You Can Take it With You Feature Transcription
Announcer:  Supporting Hawaii's Teachers with the integration of standards, curriculum and technology, this is ETEC Connections.  And believe it, you can take it with you. Dr. Jim Skouge takes full advantage of portable communication technology to improve both the way he works, and how he enhances the culture of teaching and learning in remote areas across the South Pacific.
Dr. Jim Skouge:  Perhaps it was 4 or 5 years ago I was in American Samoa and I had to get a report written that day and I was frustrated.  I had my laptop I've always had a laptop but I did not know where to go to have peace.  And I don't know what inspired me but I walked out to my rental car and I said you know what you are going to drive some place beautiful, it was a beach, one that I loved, parked that car leave the engine running, leave the air conditioning on, keep the windows up and go sit in the passenger seat, push the seat back as far as it will go, and work!  And I did, and it was perfect.  I had the afternoon to myself, I had the most beautiful priceless view in the pacific, and I got the report written.  And that was one of those moments, that you might call an 'Aha' experience.  And I said you know a car, even a rental car that is a relatively small sedan is a haven of peace.  I use the trunk of the car pretty much as my security base.  Go do my work and then come back to the car.  I'll invite a teacher and we produce books and videos.  For the past 10 years seems like forever now, I've been working on many, many community-based programs.  I use technology and media in the field if you will.  I work all over our state. I travel widely in Micronesia.  I spend 3 months each year in American Samoa, and I take video cameras and multimedia computers pretty much wherever I go, and try to teach those skills to teachers and work with teachers on projects.

Teacher #1: (speaking native language)

(Native Chanting)

Dr. Jim Skouge:  We are realizing now that the new technologies essentially can celebrate oral, visual cultures.  And that could be storytellers in Yap   canoe builders in Kosrae or to get children to draw pictures and to create filmstrips.

Female Student #1:  (speaking native language)

Dr. Jim Skouge:  We as teachers who are essentially spending most of our time trying to instruct others whether they are children or adults.  We need to learn techniques that allow us to do things quickly.  We do not have the luxury of going to high financed studios and spending tedious hours creating books or videos.  And we found on the new Macintoshes using iTunes we can produce radio variety shows for education that include old people telling stories, teachers reading stories.  And I use media then as a daily part of my communication as a teacher.  

Jim (speaking to his students):  So when you're out shooting you know moving and jerking or the camera is unsteady.

Dr. Jim Skouge:  The whole world is embracing technology, but is not sure how to use it, and not sure how to find their own voice with it.

Jim (speaking to a student):  Ok it's like on and off.  Now this is your voice, let's listen to it.  I could drag this to the beginning, but I'm going to just click on the, that button, there's lots of ways to get to the beginning.  Right now we're at the beginning.

Dr. Jim Skouge:  We have to balance this access to this global information source with the tools that will let us generate our own intimate information, our own processes of learning.  Even if its just getting a child to learn to sit in front of a camera and reflect out loud on his day and his thinking process.

Male Student #1:  I am 12 years old.  My Christian name is 

Dr. Jim Skouge:  Now let's go to the beginning of our movie, and let's see if we have a music video.  

(Music playing)

Dr. Jim Skouge:  We produce everything from music videos to all sorts of big books.  We produce lots of simple programming for community television in the Pacific.

(Narration in native language)

Dr. Jim Skouge:  If you lived on a small atoll in the Marshal Islands you probably won't be interested in the Golf channel.  But you might be interested in watching a video journal where kids from the high school had gone to a local event and have interviewed fishermen.

Male Student Teacher: They will tell about the fishing.  And the girls and boys will listening.  And then some times we will go to try out that type of fishing.

Dr. Jim Skouge:  In many of the schools in the Pacific teachers are under a great deal of pressure now.  They are under pressure to teach the western curriculum, reading, writing, math, science.  They're also under increasing pressure from their own villages and governments to teach their own culture and history.  And we're looking at media tools and asking is it possible that we could come up with simple enough ways that teachers and their students could begin to harvest the traditional knowledge of the villages to that curricula in the school could actually reflect the values and experience of the elders.  I'm more interested in looking at technology as ways to validate and celebrate the experience of people, everyday people, including the children in our classrooms, and their families, and their villages.

(Multiple people speaking in native tongue)

Dr. Jim Skouge:  If we're not very careful western technology, instead of empowering people to find their own voices could just further drown them out.  Part of my mission is to start showing people that we could produce our own media.  They won't look as good as Hollywood, but it will be in the voices of people that should be heard.

Announcer:  An ETEC Connections special vote of thanks to Dr. James Skouge and his colleagues and cohorts for enhancing our community of sharing in the successes of educational technology.  Please feel free to access the resources Jim has provided on the ETEC Connections website including workshops in a box, examples of student work, links to the Pacific Voices website and more.  Also feel free to explore our website for other overview and feature videos, workshop offerings, tips on getting grants, tutorials and more.  You Can Take it With You has been a Lei Aloha production of the Educational Technology Department, College of Education, University of Hawaii.