EDUC 391X Blog

Farewell to the Quarter

2009-12-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

Now that my other classes final projects and my PhD application are under control, I wanted to give a quick wrap up of the quarter in EDUC 391x. The course was an interesting challenge, and very different from my other courses. In all, it was an impetus for me to refine my academic approach far more than any other class.

Because I attended St. John's College, I am a reader, a conversationalist, a thinker, and a writer, but often I tend to get stuck in theory. Even though I appreciate very much the role of action as an outcome of thought, is it also easy for me to stay satisfied with unresolved questions and issues, storing them for later consideration. That is not necessarily a mistake, per se, but a healthy dose of prototyping between contemplations will actually push my thought process further than simple time.

Of course, EDUC 391x was not my only class that inspired me to think this way, but in many ways it was the most relevant. Dr. Kim never gave us the impression that what we were doing was fake, and indeed it wasn't. For my own part, I do hope to do something like what I did for my digital artifacts and final presentation as my Master's project. I believe I am not the only student in the class for whom this is true.

The final presentations themselves went much better than I expected, too. While the crowd was not enormous, it was big enough, and I managed to make a handful of contacts, each of which could end up being instrumental in the implementation of my ideas. All of those possibilities look a little different from each other, and some might be mutually exclusive, but the fact that I have them at all is a testament to the quality of the class.

Pedagogically, there were points at which I questioned the class's style. While I'm all for inspiring students to work for themselves, a higher degree of structure might have improved the quality of work we all did. That's not because we are slackers - far from it - but rather because other classes do structure our efforts over the course of the quarter, and without regular assignments, we tend to work harder on the things those other classes are asking us to do immediately, rather than the artifacts that are still weeks away in 391.

In all, though, this was an important class for me, and I think for many of my classmates. As I pursue a PhD - whether that be next year or in the future - the exposure to action research alone was worth the class. I love the idea of not only researching a problem (and solution), but trying to do something about it at the same time.

Dr. Bonk, Writing, and Academia

2009-11-25T14:19:00.000-08:00

Our final proper class of the semester was an odd one. While I appreciated the quick overview of web-based and mobile technologies (and the difference-makers using them) Dr. Bonk gave us, his presentation style was a bit off-putting. It's not that he was ineffective, it's that his use of humor was often odd and misplaced, and he was at times patronizing.

None of that really changes the message of his talk, but it just goes to show, in an era when reaching audiences in Hawaii, California, and Massachusetts on the same day is not only possible, but is the norm, it is all-the-more important to know your audience and to present accordingly. Moreover, it is important to be a good writer in the digital sense, and while certainly Dr. Bonk has his strengths - and certainly has made something of a name for himself - I was not persuaded by his writing style.

That is a broader problem in academia, of course. While I respect very much the action-research mentality as a panacea for the common research effort, all forms of the research effort are subject to the same end-point: writing. As I have read more and more academic work - both in this class in preparation for my final paper, and in other classes - I am increasingly distraught over the awful writing that most academics are guilty of. I know that I am straddling a strange time during which the stuffy traditions of writing are being invaded by a more aesthetic and fluid style, and that many of the academicians I read are firmly in the former tradition, but there is no excuse for spending so much time so deeply involved in a research project only to produce a horrid and boring writeup.

I certainly am aware of the fact that convention and practicality dictates a certain level of standardization in writing, but even as we become an increasingly epistemologically productive society, there will be forever a need for writing that is moving and meaningful and different. In the world at large, of course, such writing usually holds sway, but in the academic world it ought to as well, if not because good writing tends to be more persuasive, then because good writing is at least less painful to read.

Dr. Bonk, of course, is straddling those worlds, as well. His writing is more for a broader audience than an academic one - which is perhaps what felt patronizing about his presentation. Even so, there is seldom anything so terrifying as the academic trying to write for the lay-person, because in the years and years of academic writing academics must pursue, many seem to have forgotten how to actually write.

Mo'olelo's Principles

2009-11-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

My next big step in pursuing the Mo'olelo project is doing a literature review and writing my paper. That process should clarify and deepen the project for me, and should help to ground it in a solid and intelligible background of scholarship. That said, I do know that part of what I am hoping to do is unusual. Exactly how unusual will also, hopefully, come up in my background research.

For now, my immediate concern is fleshing out the ABCDs and six principles, since I was not able to do so in my presentation on Wednesday.

AUDIENCE
The audience for Mo'olelo is high school students. In the long term, my hope is to run the program in Hawaii, but I would like to pilot it here in Palo Alto this summer. Because I am doing an internship at both Sacred Heart and East Palo Alto, I can ensure the kind of meaningful diversity I desire. That's the true key to the audience for me: I believe that keeping economically disadvantaged students apart is not healthy or helpful. By grouping East Palo Alto students with SHS students (by mixing Pearl City kids with Punahou kids), I hope to provide valuable perspective to each, and because I propose to teach writing so differently from what they normally experience, both should be on relatively equal footing.

