A
Jewish Club Penguin? Created by an Israeli for-profit, JLand is
considerably more sophisticated and ambitious than other Jewish
computer games and hopes to reach unaffiliated Jews.
by Julie Wiener Associate Editor
‘Mommy, are you done with your e-mail yet?” my 6-year-old daughter Ellie demands, hovering behind me in our study. A
few months earlier she’d have been asking because she wanted my
attention. Now, however, she’s interested in something far more
alluring: the computer, specifically JLand, an online Jewish “virtual
world” for kids, where she has already logged countless hours, earned
hundreds of virtual gold coins and mastered various educational games. Convinced
that small children are better off playing with “real world” toys and
books that they can physically touch (and also wanting to reserve the
computer for my Facebook addiction), I kept Ellie away from technology
for many years. But a few months ago, when her first-grade teacher sent
home notes recommending the Starfall and
Razkids educational sites, we began dipping our toes in the sea of
computer games. Soon after, JLand, with its lavender-complexioned,
orange-coiffed genie, entered our lives — thankfully, just in time to
distract my daughter from the temptations of Club Penguin, Webkinz and
other more commercial sites. While
Jewish educational computer games have been around for decades, mostly
as software marketed to Hebrew schools and other institutions, JLand
(www.jlandonline.com) is considerably more sophisticated and ambitious
than its forerunners. Developed by an Israeli producer of educational
software, and launched in September, JLand is working with Jewish
federations and other Jewish organizations throughout North America in
order to promote the site, which organizers are hoping will appeal to
unaffiliated Jews. “Our goal is to get this out to as many
different Jewish children as possible,” says Adam Fenster, JLand’s
North American executive director. JLand arrives on the scene at a
time when the Jewish education world, like the general education world,
is struggling to keep up with the latest technologies and determine
whether the Internet, social networking and computer games can be
genuinely useful — or simply serve as distractions — to promoting
learning. “Technology is inevitably going to be more and more a
part of what the future of education is,” says Jonathan Woocher, chief
ideas officer (and former executive vice president) of the Jewish
Education Service of North America. “For Jewish education, it’s
critically important, not because it’s a fad, but because Jewish
education needs to be able to speak in the idiom of our time.” Last
month JESNA’s Lippman-Kanfer Institute launched JE3 (Jewish Education
3.0), an open-source Web site devoted to sharing information about
technology in Jewish education. The site (www.jesna.org/je3/) features
a variety of articles and resources related to everything from Twitter
to videoconferencing to online Talmud study, and aims “to inspire
people to discuss the impact that media and technology have on Jewish
education today, and also how they — as both educators and learners —
can utilize these tools to improve and empower their own learning and
teaching.” Computer gaming in particular is becoming a significant
focus for educators, says Caren Levine, a consultant on educational
technology who also directs the learning network at Darim Online, a
group that helps Jewish institutions make better use of technology. Games are increasingly being “viewed as another venue for learning,” Levine says. Developed
by Compedia, a for-profit that designs educational software for
distribution in over 40 countries, JLand describes itself as a “safe,
personalized online world promoting Jewish identity” for children ages
4-10. “The thing that makes JLand unique is that it’s an
ever-evolving world,” explains Fenster. Games vary in complexity and
focus depending on the age of the player and the preferences of the
parents. New games, features and activities are frequently added. And
the system “learns what the child is good at and what they need help
with,” Fenster says. Perhaps more importantly, JLand — unlike, say,
the stereotypical Hebrew school experience — is something children
actually want to do, rather than have to do. Like Birthright Israel and
its popular 10-day trips to Israel, JLand (which also starts with a
“passport” and a “flight” on a plane bearing a Star of David) offers a
Jewish education soft sell in which participants learn through fun. The
Jewish content (along with secular educational materials) is embedded
in games. For example, Hebrew letters and facts about Israel are taught
through a memory game, scenes from the Purim story appear in
