After 5 years of preparation, Leo Baeck Institute launched its digital archives, DigiBaeck, on October 16, to make fully accessible all of the documents and collections in the Archives pertaining to the German speaking Jewish world. I am curious to discuss and learn about possibilities of applying those holdings to the various branches of the educational field, how to reach out to different communities and to connect with similar or not so similar projects.

By digitizing the entire archive and not selectively prioritizing according to criteria of importance, the full spectrum of historical documentation can be explored and applied. In a world of constantly changing cultural paradigms, how do we anticipate usage of materials and exploration of topics? How can we recognize and integrate the needs of the different user constituencies?

I have become increasingly interested in three interrelated areas: 1) employing digital technologies in the classroom (iPads and Prezis); 2) utilizing digital spaces to open collaborative research projects (Comment Press); and 3) examining technology as a medium.  The relations among these three areas is somewhat obscure to me, but I sense an underlying concern with representation and exposure: how do particular technologies mediate content?  Using iPads in the classroom, for example, alters social dynamics even as it sustains a more vibrant syllabus—the technology mediates content in a way that both limits and expands.  Comment Press (a plugin for the popular WordPress blog platform) can support interactive collaborative work, but it enforces a form of navigation that I find both liberating and confining.  All this is to say that while I employ digital technologies to enhance my teaching and research, I am also increasingly aware of those technologies as digital mediums that represent images and texts in fascinating and frustrating ways.  I would like to think more about technology as a medium and the kinds of literacies we require to be more reflective users of it.