BEHAVIOR
I want to create creative, critical thinkers who have skill with language. Literacy, broadly, is the behavior I wish to create, but literacy in a much more dynamic way than it is normally meant. Comprehending words, actions, movies, music, and so on is one thing. Being conscious of how and why those media have the affect they do is another.

In Greek mythology, Orpheus loses his wife Eurydice because he is so overwhelmed with the power of his own music that he cannot control himself. As he is leading her out of Hell, he cannot help but look back - the only condition Hades makes upon his rescue attempt is that he not glance at her - and so loses her forever. The reason he cannot help but look is his lyre: his music causes him worry, just as it allowed him to descend to Hell in the first place.

With words as with music (as with flash animations, even), there is tremendous power. Passion is an unstoppable force, when used in an art. It takes mastery, and a different kind of education, to bring natural passion to bare. To make it stronger and more precise whilst making it a tool instead of a tragic flaw. It's a fine line to walk, but it's the line that, once crossed, allows men (and women) to proclaim that they are truly free.

CONDITION
Because of what I call "meaningful diversity," the conditions of my students will vary. Regardless, the one expectation I will have of any student who applies is that they be able to read, and willing to write and speak. In this sense, Mo'olelo is not for everyone, because it expects basic literacy and a desire for conversation. For the short-term, also, I expect that students will be able to make it to wherever the sessions are held (perhaps Stanford? Sacred Heart? This is early on the priority list). Ultimately, the primary condition is that every student must want to be there, because without that, the program will fall apart quickly. This may restrict me to "higher achieving" students, but because Mo'olelo promises to be different from normal school, I believe it can attract students who feel otherwise left behind by traditional education.

DEGREE
It is difficult to assess what Mo'olelo strives to do. That said, I expect every student to attend the whole five weeks of the program, and to produce - alone or in groups - a meaningful and high-quality piece of writing. My hope is to reach between 10 and 50 students in this pilot, with numbers depending almost entirely on the amount of funding and the facilities use I can secure. While not central to the Mo'olelo mission, students should be able to transfer the writing, reading, and conversation skills they develop at Mo'olelo to college applications and interviews, as well as traditional coursework when they return to high school the following year.

Now for the six principles:
SITUATION
I am not convinced that the "problems" with education are what mainstream media and research claims they are. I know that's a controversial and difficult path to take, but to me the situation that is most in need of remediation is not, in fact, the loss of STEM students, but the loss of meaningful study in the humanities. Is education a vehicle for producing citizens, or employees? Is it more important that we have highly-skilled, non-critical cogs for a corporate machine, or that we have less-skilled, but more creative and more analytical individuals who will act according to conscience and reason, and who can have a debate without the profound anger that we see every election cycle? I believe that citizens are more important than employees, and that the humanities are the key to true education. I also believe that the humanities - increasingly called the "social sciences" - are in an ongoing crisis. As the emphasis on assessment continues to increase, so too does the "irrelevance" of humanities education to policymakers, teachers, principals, and students. That is a sure way to destroy an already fragile democracy.

CULTURE
Culture is at the heart of what Mo'olelo does, because culture is at the heart of the humanities. It is not my aim to create a curriculum that integrates cultures seamlessly, or that advocates a singular culture over another. Rather, culture is a process of deepening and becoming aware of contradictions. Students should learn about their own histories, and the histories of the places they are from. They should see that writing - in one form or another - traverses all cultures, and that what it is to be human has something to do with language.

USABILITY
Mo'olelo's lessons are portable to every walk of life. There are many situations where perhaps reading, writing, or conversation will not be immediately useful, but there are few people who do not use those skills regularly. The usability of Mo'olelo is, ultimately, the foundational usability of foundational human skills.

THEORIES
There are a variety of theories at work in my thinking about Mo'olelo, but there are a couple that are particularly prominent.

Connectivism - The idea that making connections is more important than having "knowledge." In an age where there is an increasing amount of available information, it is less and less useful or practical to try to hold all of that knowledge in one's head. Instead, where and how to find pertinent information, how to connect it to other information, and how to analyze, share, and discuss that information takes priority.

New Literacy - Writing and reading is no longer constrained to written words on a piece of paper. Increasingly our literacy is and will be measured by our ability to understand digital artifacts of various kinds.

Cognitive Apprenticeship - One well-educated man is worth far less than ten well-taught men. Students from Mo'olelo will be naturally collaborative, and will strive to share what they have learned humbly and effectively.

Metacognition - This is a direct result, to my mind, of a discussion-based and Great Works based curriculum. That said, instructors will be specifically informed about and trained in the metacognitive goals of the program, because without metacognition, there is no learning of the kind Mo'olelo strives for.

