It’s Time for Education’ Digital Magazine – 2021

Established in 2014, “It’s Time for Education” has become the largest digital magazine in Israel specializing in education, with 382,000 unique users in 2019 and 48,000 followers on Facebook. The foundation created the magazine as its digital arm in order to interact with teachers and education proponents around the values of excellence in education and the topics of mathematics and the sciences. Within a short period, the scope of the magazine expanded and it transformed into a social media hub where teachers share and discuss their professional practice.

With the foundation now concentrating its efforts in middle school, we decided to shift the focus of attention of the magazine as well. The transformation included designing a new website and upgrading the editing platform to allow for creation of visual content. These tools facilitated bringing the work of excellent middle school mathematics and science teachers to center stage. Numerous articles discussed the PISA mathematics framework in detail and video clips highlighted its relevance and importance, exposing Israeli teachers to teaching practice in the top performing countries and in Israel.

The pandemic also influenced the magazine in the past year. When teachers moved to home-based learning, we immediately convened online seminars for them. Most notably, there was a joint workshop held in collaboration with Google Israel, in which hundreds of teachers participated. In this workshop, teachers met with experts and engineers and together they solved real life mathematics problems. Later on, when schools in Israel partially reopened, the magazine reached out to teachers and asked them to share with their peers via the magazine their innovative practice under the new challenging circumstances. .

In 2021, we will take additional steps in the process of focusing the magazine on middle schools. Middle schools were the last to reopen after the first wave, reaffirming their relative low status. Therefore, by turning the eyes of the magazine towards middle schools, we will now try to reverse this stereotype. We will do so by pointing to the importance of excellence in mathematics and the sciences and emphasizing the learning skills now needed in middle schools – such as self-learning, solving complex problems and teamwork – skills that are also required in the 21st century job market, particularly in the high-tech industry.

We will seek to persuade teachers, parents and students that the road to a successful future begins with choosing an excellence track in middle school. Specific activities alongside the ongoing publication of articles will include:

1. Convening a small group of middle school teachers of mathematics, physics and computers, together with high-tech engineers and scientists. The group will be trained to serve as presenters of this emerging link between middle school studies and real-life. Each will present their personal story, lead workshops with teachers, write blogs and participate in social media and TV programs.
2. Preparing a series of case studies that manifest the practical contribution of applied mathematics to future studies and work. The series will be disseminated using social media, as well as in teacher-parents meetings before students register for excellence classes.
3. Providing access to experience, expertise and practice of teachers in top performing countries by translating articles and reports to Hebrew and via workshops for Israeli educators.

We expect that 65% of the published articles in 2021 will focus on middle school mathematics and science excellence. We also strive for a 15% increase in the number of unique visitors to the website, engagement in social media, and followers on Facebook.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 408