Orot Israel College Students Attend Prestigious Academic Conference

by Dr. Avia Guttman  

Head, Special Education Department, Orot Israel College

On Monday, 25 Tevet 5773 (January 7, 2013), students from Orot Israel College’s special education department attended an important academic conference at Bar Ilan University in honor of Israel Prize laureate Professor Reuven Feuerstein’s 91^st birthday. Entitled “Cognitive Education, Modifiability, Learning, the Brain, and Everything in Between,” the conference was a joint undertaking of Bar Ilan’s School of Education and the Israel Association for Cognitive Education. After a number of distinguished academics – including Professor Zemira Mevarech, Dean of Bar Ilan’s Faculty of Social Sciences; Israel Prize laureate Professor Penina Klein of Bar Ilan’s School of Education; Professor Hephzibah Lifshitz, President of the Israel Association for Cognitive Education; and others – greeted the conference’s participants, the two keynote speakers took to the podium. Professor David Tzuriel, an internationally-renowned expert on dynamic assessment, spoke about “Mediated Learning and Cognitive Modifiability,” and Professor Moshe Bar, the director of Bar Ilan’s Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, gave a talk entitled “To Learn and to Remember: The Human Brain from Infancy to Old Age.” Next, the participants were invited to choose from an exciting array of simultaneous symposiums, which focused on cognitive education’s real life applications. The symposiums were delivered by lecturers from different Israeli universities. Orot Israel College was represented by Dr. Avia Guttmann, head of our special education department, who chaired a symposium and delivered one of the lectures. Finally, Professor Feuerstein himself took to the stage and delighted the participants with his talk, which was entitled “Structural Cognitive Modifiability and the Brain’s Neuroplasticity.” Professor Feuerstein demonstrated how learning and repetition can even have an effect on the brains of individuals with impaired cognitive functioning. Later, the students thanked Orot’s administration for allowing them to participate in this prestigious conference. In particular, the students enjoyed meeting the world-famous authors of the books and articles they had encountered during the course of their studies at Orot. The students were also grateful that they had been privileged to witness academia at its best and said that they hoped they would have the opportunity to take part in additional conferences and colloquiums.