54:59 minutes (12.59 MB)
Teaching about the crises in Japan is the focus of this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. What relevance does the earthquake/ tsunami/ nuclear power catastrophe unfolding in Japan have to our students lives and our curriculum? We suspect that there are many “teachable moments” in the stories coming to us from Japan. But what are they? What are the lessons we might be learning alongside our students?
Many teachers contributed their thoughts and links in the chat (see below), and four guest joined us in the Skype conversation:
- To help us answer some of our questions, we invited Dave Mammen
to join us. Dave is an urban planner who has worked on disaster recovery efforts in Kobe, Japan and Aceh, Indonesia. He was a Visiting Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) at Kyoto University and has directed many joint research projects with Japanese government agencies, universities and thinktanks. His research on ten years of recovery efforts in New York after 9/11 will be published later this year in Japanese and English by Fuji Technology Press. Recently Dave answered question on a CNN blog: Lessons from 9/11 will apply to helping earthquake victims in Japan – In the Arena - CNN.com Blogs http://t.co/030uvui.
- We were also joined by Martha, a senior where Paul Allison teaches,
East-West School of International Studies. Martha is not shy about her love of all things Japanese, an affection that only grew after she was able to visit Tokyo on a school trip in the summer of 2009. This was the podcast we did with Martha her Japanese teacher and another student upon their return in the summer of 2009: Teachers Teaching Teachers #161 - 07.29.09 - Summer Special: Submitting Your Own Docs Templates, Japan, and Digital Storytelling.
- Kim Cofino gave us her perspectives as well. Kim is currently the Technology and Learning Coach at Yokohama International School in Japan.
On her blog, Always Learning, Kim writes, "As in all my previous schools, I enjoy working with my colleagues to design authentic and engaging international projects incorporating social networking, blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and whatever comes next!" On the podcast, Kim talked about how difficult it was to write about this crisis, but she found a way. Kim was able to develop some of her thoughts in a post well worth checking out, Two Crises, Many Connections.
- Our fourth guest, Scott Lo also has a few wonderful places where you can continue to hear his perspectives. It's often a treat to check out Scott's Radio Tokyo, especially these days. Scott's plan "is to make the live recordings of these podcasts on Friday evenings on ds106 Radio." We were delighted to learn from Scott on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers as well!
We encourage you to share your teaching and learning ideas and your questions!
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.