As we will all be working closely with each other in the near future on the California Shake-Out I thought it would be good if we exchanged a little information about ourselves.
I am Justin Sharpe, a PhD candidate at the University of Northumbria, UK and a teacher at a High School in London for 11-18 year olds. I am particularly interested in experiential learning as a tool for disaster prevention alongside web 2.0 tools, new media technologies (such as viral media campaigns, youtube, video production etc) in order to engage students so that they can be confident in both their knowledge and abilities to respond to a variety of hazard threats. I have produced websites to support this including
www.edu4hazards.org which is now available in Spanish, English, Chinese and Norwegian. I hope to build relationships with teachers and administrators of schools in Southern California in order to facilitate experiential learning workshops such as drills, shake table demonstrations, games and decision making activities in the near future in order to examine the impact on uptake of safer practices.
I am currently acting as an animator for a teachers network for disaster prevention under the COGSS umbrella. This involves developing a proposal for a workshop to engage teachers and content experts, designers and youth in development and testing of new experiential educational tools and materials. I have already developed this online social network for teachers interested in disaster risk reduction as part of this.
In the UK I am working with the Cabinet Office, The Department for Children Families and Schools (DCSF) and emergency managers in order to develop Disaster Prevention materials that can be integrated into the UK National Curriculum and will be attending a workshop in late October 2008 to begin to develop these.
More information about me can be viewed at my
online CV site which also includes a two-page paper CV download!
I look forward to hearing from each of you and reading about your expertise and research interests!