St. John's College model - Not so much a theory as an effective practice with which I have much experience. Under-researched, from what I have found, because it self-consciously refuses to produce "assessable outcomes" merely for the sake of being assessed. The intangible outcomes, however, are profound in the level of critical thinking, self-consciousness, metacognitive ability, and adaptability of St. John's graduates. Consider: students with the same curriculum, degree, and undergraduate experience go into and are successful in education, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, business, music, law, movie production, philosophy, writing, mathematics, engineering, and so on. Why not port that to high schoolers?

SCALABILITY
For the short term, this is limited, but ultimately it need not be. The primary limiting factor is availability of teachers comfortable enough with true student-driven, discussion-based classrooms. Because there are so few people trained in the St. John's model, there is a misunderstanding of what "discussion-based," as I mean it, is. Assuming, however, that teachers with natural propensity for classroom discussion (and there are plenty) could be trained in the specifics of what Mo'olelo strives to do for a few days before the course starts, then scalability is essentially infinite. Because Mo'olelo adapts to the cultures of the places it finds itself, it can operate under the same fundamental model in any number of locations. It will never be for all students, of course, but with sufficient expansion, modular lessons and units could be ported into traditional school environments, giving all students a chance to be exposed to a different style of learning.

SUSTAINABILITY
As with any educational non-profit, grants and donations are likely to make up a significant portion of the long-term funding for Mo'olelo. That said, my rough estimates suggest that this program could be significantly cheaper to run than programs I am familiar with in Hawaii (like He'e Nalu), with a decreasing per-student cost as the program gets larger. That said, the primary cost will always be the high-quality teachers and staff necessary to make the program work as it should. Perhaps some of that can come from a small tuition required of students who can afford it. Alternatively, the products that students make could be published and sold as a source of additional revenue for the program (or, perhaps, allowing for a tuition reimbursement to students). Finally, the possible development of modular lessons suggests a way to raise funds through consulting. During the regular school year, Mo'olelo could visit area schools and do one or two day events which would bring in immediate funds and would serve as good recruiting tools for the coming summer.

Lessons from Nalu Mo'olelo Submissions

2009-11-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

As the deadline for Nalu graduates to submit their stories to me drew near last Friday night, it became clear that significantly fewer of them had chosen to participate than I thought would. When I announced the opportunity to them over Skype at their Symposium a few weeks ago, they were energized, excited, and a few even "ran off to get started." Those few didn't it turns out, end up submitting anything, and only two of the students actually took the time to send me a product. I don't see that as a failure, by any means, because even getting those two to produce something was a positive step for them personally, but I have to consider the scalability of my model, and what kinds of steps would be necessary going forward to achieve a greater impact.

To begin with, I think it is important that I ultimately expand my audience to a greater pool than Nalu graduates. While they have a particular appeal - being high-risk youth, but also having proven their capability and desire to improve their lives and to become leaders - the broader purpose here is not limited to a high-risk population or a Hawaiian one. While cultural identity is a part of the "Mo'olelo" equation, it is not the central point.

The central point is writing. Writing is, I believe, an essential reflection of one's ability to think, and is oft-overlooked in the study of literacy. We often try to assess students for their critical reading, but rarely do we assess writing, if only because it is difficult to standardize good writing practices. In an age where - as Dr. Andrea Lunsford here at Stanford would say - 'writing' is coming to mean something very different from what it has traditionally meant in the Western world, standardization is becoming even more difficult.

To my mind, however, there is an essential kernel at the heart of all forms of writing, whether they be verbal stories, written narratives, or new digital media. No matter what, telling a story - personal or fictional, historic or fantastic - requires that the teller look into himself and express what he sees. The precursor to stories is conversation, and one of the precursors to good conversation is 'reading,' in the sense of a shared cultural text - whether that be movies, books, or oral histories.

I suspected this problem would arise for my story prize from the start, of course, but my distance from Hawaii precluded my ability to actually engage the Nalu students directly in the way that I would have liked to. These students - remarkable though they are - did not feel like the effort was worth it here because they didn't know how to do what they needed to do. Nalu has done an excellent job exposing them to science, but it has not made them critical thinkers - storytellers - yet. What's more, I think very few academic programs do.

This is, of course, an avenue that will require some reading between now and December, when I produce my final paper. I need to clarify the relationship between good critical thinking and writing, and I need to understand the role of culture in producing stories, and having conversations, and so on. I have a list of topics I intend to research, but as much as I think that solid background is important, I also know that I am fundamentally motivated by the St. John's picture of what good education is, a picture that is largely un-researched. My first attempt - creating a story prize - was not fully in line with the heart of the St. John's ethos, but it did give me a glimpse into what kind of struggles await me as I push further.

An additional question here is the personal one; I intend to apply to the PhD program here at Stanford, but I feel there is an important personal issue tied into my long-term goals. Do I wish to be an academician, or to be an educator (in some broad sense)? The answer is probably, both, but I'm starting to understand that those are not mutually exclusive. In painting the picture of what I could do, I see entrepreneurship on one hand, and research on the other; but perhaps entrepreneurship and research can be the same thing, simultaneous, and complementary. Mo'olelo - or whatever else I might call it - is a model that I believe in, because it is education as it has worked for me and so many other people I know, and education in a form that the experts at Stanford see as something of an ideal. Making it happen is a matter of persistence and willpower on my part, more than a matter of "finding the right time and place." If it really works, is really sustainable, and is really scalable, the right time and place are always and everywhere.

