Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

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...

Touring Pohnpei Because of the timing of the island hopper arriving on Saturday (next flight would arrive Tuesday), we had some free time on the weekend to see the sites of the island. The island is a volcanic high island, with mountains and other cool features, with a surrounding ring of reef a couple of miles away. There is a road that rings the island, and we spent a lot of time going around the island on it. The most famous site is the ruined stone city of Nan Madol. We walked on a coral path through the jungle to see this city made of basalt slab islands, after paying our admission fee to a representative of the nahmwarki, the local chief. Think of Venice in the Pacific, but with smaller islands. It was low tide, so we could wade out to one of the biggest of the 90 islands that made up the city. This island, called Nan Douwas, had a large tomb as well as a “jail” and what our guide called the meditation hole. Donna McNear and I took turns climbing down into the meditation ...