‘Āina Ho‘ola Convention

Yesterday (June 9), I attended the convention in Waimānalo. It was a day filled with practitioners and students focused on food sovereignty. This was the last of the three days (I only attended one day) which included workshop and hands-on sessions. The day started off with a plenary discussion on food systems. A familiar face (Keola Chan) was first to speak in the group. He talked about the need to have a relationship with our food, to honor it and make it more of a spiritual experience. The others on the panel went through food the rest of the food system from farmers, chefs, markets and education. This did set the tone for the rest of the day and I was excited to be part of the movement occurring. There were about two hundred people and I was in awe over the diversity, from university to community, and yet there was always a shared common goal.
I participated in ‘Ai Pono, Kaulana Mahina and Aquaponics.

In the ‘Ai Pono session I heard them talk about health eating but what was really great to hear is that on the business aspect, they served lunch this past year to all Hakipu‘u students. In the prior year, maybe 20 students per day ordered lunch and that went up to 60-70 students. They plan to add 7 other schools on next year and have found a way to make the USDA guidelines and get healthy, local foods into schools.
Kaulana Mahina was with Kalei Tsuha. I missed her presentation when I was supposed to see her at UH but was excited to catch her at this conference. She had a short amount of time to present a vast amount of info so it's really good I had some background on this from A1. She mentioned the book that she's writing and I can't wait to see that come out. It should be a great reference to all this information.
For me it's always great to be in the community and see what's going on (there's so much). Also to see the students taking part in this experience and making commitments toward food sovereignty (growing gardens, buying organic local food, etc.)

http://www.maoorganicfarms.org/index.php/site/education_hoola/

Comments

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe...

Avatar Chat

Aloha all, Here's my o wau topic for this week. We all know the power of the Avatar and their popularity with our learners from our A`o Makua courses and I know we have discussed ways to incorporate them into our `Ike Hawai`i classes as well. Well, I can't take credit for finding this resource. Our resident Avatar expert a.k.a. Christy told me to check it out because Avatars can now chat. So please join me in finding out what other engaging and motivating feats these amazing characters can do to help us provide meaningful learning experiences for all our students. You can read about OddCast and their AvatarSpace or go to their Web site and test out some of these features. I'm hoping that this may provide us with a motivating way to get students, in both programs, to participate in some cooperative learning and sharing. Let me know what you think and if you feel this would be a valuable application to use. Mahalo - look forward to reading your responses! Kelly

Zoho Creator

I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

Search This Blog