Con-science: Creative Robotic Prayers

The Con-science workshop took place in the Arlene Fern Jewish Community School in Buenos Aires, Argentina and involved fourth and fifth graders, their parents, and teachers, making robotic projects as creative prayers. The timing of the workshop was carefully selected to overlap with the Jewish High-Holidays, a period of ten days in which the community gathers to celebrate the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement. 

In this context, children’s curriculum focuses especially on the values of these most holy period in the Jewish calendar. To run a workshop during these holidays was very meaningful because of the spiritual work of reflection and forgiveness that takes place. The workshop was a first step towards forming a group of parents, children and teachers who would carry on the project by integrating its approach to values and technology inside the curriculum and extending it to other members of the educational community.

The Arlene Fern Community School in Buenos Aires, Argentina has certain characteristics that made it a unique pilot site for starting our research program. Perhaps the most salient is that it is a value-centered learning environment which emphasizes the importance of “being” and not only of “knowing”. The school’s mission is to educate the family and the community. The school is based on a liberal Jewish worldview; however its approach to universal values and its search for meaning and spiritual growth, while rejecting dogmas and certainties, applies to broader religious and cultural traditions.

During the High-Holidays the school organizes activities for the whole family. For example, they engage in creative prayers by writing, dramatizing or drawing their own prayers about meaningful contemporary themes. In this context, robotics was used as a new tool.