-kind online educational platform and library available to Jewish schools in North America, giving students and educator’s access to both companies’ vast repository of educational offerings.
"I strongly believe in the potential of this cross ocean collaboration," said CET CEO Gila Ben-Har. "I believe in it both from a pragmatic point of view and from my Jewish peoplehood perspective."
About Behrman House
Founded in 1921, Behrman House has a long and rich history of developing and providing educational materials for Jewish schools in North America. Behrman House is the leader in providing the education community with traditional print materials and digital tools, as well as teacher training and support to make Jewish history, language, culture, and religious practices accessible and relevant to a younger generation of students. The company was the first to introduce online Hebrew teaching materials, exercises, and educational gaming with its groundbreaking Shalom Uvrachah primer and Hineni: The New Hebrew through Prayer over a decade ago. For more information on Behrman House, visit www.behrmanhouse.com
About Israel’s Center for Educational Technology
Founded in 1971, The Center for Educational Technology (CET) is dedicated to the advancement of the education system in Israel, and in the Jewish community around the globe. CET’s core competencies of content development, technology, pedagogy, and evaluation combine to make it the most comprehensive resource for information-communications technology-based educational materials in Israel. CET employs over 250 people, has more than 700 textbooks and 70,000 items in its virtual libraries. Its various websites receive over two million visits monthly, and 70,000 teachers use its online virtual classroom.
