April Estep – EdTechTalk

Teachers Teaching Teachers #242 – Energy Disasters: Massey, BP, and TEPCO – Local Reports on Our Global Crises – 4.6.11

April 20, 2011 by Paul Allison

Our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers suggest our topic, or perhaps it would be better to say, our questions. It seemed to us that a teacher from West Virginia, near last year’s Massey Mine Disaster, would have something to say to a teacher from Louisiana who lives not far from the BP Oil Spill. And both of these teachers might have something to say to teachers who live near Tokyo, south of TEPCO’s damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant. It has been our goal on Teachers Teaching Teachers to understand these crises through the eyes of our colleagues and their students whose lives are most immediately impacted. Thanks to our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we might better understand how and why it is important to bring these stories to our students.

Here’s who joined us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers:

April Estep, high school music teacher – @MsEstep, Coalfield Writers/Marshall University Writing Project in West Virginia – @MUWP
David Pulling, Director of Continuing Education, Louisiana State University, Eunice, Louisiana. David blogs at David Pulling: I Write; Therefore, I AM! and with his students on Voices on the Gulf. He is a member of the National Writing Project of Acadiana.
Eric Bossieux, @ericattwit, a “change agent” living in Japan for over 30 years. He has begun writing a blog, Crooked Letters, Straight Lines, on his company’s website.
Kim Cofino, @mscofino Technology and Learning Coach at Yokohama International School in Japan. Kim blogs at Always Learning. A wiki that Kim started is quakestories. And, Kim’s diigo list.
April Niemela, ninth grade teacher in Lewiston, Idaho and Co-Director of the Northwest Inland Writing Project. You can also follow @AprilJNiemela.
Laura Kriska, writer of The Accidental Office Lady, Laura is an intercultural consultant, and she just started a website, Cherry Blossom Letters “for American kids here to make art and write letters and then send them in
packages to Second Harvest, a nonprofit aid organization in Japan. Second Harvest makes daily trips to the impacted region and will deliver our packages directly to people in shelters.”

The introductions are pretty interesting on their own, but we hope you take the time to listen to the entire conversation!

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #208 – Wondering about fossil fuel and enjoying the power of twitter in the NWP – 07.07.10

August 1, 2010 by Paul Allison

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Alicia Blair, a science teacher who lives near the beach in Mississippi, asked us to think of her the next time we pump gasoline into a gas-guzzling automobile. Later in the show her heart went out to an art teacher, April Estep, who lives 20 minutes from the site of Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mining disaster. Casey Daugherty, a co-director of the Ozarks Writing Project, observed, "We’ll think of April every time we switch the lights on."

Sandwiched between these ongoing conversations about how to respond to the BP oil spill and similar disasters such as the Big Branch disaster, we talked about how to raise teacher voice and how to push out audio and video on social networks like Twitter.

This summer our guests brought twitter and social networking to and from their local Invitational Summer Institutes of the National Writing Project. Paul Oh leads us in this discussion of how the face-to-face, intense summer work widens when social networks become part of the mix.

Our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers were:

Alicia Blair, Live Oak Writing Project in Southern Mississippi
Casey Daugherty @caseydaugherty , Ozarks Writing Project in Missouri- @OzarksWP
Steve Moore – @SteveJMoore , Greater Kansas City Writing Project – @GKCWP
April Estep – @MsEstep , Coalfield Writers/Marshall University Writing Project in West Virginia – @MUWP
Paul Oh – @poh , Program Associate, National Writing Project – @writingproject – @nwpsiteleaders

Learn more from these folks and others on this recent NWP resource page, Tweeting in the Summer Institute and Beyond:

Writing Project teachers have found Twitter to be a serious learning tool. Many sites across the country integrated Twitter into their summer institutes this summer, and teachers have built "personal learning networks"—groups of people who casually join together to communicate and collaborate on common topics—where they discuss serious educational issues.

Story behind the image:

As an ornithologist’s son, watercolor artist Paul Jackson grew up spending Christmases in the park ranger’s cabin on Horn Island, Miss. Over several weeks, he turned his outrage into “Fowl Language,” in which a least tern, stilt, egret, cormorant and other Gulf birds sit atop a dropping-streaked BP sign as an oil rig smokes in the background.

He posted a photo of the painting on his Web site while the paper was still damp. Within two hours, it was selling as a T-shirt on the art-sale Web site Zazzle.com.

The Columbia, Mo., painter has since created his own site, “Art vs. Oil Spill.” About 100 artists from as far away as India and Malaysia have offered works, with all proceeds going to nonprofit groups working to clean up the oil or oiled animals.

Artists find ways to protest Gulf spill | Associated Press | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.