Keaukaha is a small native Hawaiian community near the city of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. This island is the largest, but most sparsely populated, of all of the islands in the Hawaiian chain. O'ahu, with the state's population and commercial center of Honolulu, is approximately 200 miles away, accessible only by commercial airlines. Hawaii is the only state with a totally centralized state Department of Education, so nearly all education offices and support services are also concentrated in Honolulu. The relative isolation of Keuakaha has encouraged the kumu kaiapuni (immersion teachers) to rely heavily on their classroom Macintosh computers and their access to online services to produce classroom materials. Prior to early 1996, the only connection for the entire school was through a slow modem in a single kaiapuni classroom. By March of that year, the school computer lab and four kaiapuni classrooms were connected to one another within a local area network (LAN) and connected with a 56kbs line to the Hawaii Department of Education wide area network (WAN). The Keaukaha Elementary LAN was recently completed, providing all classrooms, the library, and the office with Internet connections. These higher speed connections have enabled teachers to access a multitude of resources from their own classroom computers.

Stand-Alone Software

Two of the most important computer applications that the teachers use are Hawaiian translations of Broderbund's Kid Pixand Claris Corporation's Claris Works 2.1. Both programs have been fully translated so that all commands and items on the pull-down menus appear in Hawaiian. A custom Hawaiian keyboard layout, developed in 1992, has been installed in the Macintosh system folder so that users can easily create the kahako and okina directly on their computer keyboard. There are also nearly 20 fonts that have been modified to accommodate these alphabet character differences. All of these software developments and translations have been done by Keola Donaghy and Keao Nesmith, with the copyright permission of the original publishers. These modifications are also now copyrighted.

Kid Pix is a program used primarily by children to draw pictures, write limited texts, and record narration, but with the development of Kid Pix 2 it has the capability to produce computer screen "slide shows" with accompanying narrative recorded digitally for each slide. It has great potential for integration with content-area studies and vocabulary and language pattern development. Teachers also have created a large quantity and variety of teaching materials using the Hawaiian version of Kid Pix.

One kindergarten teacher created a color book, emphasizing the colors, specific objects, students' names, and specific language patterns. The color background and the text were created in Kid Pix, and a digital photograph from a classroom walking tour was pasted in to illustrate the concept.

A first-grade teacher developed similar materials emphasizing the question and response pattern of, "What is a ______ for?" The example poses the question, "What is a pen/pencil for?" and includes a drawing and answers that it is to draw with. This enabled the teacher to use the pattern with the students for a variety of objects, have them develop examples using the pattern, and have both print and electronic versions available for students to use as literacy development materials. The students are able not only to see the samples in a book form produced on a color inkjet printer, but also to see the same materials in a slide show, with the added feature of an audio recording. Kid Pix takes advantage of Macintosh's ease of recording, which allows the teachers to quickly develop audio and visual materials useful for language reinforcement.

An example of a Kid Pix slide show that integrates music, art, language development, cultural knowledge, literacy development, and the use of technology is one created by Melelani Spencer's combination second- and third-grade class. This three-slide sample from a more extensive slide show poetically describes the rich cultural and historical significance of different locations within the Keaukaha neighborhood. (Click anywhere on each slide to advance to the next one, click on the indicated spot to listen to the attached sound for each slide. On the last slide, you can return to the top of this page)

Claris Works is an application that contains a full-featured word-processing program, database, spreadsheet, drawing and painting, and a communications component. With the translated Hawaiian keyboard and fonts, teachers find it a powerful program to create classroom instructional materials. With color inkjet printers, teachers are able to incorporate scanned images and digital photographs of students, events, or objects into printed materials that are used in classroom displays or developed into bound books.

Kumu Lehua Veincent, a fifth-grade teacher, uses Claris Works to produce large-print posters used in his daily closed-circuit television production. The Claris Works documents are fed into a poster printer, which scans the images and creates a 24-inch wide poster through a thermal transfer process. Kumu Veincent's daily video productions feature announcements, math problems, common Hawaiian language usage errors, and proverbs for the day. The 10-minute programs are videotaped the day before broadcast, with all students rotating responsibilities as announcers and video crew. The printed posters created for each program are displayed on the wall in a walkway area outside the classroom for additional reinforcement throughout the day. Many older students refer to these posters on their own, and teachers of younger students often will point out the lessons and messages to their children as they pass by.

Lotus Notes

Using Lotus Notes, the kumu kaiapuni can connect to the Hawaii Department of Education on O'ahu to search the titles of approximately 1,000 popular English children's books for which there are Hawaiian translations (with copyright permission granted). Once teachers have located a desired title, they then can make a request via electronic mail for particular translations to be faxed to our school. These translations are already formatted for the specific English version identified so that they can be photocopied directly onto self-adhesive labels, then cut and pasted over the English text. The Department of Education is currently developing an electronic archive of these formatted translations so that teachers will be able to download them into their own computer and print them directly on the self-adhesive page without the intermediate step of photocopying a fax. This should also serve to ensure a higher quality of print, as well as make it much more convenient for individual teachers.

