Becca Stern | 07/13/2010
Though the Tagged Tanakh (TT) was conceived by JPS, the idea behind it was inspired by important people in academic, technological, and Jewish fields of study. Over the next few weeks I’m going to write a series of blog posts, each focusing on one of these individuals and how their work impacts the TT. My first subject is Dr. Janet Murray, a woman whose work has deep implications for the Tagged Tanakh.
Murray is an accomplished scholar in more than one field. She is internationally recognized for her work in game theory and interactive design. As the Director of the MA and PhD programs in Digital Media at Georgia Tech, Murray is also a member of their Experimental Game Lab (EGL). A prolific writer, Murray’s work is published in multiple languages, and in spring 2000, she was named to the Board of Trustees at the American Film Institute.
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Becca Stern | 07/07/2010
 Hello! My name is Becca Stern and I’m the newest addition to the JPS Interactive team. As the JPSI Summer Intern, I’ll be writing and contributing to the JPS Interactive blog and the Tagged Tanakh all summer, and I could not be more excited!
A little about myself: I’m a rising junior at the University of Pittsburgh where I’m studying English Literature and Children’s Literature. I’m a native of Philadelphia (go Phils!) and I love to eat and travel—especially at the same time.
One of my first assignments at JPS was to sort through JPS Interactive’s bookmarks. Using a web tool called Delicious, JPS staff have tagged and gathered interesting tidbits of information found online that relate to Judaism and technology. After hours of exploring three years’ worth of links (which I guess are kind of like digital bread crumbs), I started to conceptualize the path JPS Interactive and the Tagged Tanakh are forging.
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JT | 04/07/2010
David Siegel would have us believe that the era of pushy salesmen and invasive marketing is coming to a close. With the dawn of the Semantic Web, pulling will become the more active verb (and business strategy) of the 21st century.
Siegel is an entrepreneur, typographer, and technologist and is one of the biggest proponents of the semantic web (aka Web 3.0). If you’re looking for a simple explanation of how the semantic web and its business applications work–check out this post Siegel recently composed for American Express or this post that discusses his work.
What does this have to do with Jewish educational technology? How does the idea of pull affect Jewish publishers, educators, and other community leaders?
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JT | 03/01/2010
The Tagged Tanakh soft launch coincided with Tu B’Shvat at the end of January 2010. It was a quiet affair with not much pomp and circumstance. We released the site a tad prematurely, but we were so excited to get people tagging. We wanted to release early and release often.
In one year’s time, the Tagged Tanakh (TT) went from prototype to its first full release. Sure we couldn’t include all the cool features we originally wanted to, but we had made something unique – an online relational database of the English translation of the Jewish Bible.
The TT allows users to contribute remarks and tags to words and verses in the Bible. Vetted content provided by scholars and JPS staff is available alongside ideas and questions contributed by general users. People can create feeds that follow specific topics of interests or follow feeds made by other people. Feel free to take a tour!
We hope that it’s more than just hype, we want the Tagged Tanakh to be useful.
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JT | 12/21/2009
The Tagged Tanakh (TT) turns the future into the past by making Torah study front and center in the Jewish educational experience. The Tagged Tanakh takes the Old Testament and places it in a contemporary format and context to suit the needs of current generations. Using the TT, educators can build new curricula, conduct faster research, prepare D’vrei Torah, and help foster communities of practice around Jewish text.
For everyone else, the TT offers an easy and engaging way to learn Torah L’shma, learning just for the sake of it.
Previously on this blog, we noted that the Talmud dominated the intellectual discourse of Jewish thought for more than a millennium. However, both halakhah(Jewish Law) and haggadah (Midrash) use biblical prooftexts to validate and ground their arguments. The foundations of Jewish scholarship, ethics, and imagination are found in the Tanakh.
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JT | 12/08/2009
More than two years ago we started a little contest to determine which comic book character exemplified Judaism the most. Round II is now complete and we’re left with the final four!! We’re gonna try and wrap this up by the end of Hanukkah, so please tell your friends to vote now!
Help us identify the comic book character that embodies the best aspects of Judaism and JPS Interactive will make a donation to the non-profit paired with the Jewish comix champion. Which of these heroes will be a light unto the Jewish nation?
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JT | 12/08/2009
In recent news, Google and the U.S. State Department unveiled their plans to work with Iraq’s National Museum to digitize their collection and offer a “virtual tour” of Ancient Mesopotamia with Google tools. Comcast officially announced that they are acquiring 51% of NBC Universal. Stevie Wonder was appointed a position at the UN as a Messenger of Peace. And poor Tiger Woods is being skewered by the media.
So what do all these things have in common? Each one of these headlines forecast major developments in technology that will profoundly affect our future. Although I don’t have a crystal ball, I do have a healthy imagination and read lots of Warren Ellis comic books. So here are four things that I think will change the way we conduct our lives in the coming years.
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JT | 11/17/2009
Last week Philanthropy.com featured a fascinating report published by La Piana Consulting for the James Irvine Foundation. The report identified five key trends influencing the non-profit sector and gave examples of organizations that were effectively navigating our convergence culture.
After reading the report I felt a mixed sensation of vindication and dismay. Many of the conclusions validated the moves we have made with JPSI and the Tagged Tanakh and many other points reflected how much further we have yet to go.
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JT | 11/17/2009
In an earlier post I introduced the concept of datasets and how they are becoming more valuable via crowd sourcing tools. Tech guru Tim O’Reilly has suggested that, “Data is the next Intel Inside,” meaning that the next major commodity in our economy will be specific bodies of information or data. Here’s the money quote from the O’Reilly post:
“The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service.”
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JT | 11/13/2009
Yes, yes we all know that times are tough. And as of late, philanthropies have found themselves in the hot seat. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article lambasting foundations for tightening their belts too much:
“An increase in the payout rate to 6%, all in grants, would eventually add about $10 billion a year to the coffers of nonprofit organizations to the approximately $40 billion that it is estimated that foundations now give. Foundations have claimed that such an increase would jeopardize the perpetuity of their assets, yet a number of studies argue that their assets could be maintained with a payout of 7% or 8%.”
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