Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

I found out that there is a hierarchy of remote islands. There are the big main islands, which are reasonably remote, like Pohnpei or Weno on Chuuk (my next stop). These islands have international air service like the Island Hopper I talked about in an earlier post. Then, there are the islands you can get to by small boat that are less than two hours from the mainland. Then, there are remote islands that are a few hours away in a small plane, like Pingelap, the island where the color blindness is so prevalent (achromatopsia). These have small airstrips. And then there's an atoll like Nukuoro , which is hundreds of miles away from a main island and has no airstrip. These islands get visited one or three times per year by a ship that circulates around the region. Nukuoro is also unusual in the FSM in that it is inhabited by people of Polynesian descent rather than Micronesians. We found out about Nukuoro because of a brochure in the Joy Hotel, where Mike Terlaje and Mary Kid...

The main goal of visiting Micronesia is for me to gain a real-world perspective on schools and books for students with disabilities. We visited several schools, including detailed visits to two elementary schools and a high school. The first school was Sokehs Powe School, which is on Sokehs Island next to the incredible rock pinnacle I mentioned in an earlier blog. The picture from above shows its site: it's on the waterfront across the main harbor. Like most of the schools we saw, this one reminded me of schools in California. The classrooms have doors that open to the outside, because of the warm weather. Instead of windows, they have heavy screens. Most classrooms have desks and textbooks and all have chalkboards. Some of the schools have uniforms, where the kids are all dressed in the same colors. Sokehs Powe had purple uniforms. Students on Pohnpei learn in the vernacular (Pohnpeian) until they are in third grade, when they start learning English. PCs at the eleme...

Our official visit to Pohnpei started with calls on key education leaders. The Federated States of Micronesia has its capital on Pohnpei (it's one of four states in the FSM), so we met with both leaders from the federal FSM government as well as from Pohnpei State. Our main host was Carlina Henry, who was terrific. She met us at the airport, took us to see Nan Madol on Sunday, and then arranged the great majority of our meetings during the five days we were on Pohnpei. Every time we came up with a new brainstorm, Carlina knew who to call and make it happen. We learned a lot about the situation around special education in the FSM. Pohnpei State includes the island of Pingelap, which has 10% of their students with a hereditary condition called achromatopsia. This is a complete colorblindness that results in students being low vision. We were surprised to frequently meet people with the condition on Pohnpei, because many Pingelapese have migrated to Pohnpei main island. One of o...

I'm on an exciting trip to places I've never been before! Although the mission of the trip is to understand the situation of visually impaired students in Micronesia, I absolutely get the benefits of visiting these islands and enjoying the scenery. Getting to these islands is not simple. The way to get to the main islands from the U.S. is to fly to Hawaii and then take the "island-hopper." I had a vision of this being a DC-3 or some such, but it's a modern 737 that is rated as "ETOPS" which means it's able to fly for three hours on one engine. Continental flies this route three times a week, going from Honolulu to Majuro Atoll, to Kwajelein Atoll, to Kosrae, to Pohnpei, to Chuuk and finally to Guam. Our first destination on this trip was Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). As a history buff, I didn't know the new names for some of these places. As in India, these communities have been renaming their islands back to their o...