The Other Learning Theory

2009-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Because the required-for-LDT "Understanding Learning Environments" course doesn't run in the fall this year, many of us are floundering in an effort to understand all of the learning theories being thrown around. Our class last Wednesday was a great help because it touched on a large number of theories without trying to dive into the philosophical depths of any. While not satisfying, intellectually, the mere exposure to names of various theories gives us a working knowledge that is useful. Indeed, the learning we did yesterday fits particularly well with a theory we didn't discuss: connectivism.

A recent theory developed by George Siemens in 2004, connectivism is billed as "A Learning Theory for the Digital Age." It's fundamental tenet as I understand it is, basically, that the capacity to learn is far more important than what is known at any given time. There are a number of principles that Siemens lists, but they are all related to this fundamental concern with the ability to make connections - intellectually, socially, technologically, and so on.

Most interesting to me are the implications of Siemens's theory. He discusses the effects of a connectivist understanding on learning in particular, but its effects are also profound in "Management and leadership; media, news, and information; personal knowledge management; and design of learning environments." Though he doesn't go into depth in the original article, these aspects of the theory are explored in his (active) blog at http://www.connectivism.ca/.

This blog is an appealing use of the theory. Rather than merely stating that connectivism works, Siemens is doing his scholarly work in the very environment and according to the very tenets he lays out. In a recent post (August 24, 2009), Siemens discusses the process of peer review and publishing in journals. The thrust is that traditional journals give limited feedback, that it takes a long time for that feedback to come, and that often the feedback tells you more about the reviewer than the article. By contrast, Siemens speaks to his experience with his blogs: "I do almost all of my article publishing on my elearnspace or connectivism site. It is very rare that I receive a similar quality of feedback from an academic journal. What is the future of peer review if it’s value to the author and the field is reduced due to time and quality of reviews?"

As if to back this up, there are (at present) 17 comments on this post, ranging from a few sentences to many paragraphs, with most on the longer side. They come from a variety of people from a variety of fields (most of whom include links to their own blogs). Each is self-selected as a "reviewer" of the article, and collectively they contribute far more than a more formalized review process could. What ensues in the comments is not a simple "you're right" or "you're wrong," but an actual discussion where commenters respond to each other, and develop the article not as something belonging to Dr. Siemens, but as a source of discussion for the broader, social knowledge and learning of all those involved. That is, as I understand it, connectivism to a tee.

Perhaps what appeals to me most about connectivism is that it doesn't reject other theories of learning, it merely adapts what is best in them to the realities of modern technology. Much of what Siemens says is central to connectivism has always been central to learning (when is capacity for future learning not important?). Yet through careful reading of other literature and a keen eye for the effects of technology on learning, Siemens has developed something more far-reaching and appropriate to the realities of modern knowledge than any other theory I am familiar with.

Brainstorming Mo'olelo

2009-10-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

My initial prototype of a writing prize will kick off tonight when I present the challenge to Nalu graduates, but my vision of the project is starting to expand a bit. Rather than envisioning an essay or story prize, I see Mo'olelo as a potential organization that doesn't just challenge students to submit examples of good storytelling, but, in fact, teaches students to tell their stories.

Details are highly malleable, of course, since this is still very much an emergent idea, but my basic concept is a four-week summer program open to kids from across the island. Funding could come in the form of grants and donations combined with maybe a small tuition for students able to pay (since I would want native and low-income students, too, I would try to make it easy to get tuition waived). Through the four weeks, students would work closely with each other and with their teachers to develop storytelling skills, including generating creative ideas, adapting real-life situations, effective embelishment, vivid word choice, public speaking, writing, and active listening. In the fourth week, students would compose an original story and present it at a final symposium for all the students.

I believe there's an intrinsic value in just participating in a program like that - though outreach to low-income and native students would be important to ensure participation - but the other end of it could still be competitive (as a source of motivation). There could be a monetary prize, of course, for a winning story, but more a more promising offer would be a scholarship, whether through Kamehameha Schools or some other organization, or perhaps internally. Tying the award money to furthering a students' education not only adds to the validity of the program, but also encourages students who already know how to tell their stories to get into situations and places where they can make a difference because of those skills.

In the short term, Nalu graduates will hopefully provide me with a small pool of entries so I can evaluate the kinds of stories that students will produce on their own. In that sense, the current effort is a kind of background research into the potential audience for the larger effort. In the meantime, I think the prototype I need to build for the second digital artifact is a website that lays out the architecture, background research, funding possibilities, potential partnerships, and so on for making Mo'olelo a reality.

