The Jewish Community Comes Together on Twitter

On July 11, 2011 nine year old Leiby Kletzky went missing in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, NY. A massive search effort was organized to find him, but less than 48 hours later Leiby was found murdered. From a communications standpoint, one of the interesting things about this event was the way it played out on Twitter. Within hours, hundreds of people had authored thousands of tweets related to the missing boy. This communication was possible because people used the #bpboy hashtag in their tweets. This hashtag was used to share news about the latest developments in the case, help coordinate search and rescue efforts, inform people about funeral arrangements and it gave people a platform from which they could express their condolences, shock and anger.

The #bpboy hashtag came to my attention on July 12, at about 2:00 PM. I noticed that about 350 tweets had already been created with the #bpboy hashtag so I created a Twitter archive for all future tweets that would use the #bpboy hashtag. In less than twelve hours there were thousands of tweets. You can view the archive here and some interesting stats here.

I think there are a number of lessons to take away from this story:

1) The power of Twitter within the Jewish community. It is clear that many Jews are using Twitter as a communication tool. Even ultra-Orthodox Jews in Boro Park.

2) It is possible to create a real sense of community on Twitter. There were so many tweets from concerned people who wanted to help or express themselves it was just amazing to see.

The question them becomes, could Twitter have been an even more powerful tool within this community? For example, it took about 9 hours from when the boy went missing until a hashtag was created and another 12-14 for the hashtag to take off. Put another way, it took almost 24 hours for this Twitter community to be created and for them to find each other. Looking to the future, could Twitter be used in such a way that it might prevent another tragedy?

I think it can. For starters, Twitter could have been used to alert people much earlier that the boy was missing. Time was crucial here. By the time authorities were notified, the kidnapping had already taken place. In general, the sooner the right information gets out, the better the chances of recovery. Imagine if as soon as the boy was reported missing every cell phone within the community received an urgent bulletin with a picture of the boy attached explaining to look out for him? The speed in which a large group of people could be reached would be of tremendous value.

Second, Twitter could also be used to guide the rescue efforts more efficiently by tweeting where help is needed or what resources are lacking. Some of this was done, but to best of my knowledge there was no communication with the community at large to check Twitter if they can. For example, Hatzolah and Shomrim both tweeted during the event but to the best of my knowledge no announcement was made that their tweets could be followed on Twitter. How were people to know? If these organizations would have relayed that information, people might have been out in the field instead of trying to figure out if and where their help was needed. It would have relieved stress from overburdened command centers.

Third, a lot of rumors or misinformation could have been posted on Twitter as well. If people would know to follow certain people or lists, the spread of misinformation could be prevented. Imagine if somebody would have tweeted a rumor the boy was found and everyone could go home. It could have been a disaster. Having clear and reliable information made available could go a long way towards preventing rumor mongering.

The bottom line is, Twitter can be an effective communication tool particularly in times of emergency, we need to tweak it to perfection!

I am particularity interested in using Twitter as a platform for communication within the Jewish community as such I have created a mock website to explain my vision. If you could leave some feedback about this article or the website which is called TweetingJews.com I would love to hear from you! (Please realize at this point the website is only projecting a very general idea.)

Can Open Source work for Jewish Education?

Quick, what dos Mozilla Firefox, Linux, Moodle, Openoffice.org. Audacity and Filezilla all have in common? Answer: They are all examples of great open source software available for free on the web. In general, open source products are developed by people around the globe who contribute their time and expertise to develop a product which is then made available for free to the public at large.

Recently there has been some discussion about exploring an open source model for Jewish education. It sounds idealistic, everybody chipping in their little part, the question is - how practical is such an idea?

As someone who has actually tried to organize an open source project or two for Jewish education, I would like to share what I learned from these experiences and what I see the challenges to be.

