Teach 3.11 is a multi-language collaborative resource that helps teachers, students, and scholars locate and share educational resources about the historical contexts of scientific and technical issues related to the triple earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in Japan.
- “What should I read?”
- “What should I teach?”
- “Who studies these issues?”
These represent a sample of the kinds of questions that have been directed at and among many Japan-watchers and analysts of science and technology since 11 March 2011. As an independent initiative spurred by the hope of helping people find answers to such questions more quickly, Teach 3.11 is a volunteer-based online project built in the spirit of international cooperation and solidarity that disaster recoveries depend upon, regardless where they occur. As a not-for-profit educational project of the Forum for the History of Science in Asia, Teach 3.11 has a simple goal: to help highlight scholarly works and teaching materials by enlivening the collective wisdom of scholars worldwide working at the intersections of history of science and technology and Asia.
Achieving this goal depends on volunteers writers and translators consisting of undergraduates, graduate students at the masters and doctoral level, post-docs, and professors. Volunteers write and translate summaries of useful books, films, articles, and other resources on history of science and technology topics related to the disasters. By posting materials in English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, we hope to make Teach 3.11 as useful as possible for fellow educators, students, and scholars everywhere. Here’s a sample of the kind of entries we are compiling, and a longer list of completed annotations is here. Click here to volunteer as a contributing writer or translator.
Beginning on 14 April through the end of the month, we posted every weekday at 2:46 p.m. local time in Japan to remember the events that have since unfolded. We fielded citation suggestions during our first phase of development through a self-imposed deadline of April 22nd in order to collect the most relevant information about references, readings, and audio-visual materials to aid teachers interested in pertinent history of science and technology resources in the wake of the disasters. A year later, we continue to prepare future online postings in multiple languages toward the aim of building a collectively produced online teaching resource. New postings will continue to appear at 2:46 p.m. Japan time.
Our lines of communication are open to the community. Click here to volunteer, or email us at teach3eleven [at] gmail.com. Bookmark and check teach311.wordpress.com or follow us on Twitter @teach_311 for updates. As we increase our digital capacity, please stay tuned and help spread the word.
Thank you.
Image: A house floats intact in the Pacific Ocean, washed out to sea by the tsunami of March 11, 2011. Credit: US Navy
This is a wonderful job! I am very much looking forward to utilizing the collections in my teaching. In fact, I already discussed with the students about the question of “continuing construction of nuclear power plants” upon watching the recent news on Fukushima Nuclear Plants in the course entitled “Engineering Technology and Society” being taught jointly for Seoul National University and Jeonnam National University in Korea.