One of the really promising things about this model, to my mind, is that it is not limited to Hawaii. The name Mo'olelo may be particularly Hawaiian, but there are cultures and stories and students who need to learn how to write and speak and engage as listeners everwhere. A discussion and writing oriented summer program that hones those skills may not be for everyone, but it certainly could find a market in just about any part of the country (or world), especially if it is tied to scholarship money and other educational opportunities.

Obviously I'll be thinking more about this, and would love any feedback. Challenging my assumptions, poiting out things I haven't thought about, and forcing me to be more well-rounded in my background research are quite welcome. I see a lot of potential here, and it aligns very well with the topics and people I am most passionate about. That said, I'm trying to keep a reserved optimism about the idea, knowing full well that my current brainstorms will almost certainly look nothing like the final result.

Digital Artifact Review

2009-10-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's first digital artifact presentations were eye-opening. Every student in the class took a slightly different approach, and covered a slightly different issue. There were presentations focused on unheralded problems with few efforts being made to provide solutions (vanishing cultures, for example). There were also presentations about problems so prominent that almost everyone has an opinion (Israel-Palestine). I made a poster, while my classmates created everything from powerpoints to podcasts, with some movies mixed in.

There were a few moments that really jumped out at me, whether because of the quality of the presentation, or the relevance of the project to my interests. I want to talk a little about each of those moments, to see what, if any, common theme runs through them.

Ashley asked an important question during her presentation, "Can mobile learning stand on its own without formal schooling?" In India this is obviously a big question, as mobile learning is, in many ways, already more widespread and effective than the traditional classroom. It is certainly the case that mobile devices afford the opportunity to learn where otherwise there may be none (or little, anyway), but Ashley's question is a good one. How much support from a teacher does a student need? Can a phone be a teacher, really? I'd be curious to know what level of success young people in India have learning English through their phones.

Jacob's video, I thought, was excellent, not only because of the production, but because of the content. There have been many grassroots efforts to create peace in Israel and Palestine, but few have grabbed my attention like the PeaceMaker game Jacob spoke about. In contrast to most strategy games, PeaceMaker forces the player to determine the best way to avoid conflict, rather than to be successful at it once he has started it. This kind of subversive game-making - challenging young people to see the value and the strategy behind peace, and seeing it as an objective that is difficult to acheive - is far too uncommon. In this case, it seems particularly well done, as well, which is rare in an "educational" game.

Coram spoke to the issue of vanishing cultures. As the Hawaiian culture - and language, and people - could certainly be described as "vanishing," I was particularly interested to discover that languages and cultures are dying as quickly as they are around the world. This seems so underreported to me, yet so blindingly obvious and somewhat disturbing. I'd love to know more.

During Mike's presentation, he made an interesting point that's worth remembering: "Communities feel less empowered when education comes from outsiders."

Tony's description of Youth Radio in Oakland seemed to me a promising model that could easily be transported to other locations. As long as there is a sufficient population of listeners, the idea of putting together some kind of youth-driven radio has, obviously, a lot going for it. How big of an urban area do you need for this to work?

Because many Hawaiians are homeless, Keith's treatment of homeless job training was engaging to me. It seems a key factor in the success of such programs is the motivation of the people who are homeless to work hard and to get back on their feet. I worry that, in Hawaii, motivation is often a sizable obstacle, because many Hawaiians do not see why they should integrate into a culture that has hurt them so badly. Of course, there are also plenty of Hawaiians who would jump at the opportunity for proper job-skills training like those mentioned in Keith's presentation. It would interesting to hear about how widespread programs like the invisible people project are.

I believe there was something interesting and engaging in just about every presentation, but these were the things that really struck me the most. Overall, I was glad for the chance to learn from my peers, and to see what kind of projects they know about, and what kind of issues they are passionate about. I also relished the opportunity to see how each of us chose to present our material. It certainly speaks to our relative comforts with certain technological media, and is clearly an important step in the process of designing a presentation.

First Digital Artifact Writeup

2009-10-15T12:31:00.001-07:00

What technologies exist to help Native Hawaiians? Precious few, I'm afraid. While there are many technologies that could be used with the Hawaiian population, the impetus – financial, cultural, whatever – simply does not exist. As it is, the efforts of individuals – Keahi Souza, Kahu Brenda Ignacio, Kumu Lake, Manning Taite, or Kumu Keahi Renaud – do more for Native Hawaiians than our fancy western technologies.

Kumu Keahi, however, bridges this gap. No one would accuse his websites of being beautiful, for they are not. While the rest of the world is using flash to create websites with eye-candy and unrivaled functionality, Keahi and his students are stuck in a less attractive past. But at least it is something.

A quick look at Keahi's beachmass.org makes you wonder what benefit students are getting out of Keahi's efforts. The benefit is a hidden one. The website, while hardly “professional,” was designed and coded almost entirely by a student – a Hawaiians – with no experience in HTML or Java. The purpose of sites like this one may be organization and dissemination of information, but in their essence, they serve the deeper purpose of getting Hawaiians to interact with and design technologies that otherwise they would not.