collector’s cards and albums that children can “buy” with coins earned
from other activities, and children can communicate with Jewish peers
in Israel and elsewhere. And, using a “communicator” feature that
allows players to choose from pre-selected phrases in Hebrew and
English (a tool that not only bridges the language divide, but prevents
pedophiles and others from using the site to prey on children), players
can socialize and trade cards with peers around the world. Significantly,
JLand, thanks to Compedia, has the financial resources that most
previous Jewish technology ventures have lacked. Whereas
mainstream children’s games, like Club Penguin, can finance their hefty
development and programming costs by signing up millions of paying
users, Jewish programs are limited by virtue of serving a niche market. As
a result, says Gil Ilutowich, who founded Compedia 22 years ago shortly
after completing his service in the Israel Defense Forces, most Jewish
computer programs are “very poor” and unable to compete with their
mainstream counterparts. “If a kid doesn’t like it after 10 minutes, you lose him,” he told The Jewish Week in a phone interview from Israel. Ilutowich,
who serves as vice chairman of Spirit of Israel, an arm of the Jewish
Agency for Israel, says agency officials approached him a few years ago
about developing Jewish educational software. JLand, which is
available in Hebrew for Israeli children (under the name Pele Land),
has leveraged some of the development costs by using many materials and
features developed for a non-Jewish Compedia game called “Wonder
Islands.” “When you come to a project like this, you can’t expect to
make a profit. I never expect to see my investment back from this
project,” Ilutowich says. Rather than be a moneymaker, JLand’s goal
is to provide “Jewish exposure to children who otherwise might not
receive any,” Fenster says. So far, JLand has 2,000 users in North America and another 2,000 in Israel. Although
JLand charges a monthly fee of $9.95 (following a free trial period),
fee revenues are not expected to cover the site’s costs. In addition,
the site’s marketing focus, for now at least, is less on reaching
individuals and more on developing partnerships with Jewish federations
and other American Jewish organizations. So far 21 North American
Jewish federations, including two in New Jersey, are sponsoring JLand
subscriptions for children in their communities, and JLand is in
discussion with the Union for Reform Judaism, Chabad, UJA-Federation of
New York and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, which is known for the PJ
Library, a sort of Jewish children’s book-of-the-month club that is
offered free of charge. In addition, JLand is partnering with the
New York-based Jewish Outreach Institute, which is publicizing JLand
both on its Web site and among participants in programs like the
Mothers Circle, a group for non-Jewish women raising Jewish children. Rabbi
Kerry Olitzky, JOI’s executive director, calls JLand “a really
interesting entry point” that “speaks the language of young kids,” is
“very accessible and palatable” and “has a subtle, but real,
educational component to it. “We were attracted to it because the
people who designed it are professionals in the field of Internet
media, but wanted to develop a nonprofit approach to reach people at
the periphery of the community,” he says. Because anyone can
access JLand from a home computer and it requires no previous
knowledge, the program “does not have any of the barriers that
traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions have,” Rabbi Olitzky adds. Not
surprisingly for a startup venture, JLand has its share of technical
glitches. Loading times can be slow, and on several occasions it has
frozen altogether while my daughter was mid-game (on our brand-new
MacBook Pro). In addition, I’ve had difficulties registering my younger
daughter Sophie, who is almost 4 and already clamoring for a turn to
play. Along with the tech problems, some of the activities seem to
be of questionable educational merit. A memory game teaching about
Israel relies on grainy photos of tourist attractions, some — like the
Israel Railway Museum and a water park near the Kinneret — that don’t
seem all that important for a diaspora Jewish kid to know about. I’m
not entirely sure, so far, what Ellie has learned from JLand, other
than being able to name the Seven Species and tell me that the Israel
Railway Museum is in Haifa (pronounced Hai-FAH, like a true Israeli). Nonetheless,
I’m content to let her keep logging on to JLand. It’s no substitute for
Jewish camp, family activities or formal Jewish education, of course.
But if nothing else, it makes a delightful Jewish babysitter.
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