Pure Manaʻo

Timeline Summer 12 - pre-proposal, lit reviews, submission for B-credit, negotiations for a course (place, time) Fall 12 - build the course using the village, build in  indigenous, developmental evaluation and sustainability Spring 13 - submit IRB approvals, pa ʻa the logic model, recruit teacher leaders Summer 13 - Alana Summer Institute Fall 13 - teacher action research and gathering of data Spring 14 - analyze data, write Summer 14 - write, collaborate, present This is a "in an ideal world" timeline that does not take into account the village, the permissions from higher ups, the ability to exist on a non-budget, the recruitment of teachers willing to participate in this work with me, the full time job duties that I already have AND the fact that Iʻm supposed to be in 6 or 9 credits worth of my own courses in the Summer of 13 on Oahu when I want to serve my Big Island teachers. Any suggestions?

The metaphor: Today was a salad with dressing on the side kind of day: healthy dose of affirmation, not too heavy on the sales pitches, not too saturated with bells and whistles, and a little bit of crunch to balance the dish. The facts: The highlight session for me was session #1 with Dr. Michael Fullan talking about "Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy, and Change Knowledge." In short: The session talked about the ineffective role of technology in change knowledge when it was not paired up with pedagogy. My takeaways: student motivation decreases the older they get (the above graph charts enthusiasm by grade level. At 9th grade, the enthusiasm rate drops to a low of 37) teacher satisfaction also decreases - "55% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years" - Michael Fullan the necessary breakthrough to combat the downward trends  comes with new knowledge created with the partnering of technology, pedagogy and cha...

Now that we have our family website up and running, I've decided that this is a good time to sign off on this blog and recreate it into something else. There's no need for two personal blogs, so I'm going to take the rest of this week to recreate this one into its own niche. Blogging is about writing about your passion and finding your niche so that you can hook up with like minded people and learn and share, so I've got to really hone in on what passion I want to explore for this manao blog. Some passions on the family blog: food, family, fun, books. That's already there and mom can still share her mana'o and memories on that blog for all of us to savor. My other passion is my work. I love being an English teacher, a literacy resource teacher and an advocate of using local culture and local literature to raise the educational bar for local students. My passion is to use technology to enhance literacy. Really, it still comes down to a simple formula that's ...