Keahi also has taught at Chaminade University, which tends to have a larger Hawaiian population than the University of Hawaii does. One of the classes Keahi teaches is Hawaiian Language, and his site compels his students to immerse themselves in their language, because it is in Hawaiian. Here the lesson is not so much bringing Hawaiians to technology as it is employing technology to better teach a subject. Inside the classroom it is easy to encourage students to speak and read and write in Hawaiian, as much as is possible, but outside the classroom there needs to be some impetus. Posting class lessons and notes in Hawaiian serves that purpose.

If these seem paltry attempts, it is for good reason. Keahi's audience is small (dwindling), excessively poor, and quite wary of all things Western. This is for good reason; the Hawaiians have been treated at least as poorly as – and probably worse than – any indigenous peoples in North America. With no recognized status as a Native people, no rights to Native lands or traditions, and only the efforts of a few individuals and private companies to preserve who they are, Native Hawaiians are deeply distrustful of we “Haoles,” we who are “without breath.”

Broader efforts than Keahi's do exist. There are a handful of online charter schools in Hawaii (see Hawaii Technology Academy), but these do not serve primarily Native Hawaiian students. They may be free, but most Native Hawaiians – without individual intervention by people like Keahi – will not have regular access to a computer, and so cannot take courses online. Nevertheless, these are equalizing efforts, and do serve a broader population that includes many Native Hawaiians: students forced to attend inadequate public schools in Hawaii.

Punahou, Kamehameha Schools, Iolani, Hawaii Pacific Academy, and on and on. These are just some of the highly successful private schools in Hawaii. Most of the finest students – and all of the wealthiest – are plucked from the public school system and sent to these college-preparatory academies. They dominate the cultural and educational landscape in Hawaii so much that when someone asks you where you went to school in Hawaii, they mean High School (and a Punahou education carries more weight than Harvard or Stanford one does). Online charter schools may not be able to bridge the gap between the excellent private schools in Hawaii and the generally poor public schools, but they are certainly a step in the right direction, especially for students who are kept out of those higher level schools for financial reasons.

A final effort to bring technology to Native Hawaiians is the Hawaiian Homestead Technology project, run by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. The goal of HHT is to provide high-tech jobs to Hawaiians, primarily in document digitization. This is hardly an educational opportunity, but it does provide a back-end for the kind of work Keahi does with his students. Many Hawaiians do not pursue a higher quality of life because too often there are not apparent opportunities for them in the job market. How can Hawaiians compete with the wealthy immigrants to their island, most of whom hold advanced degrees and have already proven themselves in the workplace? HHT, and CNHA as an organization more generally, tries to address this issue, but while technology is a part of their effort, it is far from central (the same could be said of OHA, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs).

Which returns me to Keahi. It seems to me that it takes the kind of determination and focus found in individuals to work with a population as marginalized and as small as the Native Hawaiians. It is worth noting that, of all the ethnic groups polled on the US Census in 2000, Native Hawaiians had the lowest median income. Anecdotally, it takes only a drive around the island of O'ahu to see that beaches are littered with tent-villages, mostly filled with homeless and landless Natives. The way out for most of these people, should they want it, is to integrate into the very culture that forced them onto the beaches in the first place.

Kumu Keahi's goal is not to make students into tech-savvy employees and entrepreneurs. His goal is to create leaders. To often successful Hawaiians – having broken into Western society – forget what it means to be Pono. Being Pono means, in essence, being good, doing the right thing, and having dignity. It is, however, a uniquely Hawaiian word with a particularly Hawaiian connotation, and those deeper meanings are too easy to forget. Keahi, in teaching students to build websites, or in teaching them Hawaiian language, is trying to build a community of leaders who understand what it means to be Pono, and who cannot choose but to be anything but.

In my presentation, I cover these technologies, but not before introducing the Hawaiians and Kumu Keahi – through a brief discussion of the banana tree – and then offering the audience a choice. Do they want to hear about “Hawaiian Time,” about the “Kumulipo,” about “Solving Problems,” or about “Mana?” These lessons are the true essence of Keahi's work. The technology, inasmuch as he uses it, is just a tool to help create the kinds of behaviors these lessons try to teach. All four are aimed at inspiring leadership and empowering a sense of what is Pono. These lessons, also, are oral, to be remembered without being written. They are, in short, too important to simply write and forget; they must be carried around and internalized.

From my perspective, each of these four lessons – while all aimed at behavior – can be associated with a particular one of the ABCDs. The lesson about Hawaiian Time is a lesson about Condition, because it informs us exactly what the Hawaiians are up against, and how much strength it takes to be Pono. The lesson on the Kumulipo is about Audience, because it gets to the root of who the Hawaiians are. The lesson on Solving Problems is a lesson about Behavior, as it addresses, directly, what kind of actions a leader takes. The lesson on Mana is a lesson about Degree, not because it is quantitative, but because it reminds us exactly how much a person's spirit must be directed towards betterment, and how important each individual is (and the individual is Keahi's degree; a single student at a time may not be attractive to funders, but it is effective in a way that standardized, mass-marketed “change” never is). Each of these lessons weaves together, and though one of Keahi's students may only hear one of these lessons, the rest are contained within that one.

