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"It is … our duty as scientists to promote education, rational thinking and tolerance. We should also encourage our educated youth to become technological entrepreneurs. Those countries that nurture this knowhow will survive future financial and social crises. Let us advance science to create a better world for all."
Professor Dan Shechtman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2011, and member of World ORT’s Academic Advisory Council in Israel.

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"I think education is the fundamental component to South Africa being able to become a successful nation. Education should not be based on race, class, gender or ethnicity and ORT has ensured that people from all walks of life are afforded an equal chance for a better tomorrow.”
Johnny Clegg, musician and anthropologist.

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"Throughout the world, ORT schools provide a modern educational environment in which young people learn to appreciate time-honoured general values as well as get connected to Jewish values. The cutting edge technological orientation brought in by ORT positions Jewish schools at a much higher level, thus providing them with an ability to attract the generation who may otherwise remain unaffiliated."
Natan Sharansky

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"I have had occasion before to remark on the fact that ORT's activity does not base itself upon 'charity' but upon self help. Both for the work of rebuilding human lives and the great task of building a new nation in Israel, the acquisition of skills assumes an enormous importance. I want to assure you of my greatest admiration for the cause in which you are so nobly engaged."
Albert Einstein

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"Your vocational training activities … represent a constructive activity on a people-to-people level which deserves approbation … You are engaged in a work of great humanitarian significance. Yours is the type of meaningful program which transmits skills and technical knowledge as an aid to the modernization of communities and to the improvement of living standards. It is thus in consonance with the main currents of our times."
President John F. Kennedy

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"…ORT has provided an education for life to Jews and others in vulnerable communities throughout the world. In so doing, it has exemplified one of Judaism's greatest values. We are the people who predicated our very existence as a people on education, on 'teaching... diligently to our children.' … The civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome have long since disappeared. Judaism still lives and flourishes and survives. ORT is testimony to that truth.”
Lord Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

World ORT News

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12 Jan 2012 15:51 Age: 125 days
Category: News Update, FSU

World ORT and ORT Russia selected to help develop school for Russia’s Silicon Valley

World ORT and ORT Russia have been given the task of designing a massive new school to serve the population of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre – Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley.   After beating a field of 200 domestic and international competitors for the multi-million-dollar tender, ORT has initiated a consortium of companies and organisations which were similarly shortlisted by the Skolkovo Foundation, the agency responsible for the Innovation Centre.   The idea is to create a “smart school”, similar to the concept which World ORT is developing in Israel where two client schools have been earmarked for the necessary radical overhaul to enable them to use technology to create an individualised and collaborative learning environment with more opportunities for cross-curricular integration and improved content development and delivery.

The school which ORT is helping to develop will form an integral part of the Skolkovo innovation city, seen here in an artist’s impression.

World ORT Chief Program Officer Vladimir Dribinskiy said ORT’s selection was the icing on the cake of the 20th anniversary since its return to Russia, the country where it was founded in 1880 and from which it was expelled during the Stalinist era.

“That we are a driving force of the consortium which won the tender for such a prestigious project is a great achievement in and of itself,” Mr Dribinskiy said. “I am very proud that we are in this position after 20 years of developing ORT’s operations in Russia; I can’t imagine better recognition of our contribution and achievements.”

ORT and fellow consortium members, the Moscow Institute of Open Education, the Federal Institute of Educational Development, and the Technology for Learning Educational Centre, British company Lookred and American firm Global Lab, have common values sharing a vision of a technologically-based “transparent” school which would embrace the community it serves.

Currently, that community is little more than a village. However, the Government reportedly expects 40,000 people to live and work in what it wants to be an ultra-modern “Innovation City” built on 900 acres 20km west of Moscow – an ecosystem to encourage scientific and technology-based companies.

Since the Government launched the Skolkovo Innovation Centre project in 2009, more than 200 companies have been attracted to the idea of setting up a presence there – including research and development centres currently under construction for IBM, Siemens, Ericsson and Nokia – to develop new space and telecom products, innovative medical equipment, biotech, clean and efficient energy products, nuclear technologies and information technology. Skolkovo itself is intended to become a “city laboratory” where locally-developed innovations will be introduced and approved.

The planned school complex, with 2,000 students aged between six and 18, will be an integral component of the overall development of the high-tech hub at Skolkovo, with many of its alumni going on to study at the planned Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. The Institute, believed to be the first such institute in the world to integrate comprehensively education, research, innovation and entrepreneurship, announced last month that its first president will be Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Edward Crawley, a specialist in space exploration.

Gregory Vodopyan, Deputy Principal of the ORT Gunzburg School in St Petersburg, said: “It will be a comprehensive school for local, working class children and for the children of the transient white collar population of high tech workers, businesspeople and academics who will be drawn to the area. ORT will be responsible for designing information systems, teacher training, designing the technology curriculum and experimental work with new learning methods and teaching materials.”

World ORT’s global reach means that international experience can be brought to bear on the project. However, it is the individualised learning concept which stands to make the Skolkovo school radically different from most of its contemporaries.

“The traditional class has one teacher and many students, all of whom are sitting in rows – like an officer with rank and file soldiers,” said Mr Vodopyan. “The teacher is the centre of the learning process. We want to implement a student-centred model where a teacher, assisted by tutors, will educate students sitting together in groups allocated according to learning performance.”

The extensive use of technology means students can work together in small groups on individualised study tracks and enables teachers to become closer to each pupil – similar to ORT Argentina’s experience.

Mr Dribinskiy said: “Delivering educational content through Web 2.0 has enabled a more individualised focus on each student’s needs and takes into account immediate responses and interaction with students and their families. It’s an example of technology making individualisation of teaching more efficient and helpful.”     

 

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