One particular project I tried to launch revolved around developing some Judaic Studies curricular materials. (I have blogged about it here in the past.) My thought was to start with something small that educators can collaborate on over the summer. I thought the free time in the summer and the limited materials that needed to be covered would make be a good first candidate for an open source project. However, sadly enough the project never got off the ground. I will be the first to admit that I was probably the source of the problem, however there are some lessons I took away from this. I view these as challenges which need to be overcome in the future.

Challenge #1 Are Jewish educators even online?

The first step in any open source project is finding like minded people willing to contribute their time and expertise. Where does one find such people? Techies use the internet to find each other. Where do you find other Jewish educators online? I posted invitations on Lookjed, I created a Facebook group...I even tried faxing an invitation to all schools in the Lookjed directory. However, at the end of the day, I question what percentage of Jewish educators were even aware of such a project. Many Jewish educators have ideological opposition to using the internet at home. If you can't find a big enough pool of contributors your project is almost dead in the water unless it is very small and specific. Although I thought my project was small and specific, obviously it wasn't small and specific enough.

Challenge # 2 Do educators have the time and technological expertise?

Even if we can find Jewish educators online, how many of them feel comfortable using technology collaborating tools? It is one thing for people who make their living as developers to use technology to connect and collaborate on the development of software, but can you ask them same of educators? Put another way, asking techies to use tech is somewhat different than asking non techies to use tech. Do we have any good examples of successful open source educational curricular projects out there on a national level? There is talk of open source textbooks, Wikipedia might be a close example but they are not exactly the same. I have seen some attempts for Jewish educators to get together on a wiki, but I am unaware of any great results in terms of team collaboration and project successes. With time the tools will presumably get easier to use, but the steep learning curve for contributors remains a challenge.

Another related thing to consider, is the time factor. While the average software developer probably makes a decent salary and most likely has a small family as the average American does, those involved in Jewish education are often making a minimal salary and work two jobs to support a larger than average family. That does not leave a lot of free time to dedicate to projects. Some of us are a little crazy, but the majority are not. Working on a project requires dedication and at a certain point one needs to ask themselves why am I doing all this work for free?

Challenge # 3 Who is leading and/or sponsoring the project?

Speaking of free, when you read about most of the successful open source projects you will notice two things they have in common. The first is, they are almost all led by a group at the top who are dedicated to the project on a nearly full time basis. Second, these people at the top are usually SPONSORED in some way. They are not working for free.

For example: Openoffice.org is supported by Sun Microsystems, presumably because they want to chip away at Microsoft. Moodle headquarters is supported by hosting services who use the Moodle trademark and contribute a portion of their profits to the head team. Linux developers make their money by offering support. Sourgeforge.net which hosts open source projects for free makes money by selling their platform software to businesses. Even Wikipedia has its own foundation and can easily make money by advertising. The point is, very few large projects are developed wholly by people with altruistic intentions. Filezilla was started as class project and released as open source because the developers didn't think anybody would pay money for it with so many commercial options available. Audacity is about the only project I know of that does not have a steady source of funding other than donations. It is a small project to be sure.

Thus, I think even if open source were to be used in Jewish education, at least the core team would need to be sponsored in some sort of manner and given organizational support. Sponsoring a core group would most likely get a project off the ground to the point where a greater mass of contributors can join at a later time and be guided to what their role can be.

I don't want to sound pessimistic or be the naysayer who says it can't be done, but until I see a successful open source Jewish educational project I remain unconvinced about the viability of using open source to solve Jewish educational needs. I know for example, the Jim Joseph Foundation made a grant to 14 fellows to build online communities of practice, I am curious where that will lead to after two years of training.

To be determined.

Tzvi Daum
http://www.torahskills.org/
http://www.twitter.com/torahskills

PS I don't consider the various lesson planning sites such as chinuch.org or SJED as examples of successful open source models. For the most part these are sites where users just contribute lesson plans they created. There is no collaboration between contributers and the result is a jumble of lessons with hardly any rhyme, reason or methodology to it.