Compendium

Hoku a Aina summit

We will be holding a three day Hoku a Aina teacher summit over the second week of spring break March 21-25. Our goal is to gather 18 engaged K-12 teachers and take daily field trips to three world class research resources we have only here on the Big Island:

The NELHA sustainable ag and energy complex, Mauna Loa Observatory/Mauna Kea Observatory, and the Hawaii Volcano Observatory and Puna Geothermal Ventures.

We'll also be holding evening sessions with guest speakers and hands-on workshops on sustainability.

Our hope is to enable connections, share solutions, challenges and visions and develop curricular tools we can use with our students.

We will also be video conferencing with teachers in Germany, England, South Africa, Australia, Alaska, Taiwan and Malaysia to share their insights, concerns and solutions.

Our keynote speaker Monday night 3.21 will be Nainoa Thompson, of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, who will share how navigation and sustainability were key aspects of native Hawaiian culture.

As you may know, Hoku a Aina refers to Stars to Sea, and our hope is to address the four major issues of the next century: energy, water, food and culture.

You are also welcome to come and listen to the evening speakers (see calendar below), or if you would like to join us on our daily excursions (see calendar below), we will pay HPA teachers a stipend of $200 per day, which could help you pay for a vacation the first week of Spring break.

Please contact bill@hpa.edu or elabassistant@hpa.edu for more information.

Calendar links:

You can view my calendar at:

http://ical.me.com/wiecking/hoku%20a%20aina

You can subscribe to my calendar at:

webcal://ical.me.com/wiecking/hoku%20a%20aina.ics

Project summary:

http://energylab.hpa.edu/energylab/hokuaaina/hokuaaina-summary.pdf

Description:

Hoku a Aina comes from the concept of Stars to Land, which resonates with the ancient Hawaiian saying: "Mai ka ho'oku'i a Ka halawai", or "from the zenith to the horizon". We intend with this program to leverage our unique gifts here in Hawaii: culture, energy resources, sustainable food and water. We will use the facilities of the Energy Lab to bring together the best minds in the world, teachers, researchers, kupuna and students to develop a sustainability curriculum in the spirit of the Energy Lab project: using the Big Island as a metaphor for the planet: limited in resources if used unwisely, but capable of sustainable living if used thoughtfully.

Our approach will be to gather either in person or via video conferencing leaders in these fields, visiting resources unique to our location: Mauna Loa Observatory, Keck Observatory, the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, and the NELHA complex. We strive to develop solutions for the four great challenges of this century: culture, energy, water and food, and in the process discover the inter-dependence of these critical resources, while working with teachers and researchers from Australia, Germany, England, Malaysia, Taiwan and others. Our keynote speaker will be Nainoa Thompson, who will help us understand how the lessons of the Hokulea voyages helped us to understand so much more than migration, but also biodiversity, sustainable living, and preservation of culture.

We will host this pilot Hoku a Aina summit here at the elab in March 2011, to be followed by a larger, more open Teacher Sustainability Congress in the summer of 2012, where we will extend this experience to include a pilot certification as Certified Sustainability Educators (CSE). It is our hope that once adopted, such a certification will be blessed by NSF, NOAA and other environmental organizations and eventually change the landscape for sustainability education world-wide.

At this congress, we hope to extend the lessons learned in our first Footprint Futures project with the Global Footprint team, hopefully to develop a second level of the GFN exercises we developed here at HPA last summer with the Student Sustainability Congress and the Sydney team visit.

Our toolkit for the Hoku a Aina program will include a wiki, which we will expand into several web portals for student, research and teacher access. These will include portals for sustainability, education, local outreach, technology solutions, and other resources that will make the elab a virtual hub, much like the Library of Alexandria was in ancient Egypt, where an impartial collection of information and ideas can serve as a central resource for sustainability education.

There are four critical issues we are responsible for informing our students about to be change agents in the 21st century: Energy/Food/Water/Culture

We must engage our students in sustainability in all its forms: resources, society, ethics and more. We cannot pose the challenges these students will face as solely science issues, as they will take all of their skills to develop lasting solutions. We are using the UNESCO guidelines for many of these efforts, and are only recently creating a new K-12 program called "Hoku a Aina" which is Hawaiian for "stars to land", utilizing our unique access to four of the best facilities on the planet for the study of sustainability: Keck observatory, the Volcano observatory, Mauna Loa observatory (where global warming was discovered) and the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii (NELHA). It is our vision that our students have a chance to see global solutions through the eyes of some of the best thinkers in our society. We engage them to ask tough questions and to develop their own solutions.

The big island of Hawaii uniquely offers students access to four of the world's leading research centers for the study of the earth, the oceans, the atmosphere and the sky. The Hoku a aina project engages our students with field work at each of these four world-class observatories:

Earth/land/aina/solid: HVO-Hawai'i Volcano Observatory

Oceans/liquid: NELHA-Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii Authority

Atmosphere/gas: MLO-Mauna Loa Observatory/NOAA

Sky/plasma/hoku: Mauna Kea Observatory/CFH-Keck and Canada France Hawaii

These centers offer access to cutting edge research and experts in their fields to students at HPA, which can act as a field research base for studies at these locations. Combining real-time video conferencing with hands-on interaction and study, the Hoku a aina project will expose students to leading research, and will enable them to solve the critical issues in the 21st century: energy, food, water and culture. Examples follow:

Matrix: 4x4

Schedule-see links below for updates

Calendar links:

You can view my calendar at:

http://ical.me.com/wiecking/hoku%20a%20aina

You can subscribe to my calendar at:

webcal://ical.me.com/wiecking/hoku%20a%20aina.ics

Video Teleconferencing partners (VTC) (confirmations in bold)

Taiwan-Ming Dao School-Tia Huang: tiahuang@mail.mingdao.edu.tw

Sydney Australia-Joey’s-John Cherry: jcherry@joeys.org (+20 hours)

Germany-Hamburg IS: Katharina Klimkeit katharina.klimkeit@hotmail.de (+12 hours)

South Africa: Bishops School Michael King: mking@bishops.org.za

Great Britain: Steve Moss Steve.Moss@partnershipsforschools.org.uk

Malaysia: Drew Boshell, Tandek School: drewboshell@hotmail.com (+18 hours)

North Carolina: Ben Wolfe: ben wolfe <ben.wolfe@cms.k12.nc.us>

Alaska:

Ayme Johnson Ayme Johnson <johnson_amelia@asdk12.org>,

Roxy Menadelook Roxanne Menadelook <menadelook_roxy@asdk12.org> (+1 hour)

Rick Davis-Bengladesh?

Dave Doty-Vietnam?

Sinagapore-Lance Boyd: lance boyd <lancecboyd@gmail.com>

Facilitators:

Bill Wiecking, HPA Energy Lab

Alan Nakagawa, Hawaii DOE (Monday PM only)

Mark Hines, Mid Pacific Institute

Mark Standley, Alaska Schools/HiTech Hi

HPA:

Laura Jim

Matt Piercy

Adriana Piercy

Kristin Tarnas

Cobey Doi

KC Stallsmith

Kelly Hart

Deighton Emmons

Mark Ravaglia

Greg McKenna

Mary Alice Nogues

Chad Kamrow

Pat O'Leary

Jerry Bleckel

Brenda Clark

Steve Furchner

Unconfirmed:

Kumu Kuwalu (Nicole Anakolea)-kanu comittment

Christine Dahlquist-swimming

David Giff-Monday pm only

Kelly Buscher-declined

Ali Ann Dirga-declined