At Keaukaha Elementary, an on-site curriculum developer maintains a collection of camera-ready hard copies of translations previously received from O'ahu. A computer database is being developed, with multiple cross-references to allow teachers to easily locate and order specific titles by subject, author, title in English, title in Hawaiian, ISBN, publisher, and grade level. This database will enable kumu kaiapuni to develop thematic units, author studies, and genre studies, or just to expand the classroom Hawaiian language library, using translations of quality children's books. The curriculum director has organized weekend work sessions for parents, extended family, and Keaukaha community members to cut and paste the photocopied translations into the original English texts, creating reading material for the kaiapuni classrooms.

Kualono

For other reading material, the kumu kaiapuni can access via the Internet a wealth of traditional knowledge located at the Hale Kuamo'o, the Center for Hawaiian Language in the state of Hawaii, located at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Using an Internet browser, the kumu kaiapuni access Kualono (this is a link to the Hale Kuamo'o homepage) and are then able to download contemporary Hawaiian language newspapers. These periodicals are valuable tools to promote a higher degree of proficiency in the Hawaiian language for students and teachers alike. This site is accessible in both Hawaiian and English, and provides downloadable Hawaiian fonts and keyboards.

Internet access also allows teachers to keep up with the dynamism of the Hawaiian language. As new words are needed for new concepts such as ozone, Plexiglas, and virtual memory, teachers can send requests for translations to the lexicon committee for words that currently have no Hawaiian equivalent. Through Kualono (this is a screen capture of the Web site homepage), they also can access an online Hawaiian dictionary with recent additions approved by the lexicon committee. This access is crucial to teachers, students, and curriculum developers alike because hardcopies of this dictionary are printed once a year. Often by the time printed copies are published, other terms may have already been created for these words and may have become common usage. This may cause comprehension problems when reading the official term in printed material.

There are multiple resources throughout the Kualono site for teachers and for students. Kumu can also request copies of traditional stories edited for children, posters with Hawaiian proverbs, science discovery boxes, computer programs, and other instructional materials in the Hawaiian language.

Leoki

Through the multifunctional e-mail and bulletin-board service using First Class Client software entitled Leoki, there are numerous Hawaiian language online resources available. Access to the site is password protected and is available only to registered users in the Hawaiian language speaking community, from kindergartners to university students and professors. Each teacher has an e-mail account, and accounts are available for most upper-elementary students once they have received appropriate training. Besides traditional e-mail (conducted exclusively in Hawaiian), participants can access bulletin boards, join chat groups with multiple simultaneous e-mail partners, and access many other resources. These resources enable teachers and other Hawaiian speakers to exchange information quickly and easily with other Hawaiian immersion sites throughout the state, but also provide an excellent vehicle for the authentic use of written Hawaiian. Because Leoki is available only to registered users, all of the following links are screen pictures of the pages at the site.

The kumu can share lesson plans and other developed curriculum online. In the past, they were able to share their curriculum only through their own informal connections or wait for an annual statewide immersion conference. Now even the miles of ocean and lack of time are no barriers to colleagues collaborating with one another from the various islands across the state. Teachers can post their own lesson or unit plans and access all other archived lessons. These lessons and units are arranged by grade level and grade-level clusters for easier access. Within the Leoki site is another page that provides the history of Hale Kuamo'o, access to curriculum development materials, and information on how to contact individuals at Hale Kuamo'o.

From this site, resource collections of stories can be downloaded. Teachers can also order curriculum materials online, such as resource books that are used for teaching and reinforcing common language patterns. Because Hawaiian is a dynamic, living language, there is a continuous need for a growing lexicon. Online resources help Hawaiian speakers and writers to maintain consistent terminology for newly coined terms. Users are able to download latest additions to the dictionary and make requests or suggestions for translations of new words in Hawaiian. Official decisions regarding coining of new terms are the responsibility of a statewide lexicon committee.

Archives of student newspapers are also maintained at the Leoki site. These papers are distributed in hard copy to all kaiapuni students statewide, but often the reading level is too advanced for younger students. The archive allows students to search earlier issues, and provides an easy access to all the issues printed previously. Students and teachers also can submit materials online to be considered for publication in this monthly newspaper. The selected submissions will appear in both the print and electronic versions of the paper.

Other Applications

In addition to the Hawaiian version of Claris Works, kumu kaiapuni use applications such as Print Shop Deluxe, hardware products such as the Pro Image poster printer, digital cameras, or scanners to create high-quality classroom materials. Although the number of translated software applications is small, the Hawaiian keyboard and fonts make almost any publication program functional for creating materials in Hawaiian. The poster printer works essentially like a scanner, but enlarges the scanned image from normal letter size to large poster size. This product also has the capability, with an additional adapter, to take data directly from a computer and to create a poster-size image. Digital cameras are used frequently by kaiapuni teachers at Keaukaha to incorporate visual images directly into projects they are developing on their classroom computer. A color scanner is available in the computer lab for integrating images from other sources such as student drawings, regular photographs, and other flat media.