As for web-based and mobile technology, it is present in the world of Hawaiians because it is present in the world at large. Trying to find an effort to help Hawaiians using those technologies, however, is something of a lost cause, because outside of individuals (or small groups) like Kumu Keahi – who use such technologies as a means, rather than an end – there are none.

Finally, ending with how my presentation begins, Kumu Keahi is fond of saying, “There is nothing that I wish to accomplish that I can accomplish alone.” Perhaps the true potential of technology in Hawaii – and it's actual use – is in a simpler way. Text messages and email make building teams easier. The banana tree is actually a grass, but it is strong because of how it weaves together.

Hawaiians and Technology

2009-10-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping, for my first digital artifact, to find some example of mobile or web-based technology that's being used to support Native Hawaiians, but I'm having a difficult time. While there are certainly applications out there that would be relevant to Hawaiians, I cannot - after a couple days of searching - find any particular effort to bring modern technology to Hawaii.

This is hardly surprising. Hawaii has a reputation, on the mainland, as Paradise. It is a beautiful chain of islands with picturesque beaches, scantily clad sun-bathers, awesome surf, and a prosperous, tourism-driven economy. The reality of Hawaii, however, is quite different, and the terrible inequities of Hawaiian society are not publicized - and are certainly not a part of the public consciousness - in the way that issues in third-world countries or in poorer parts of first-world countries usually are. The Native Hawaiians have little use for technology, it seems, because they have almost no access. How can there be an effort to provide a technology to any population in an effort to better its livelihood if that population has no opportunity to use it?

Of all the ethnic groups surveyed on the US Census in 2000, Hawaiians had the lowest mean income. That is hardly surprising, since Hawaiians have had precious little opportunity to improve their socioeconomic status since the conquest and subjugation of their country. Unlike other minority groups in the United States (most of whom are still marginalized, to be sure), Hawaiians have never had a true movement supporting their rights, and therefore have been left essentially unprotected for over a century. The result is a kind of cultural diffusion; Hawaiians have found it easier to simply marry into Japanese, American, or European families, adopting the mores and customs of those places, rather than maintaining there own. The famous Kamehameha Schools were founded, not to preserve Hawaiian culture, but to re-educate Hawaiian children so that they could better fit into Western Society.

What few Hawaiians remain tend to be anti-technology, if only because they associate high-tech with the country that divested them of their sovereignty. And yet the Hawaiians were a scientific and technological people in their own right. Now, more than anything, they are a people left behind socioeconomically and educationally, and they are too isolated and expensive to reach for any meaningful effort to be made to help them (except from within the Islands).

My personal interest is in charter schools, and increasingly I'm hoping to come out of Stanford prepared to return to Hawaii so that I can found a school (or schools, but one step at a time) to better serve Hawaiians. Native Hawaiians are a core part of that goal, but as Kumu Keahi - one of my Hawaiian teachers - tells me, being Hawaiian is not about your blood or your skin. On some essential level, I identify myself as a Hawaiian. But I am no programer, when it comes down to it, and my interest in technology is in leverage, not in creation. How can I leverage technology to build a better school in a place - and for a population - without the money to afford it? What hardware, what software, is available? What is being tried already?

I know the answer to the last question: nothing, or very little. Within the Islands there are efforts, but they are doomed to fail in the face of a 3,000 mile gulf between Hawaii and the mainland (a 3,000 mile gulf between Hawaiian ventures of any kind, and the funding that could support it). Hawaii is not the blot on the collective consciousness of the Western World that Africa is, but just because it is small does not mean it is unimportant.

The Equalizing Power of Mobile Technology

2009-09-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

During class last Wednesday there were a few things that got me thinking. I jotted them down at the time, but now I think I'll expand a little on each one.

At one point in class, Professor Kim said: "Mobile technology has done more equalizing than anything else in human history." It seems to me that this is in large part true, but it is hardly necessary that it will continue to do so. Really, mobile technology, like many technologies, is full of potential, providing a powerful equalizing framework, but is not itself equalizing per se. For example, we might have said the same thing about industrialized agriculture, but while the sudden availability of cheap food - a basic necessity of life - certainly makes it seem like we might be able to support larger populations with more equalized opportunity, it has certainly done nothing of the kind. Like with industrial agriculture, is there a way in which mobile technology might simply serve to perpetuate already existent discrepancies between the wealthy and the poor? Doesn't it matter who leverages the technology and for what purpose? In other words, don't Nokia and Verizon and AT&T stand to gain more than people?

