28 June 2007 World ORT provides ICT seminar for teachers in Rome Romes ORT Renzo Levi school has taken a further step towards achieving higher educational standards with an ICT and Multimedia training seminar organised by World ORT. Last year, World ORT supplied ORT Renzo Levi with a new science laboratory and fitted out a second computer laboratory with funding from ORT Americas Grace Mendelson. In addition to the new equipment World ORT provided teachers with intensive training on computer assisted teaching methods in science and technology, a workshop using the new data logging system, the use of web open source software for the dynamic teaching of science and mathematics, and the presentation of science experiments without the use of computers. This months seminar on ICT and Multimedia in Teaching was attended by ORT Renzo Levi High School teachers of humanistic as well as scientific subjects; their colleagues in the Junior High School were unable to attend because of exams. But, said the schools ICT and Science Coordinator, Carlo Santini, it had been a tremendous success. The feedback I have received from the participants has been positive, Mr Santini said. They were enthusiastic about having this training opportunity. They told me that they would be able to use what they learned in their classes. The three-day seminar provided an overview of multimedia teaching for staff with no familiarity with ICT tools and showed examples of ICT-aided humanistic classes taken from real life. The teachers were also introduced to useful multimedia products available on the Italian market and shown how to integrate ICT tools in the classroom. A session at the ICT seminar at ORT Renzo Levi. The Head of World ORTs Education and Technology Department, Vlad Lerner, attended the closing session of the seminar. He said the seminar was a highly valuable contribution to the process under way at ORT Renzo Levi to raise educational standards even higher than they are at present. Generally speaking, the Italian education system has some catching up to do with regard to ICT skills and awareness, Mr Lerner said. This training helps to put the teaching staff at ORT schools in Italy at the forefront of the countrys embrace of new technology in education. Not only that, it will result in the optimal use of the equipment that World ORT has provided ORT Renzo Levi. There are plans to organise a further seminar in September for teachers in the Junior High School. And it has been agreed that such training opportunities will be provided on a regular basis after that, perhaps bringing together teachers from ORT Renzo Levi with their peers from the ORT-affiliated school in Milan. Until World ORT stepped in with the new laboratory, science teaching at Romes only Jewish school had been academic with little in the way of hands-on experiments. Now, students use portable instruments to put data from their experiments straight into the computer, increasing accuracy, saving time and allowing for straightforward graphical representation and storage. World ORT has also supplied ORT Renzo Levi with videoconferencing equipment which will be used for educational links with the Weizmann Institute and Bar-Ilan University next academic year. In addition, World ORT and ORT Italy have agreed a matching funds campaign to provide scholarships at ORT Renzo Levi. World ORT Director General Robert Singer paid tribute to those in Italy who had made these developments possible. This vigorous and productive partnership could not have happened had it not been for the leadership of Romes Jewish community and that of ORT Italy led by its President, Professor Giacomo Saban. Their vision of progress and higher standards is one which World ORT is delighted to help make reality, Mr Singer said. ORT has had a significant presence in Italy since World War II. After the war, ORT trained Holocaust survivors in the Displaced Persons camps. From 1950, activities focused on the training of people in Italys resident Jewish communities. However, ORT programmes also benefited thousands of Soviet refugees during the 1960s and 1970s. Since moving to its current site in the heart of Romes historic Ghetto, ORT Renzo Levi has gone from strength to strength, the number of its high school students doubling since 2001. World ORT is the worlds largest Jewish education and vocational training non-government organisation and has benefited more than 3 million people Jewish and non-Jewish in 100 countries since its foundation in 1880.