Ayelet was named the new Franz Ollendorf Chair (Donated by Octav and Marcella Botnar) at the Technion.
Franz Ollendorf
Franz Ollendorf was a physicist and educator, a founder of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, and a pioneer of the field in Israel. Ollendorff also established the electricity and radio majors in the first technological high school in Israel. He was interested in the philosophy of science, promoted translational research into clinical treatments, and opposed the registration of patents, thinking that scientists must apply their inventions for the greater good.
Ayelet is thrilled, and not only for professional reasons: “In the early 1930s Ollendorf was a lecturer at the University of Berlin and was later active in the Hebrew youth movement in Berlin, before coming to Israel in 1937 and joining the Technion. My late grandfather studied for his doctorate at the University of Berlin and was also active in the Hebrew youth movement in those years, so the two likely knew each other. For me, the chair is not only an important reminder of the enormous contribution of scientists to education and society but also a farewell greeting from grandfather.”
Congratulations to Shakked Dabran-Zivan for bringing home the prestigious Irwin and Joan Jacobs Excellence Fellowship for Ph.D. Students!
Previous laureates from our research team: Dr. Hani Swirski (2017), Dr. Aviv Sharon (2018). Also, Dr. Yael Barel-Ben David won the Jacobs Award for publishing an outstanding paper by a graduate student (2020).
Congratulations to Yael Rozenblum for winning the Refaeli Mishkin Faculty Academic Excellence Prize! Our great pride and joy are mixed with deep sadness, remembering our faculty alumni, Dr. Refaeli Mishkin, who was murdered in the October 7th massacre by the Hamas.
Yael Rozenblum receiving the Refaeli Mishkin Faculty Academic Excellence Prize
Yael Rozenblum with family members
Previous laureates of the faculty academic excellence prize (the Kaplan prize) from our research team: Dr. Galit Hagay (2012); Dr. Hani Swirski (2016); Dr. Aviv Sharon (2017); Dr. Yaela Golumbic (2018). Also, Dr. Dalit Lan won in 2023 the Kaplan Prize for meaningful contribution to the education system.
Read the fantastic blogpost by Dr. Lea Taragin-Zeller describing our new paper “We think this way as a society!”: Community-level science literacy among ultra-Orthodox Jews.
It was worth doing this research just to get her to write this post!
We are often told that nowadays, all the world’s knowledge is available at our fingertips – just a quick Google search away. But what happens when users search for information in their own language? For example, when searching for a scientific term, do search engines provide English-, Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking students with the same level of access to quality scientific information? This question is addressed by a new study, conducted at the Technion and recently published in Public Understanding of Science.
The study found that search results for terms in English are of better quality than those provided for equivalent terms in Hebrew and Arabic. Additionally, most of the differences between the languages pertained to pedagogical aspects of quality, that is, the extent to which the content was geared towards young users, rather than the scientific aspects, such as the accuracy of the content. Some of the largest differences between the languages were found for terms related to nutrition and metabolism, such as “carbohydrate,” “protein,” “enzyme” and “metabolism.”
These findings are based on the top Google Search results presented to users in Israel for 30 basic scientific terms in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English. The terms pertained to three scientific domains: biology, chemistry, and physics. Each search result’s overall quality was determined using scientific criteria, such as content accuracy, the author’s authority, and the use of sources; pedagogical criteria, such as references to everyday life and the quality of audiovisual materials; and criteria specific to online content, such as recency and interactivity.
According to Kawther Zoubi, who conducted the study as part of her masters’ thesis at the Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, “these findings help us understand the digital divide and the social factors that affect our ability to develop science literacy. Our understanding of science depends on the environment we live in and the extent to which we have access to quality scientific information. This depends on our proficiency in different languages.”
Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari of the Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, who oversaw the study, added: “The scientific and educational communities must act to mitigate the digital divide. We all have the right to access quality scientific information in our language.”
The study was conducted by Kawther Zoubi, Dr. Aviv Sharon, and Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari of the Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, along with independent scholar Dr. Eyal Nitzany.
The study is available under an Open Access license (CC BY-NC 4.0) from Public Understanding of Science, published by SAGE Journals.
Zoubi, K., Sharon, A. J., Nitzany, E., & Baram-Tsabari, A. (2021). Science, maddá and ‘ilm: The language divide in scientific information available to internet users. Public Understanding of Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625211022975
בפורים יצאנו מאפלה לאור גדול, ו”הופכות את היוצרות” מנסות לעשות את אותו הדבר עבור שורדות זנות.
בזכות קרן הפכנו שותפים למשלוחי מנות לנשים בהוסטלים ולילדיהן. מוזמנים להשתתף גם:
https://www.yotsrot.org/ for women exiting life in prostitution and sex trafficing
On Purim we came out of darkness into a great light, and “Yotsrot – Turning the Tables” try to do the same for survivors of prostitution.
Thanks to Keren, we have become partners in parcel deliveries for women in hostels and their children. You are also welcome to participate: https://www.yotsrot.org/
מאמרה של בוגרת הפקולטה כאותר זועבי זכה היום בפרס מאמר מצטיין של סטודנט/ית בכנס צ’ייס 2021. המאמר “סַיְיֵנְס, מַדָּע וְעִלְם: הבדלים באיכות המידע המדעי הזמין למשתמשי האינטרנט בשלוש שפות” נכתב על ידי כאותר זועבי , ד”ר אביב שרון , ד”ר אייל ניצני, ופרופ’-חבר אילת ברעם-צברי בהתבסס על עבודת המאסטר של כאותר. גאים בך כאותר!