A big part of answering those questions is considering a more fundamental one: can meaningful education occur on a mobile phone? What is education: is it the dissemination of information, or is it a specific training in thinking process? If the latter, what mobile technology can successfully "teach?" I agree that providing better access to resources (information, lesson plans, research, etc) is helpful, but without a teacher, can education really happen? Without that metacognitive step - learning how to learn - the teacherless student will always be at a disadvantage compared to the student in a school. Of course, that's not to say we shouldn't provide new mobile technologies to children who otherwise would have no opportunity to learn, but how equalizing is that technology, really?

On the other hand, I would agree that it would be nice to find a way to equalize somehow, and mobile technology is certainly more obviously powerful in this regard than former technological breakthroughs. The lynchpin, it seems, is motivation, as Professor Kim says. Perhaps mobile technology cannot replace a teacher, but it would be foolish to imagine that students cannot adequately learn without what we traditionally call an "education" if he cares enough. Professor Kim's stories bear out this fact: kids who have a reason to engage in learning will do so.

This more hands-off approach, while necessary due to the resources (or lack thereof) in third-world countries, also has the advantage of staying out of the way. The notion that kids need to be shown how to do everything is a silly one, born of our own difficulty when not told what to do. In societies where everyone must learn without instructions, there is no need to break that mold. Children will learn how to use mobile technology, even without the instructions or a teacher, and moreover will figure out how to use the applications embedded in the technology. Because they are engaging, and not being forced to engage, they will also find the things that are most relevant to them naturally, with out being forced to study or learn about things that do not help them. There are two sides to that conversation of course - do students know what's best, or do teachers? - but the fact that it is debateable means it's worth giving the kids a chance to determine their own learning available.

To me the key remains metacognition. If you can create metacognition - a consciousness of the process of learning, and an understanding of how it happens - a student will change their attitude towards learning, and will learn to engage with motivation regardless of obvious external rewards. If motivation is the key to education, metacognition is the key to motivation. So how do you get there with moble technology?

Introductions and Preparations

2009-09-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

Our first meeting of "Web-based Technologies in Teaching and Learning" was a good introduction to the course, in that it demonstrated that what we get out of the class is really up to us as students. Professor Kim, undoubtedly, expects a fair amount out of his students, but what he expects seems to be fairly fluid. That is to say, the kinds of projects I end up doing may differ greatly from the projects Amrita or Jacob does, and that's kind of the point.

More than anything, I believe that the potential connections Professor Kim can help us make are enough to make the course worth it. I would almost say that the essence of the class is networking and prototyping. We are meant to try out ideas, that then allow us to figure out the all-important "who" of what kind of work we might like to do (whether that be for our internships, our final projects, or even our careers after Stanford). In this sense the class is somewhat laid-back - because there aren't extensive and difficult readings, or overbearing essays to write - but essential in that, the more effective and creative the effort put forth, the more able we will be to access and take advantage of the resources Professor Kim has made available to us.

From my own teaching experience, I find the pedagogy in the class so far refreshing, because it is much more in line with what I am used to trying to do. As a student, I would rather provide my own motivation, and engage to the level and in ways appropriate to my interests. That's not to say that we are meant to not engage if we don't want to, but rather, that the Professor takes for granted that we all want to take the class, and will engage. Many classes ask for contributions that, while helpful in an ancillary way - or helpful for the teacher - are not actually relevant to the kind of thought-processes that are, ultimately, the most effective or useful. I suspect this will not be the case in 391.

Seeing some of the projects students from previous iterations of the class produced was, as such things always are, helpful. The most immediate consideration, for me, was the balance between style and substance, and how we, as educators, have to find a way to provide both. Some projects were heavy on substance, but light on "bells and whistles" (I'm thinking specifically of the health project), while others were creative and funny, but conveyed a fairly simple point (for example, the Buzz Lightyear project). That balance is important, I think, because in some sense we might call "bells and whistles" the defining feature of technology. So how do we use technology to support learning? Is it best to teach technology for its own sake, or to use it as a tool to assist other learning? How can we do that without distracting students form the material?

A brief aside, on that last question. While working at Punahou - a private school in Hawaii - a couple summers ago, a friend of mine and I worked together to craft a GoogleEarth lesson for history students, with the eventual goal of helping them produce their own. While the software certainly helped them to visualize the planet, I don't know that it helped them with the more fundamental point: that the resources we use every day come from all over the world. GoogleEarth, in some sense, made this fact more immediate (at least, once they saw where apples and salt and steel and so on really come from), but it also distracted them from that kind of thinking. Instead, they were focused on how to link to pictures or videos, and how to make sure their tour worked alright when they pressed play. That valuable mental energy that went towards learning the program may have facilitated a higher level of engagement, but I don't know that it actually helped the students think through the questions and concepts they were meant to.

So what is worth learning? And how does technology help us get there? These broad questions are perhaps not the focus of any one class, but I feel that 391 might help me think about them more than my other classes.