Leveraging Technology to Promote Culture

Kumu (teacher) Kiani Yasak is the Hawaiian Language Immersion Teacher at Kalama Intermediate School on Maui, Hawaii. She asked herself: “How do I promote nationhood while leveraging my connected tablets?” This is brilliant because as a country, it’s critical that we do what we can to preserve the qualities of life that make us different. We are a nation of varieties and this classroom really demonstrated how we can leverage the tools available to us today to preserve culture and promote nationhood for underrepresented groups. It’s a powerful thing to have the right technology to support very clear learning goals like the one in this middle school.

Having access to a native Hawaiian dictionary, being able to use video and audio tools to capture a very visual and oral history and culture, having a variety of stages to showcase–this new face of what learning looks like is now at the fingertips of teachers like Kumu Yasak. How can we engineer a process to preserve culture and promote nationhood? This hour and a half spent with these beautiful students and their amazing teacher made it simple for me to visualize the possibility.

We captured the story in such a small period of time. Let’s think about how families are using these types of technology to help them preserve their culture and celebrate and share it with the world!

Reflection and video by Marco Torres, Director of Story at Digital Promise