Instructions for Teachers

The Student Space and Teacher Space are designed for communication between students and between teachers from different countries. Student Space is the primary online classroom for educational exchange, while the Teacher Space serves as the background platform on which the Student Space is shaped.

We feel that active participation in the Student Space and Teacher Space is an effective means to connect students and teachers from around the world to create a global community bound by common values.

Discussion Posting:

The Introductions Blog enables students to introduce themselves to each other by answering the question: “What makes our island homes special, valuable, and unique?” The blog allows students to begin building the trust, enthusiasm, and mutual solidarity that will characterize this online community. By beginning a discussion about the uniqueness of their homes, cultures, and traditions, students have the opportunity to hear from and learn about students from diverse communities.

Listed below are a few general instructions for student discussion posting:

1. Instruct your students to reflect on the questions and then to post their responses (individually or as a class) in the blog space of each respective Module question.
2. Ask your students to include in the title where they are from, how old they are, and what school they go to.
3. Encourage them to read the comments posted by students from other island/countries.
4. Then, encourage students to respond to those comments in order to foster interaction between students from different countries. This will also help initiate further avenues of inquiry and research.
5. In order to respect the learning environment of our community, we ask that teachers inform their students to use the blog space strictly for postings that are relevant to the discussion.

Facilitation:

In order to facilitate discussion in the Student Space and to keep dialogue "live" and moving, we will occasionally highlight responses and insights from student postings that we feel could elicit further discussion. Again, we welcome any suggestions and feedback during the facilitation process. Please email us at hokulea.outreach@gmail.com.

Photo Instructions:

Students and teachers may share photos with the Education community that illustrate student engagement in classroom activities. Please send digital images to hokulea.outreach@gmail.com in JPG format. Also, please include the name and location of your school, as well as a brief one-sentence description or caption of the photograph. We will add photos to the Education Photo Gallery as soon as possible.

Supplementary Documents:

If you or your students would like to post documents created for classroom activities (such as PowerPoint presentations, in-class essays, etc.), please send these files along with a description of the assignment to us as well.

Satellite Phone Calls:

Teachers can also set up satellite phone calls for their classrooms with crewmembers. This is an excellent opportunity to turn the Hōkūle'a's voyage into a reality for students by allowing them to personally communicate with crewmembers. We strongly encourage teachers and students to prepare questions beforehand, and then to share their experiences talking to crewmembers with the rest of the community by posting their reactions onto the Education Website.

Since satellite time is limited and costly, we ask that you first follow the instructions listed here, and also review the technological requirements and logistics for setting up a phone call.