About the Hosts
Amy Presley is a History teacher with Broken Arrow High School near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Prior to moving to Oklahoma, she spent a decade teaching high school history near her home town in St. Louis, Missouri. Amy double-majored in History and Secondary Education with an Emphasis in Social Studies at Webster University for her undergraduate degree and earned her Master's in Education from Lindenwood University. Her passion in Social Studies is History & particularly the stories - who needs fiction with some of the zany stuff history provides?
Scott Padway is an avid adventurer and native of the San Francisco bay area . Currently, an Instructional Coach, he has taught many different social studies courses from 7th - 12th grade. Having earned his masters from UCSB over a decade ago, he has enjoyed a career focusing on engagement strategies, inquiry based learning and 21st century skills. Scott has been a presenter at the California Council For social Studies as well as other conferences on topics including Media Literacy, Blended Learning strategies and engaging web tools. He loves bringing in his travel experiences and creating opportunities for students to embark on their own cultural explorations .
Chris lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her husband and two children and teaches world history for a private online high school affiliated with Indiana University. She has taught social studies, primarily world history, since the mid-1990s and has a collection of teaching licenses from four states (Indiana, New York, Virginia, and Ohio). In her current role, she designs and facilitates interactive world history courses for students who live in several states and countries. She works with a professor and graduate students in IU's Learning Sciences department to design the courses based on research on best practices in online instruction. She was selected as one of five Jacobs Educators from around the country for the 2016-2017 school year by IU's School of Education. She has served as a reviewer for the National Council for the Social Studies annual convention proposals and presented a poster session on her online world history course at NCSS in December 2016. She is a co-leader for #sschat, a virtual professional learning network for social studies teachers. In her spare time, she likes to read, compete in sprint triathlons, and watch sports.
Ryan O'Donnell is a high school social studies and technology teacher at Rocklin High School in Rocklin CA. He has been teaching since 1997 and has been an advocate for all things "tech" since he first began teaching. His teaching assignment currently has him teaching AP World History, Advanced Geography, Digital Storytelling and Web Design. Along with teaching, Ryan has been presenting at technology and social studies strategies workshops in his district and throughout the country as a trainer for Teacher Created Materials. Ryan has just joined the board of CapCUE and enjoys his family time with wife and two daughters as well vegetable gardening and being a Star Wars superfan.