The iChallenge

What is The iChallenge Ideas Incubator?

The iCenter’s iChallenge Ideas Incubator is nurturing the seeds of the future in Jewish education. It is helping talented, creative, and passionate educators, parents, and communal leaders to imagine, design, and experiment with new possibilities. The iChallenge Ideas Incubator is bringing together people who might otherwise have never met, exposing them to the light of powerful ideas from the general educational world, and enabling new shoots to grow and take root. The Incubator is building a powerful model for growing new life in Jewish education.

In brief, the iChallenge Ideas Incubator is:

• A chance for seasoned educators, passionate parents and creative thinkers to collaborate on creating innovative Jewish educational experiences

• An opportunity for ideas to received up to $30,000 of support per project

• An initiative aimed at Chicago-area children in pre-K through 8th grade

• An invitation to become part of a new diverse cohort of inspiring educators and enjoy intensive professional development and collaboration opportunities

The Ideas Incubator is made possible by a generous matching grant.

A New Model of Educational Entrepreneurship

The Ideas Incubator focuses its work on developing models in several core areas. Each model area features a number of projects, which take place in a diverse range of settings, from home to synagogue, from school to farm. Projects impact a range of ages, from early childhood and young families to B’nai Mitzvah students. The general model areas include:

1. Learning from the success of Jewish summer camps to bring the joy and power of the camp experience to year-round Jewish education.
2. Collaborating with B’nai Mitzvah students to create initiatives that inspire the development of their personal narrative; the understanding of their Jewish journey; and the commitment to become creators, and not just consumers, of their Jewish education.
3. Presenting Jewish education through diverse lenses that engage 21^st century children’s interests and learning styles, including sports, the environment, technology and social action.
4. Playing with new models for complementary Jewish education, in different types of settings with different types of curriculum.
5. Connecting American and Israeli children, and their families, using cutting-edge technology backed up by rich curriculum and inquiry.
6. Developing immersive educational environments that integrate Israeli culture and language.
7. Incorporating the latest advances in educational theory to promote the use of games-based learning, which has the power to nurture collaborative and student-centered approaches.

About the People

People and experiential learning are at the heart of the Ideas Incubator. From its initial community-wide creative ideation session in January 2011 through the regular gatherings of its grantees, the Ideas Incubator has been animated by the belief that great ideas grow in environments of diversity. If multiple individuals or organizations are working on similar projects, the Incubator helps to bring them together. And the Incubator convenes all of its grantees to learn from leaders in innovative educational thinking. The result is a set of projects that are stronger from the experience of cross-pollination, and a community of educators who are more creative, resilient, networked and inspired to take risks and stretch their imagination of what is possible.

The educators who are part of the incubator are:

• Prepared to broaden the way they think about and do education

• Interested in using diverse lenses (social action, technology, arts, sports, environment, health, etc.) that speak to today's learners

• Inspired to create meaningful Jewish experiences

• Looking for creative professional collaboration and development

• Committed to excellence in Jewish education