Introduction to the program

The California-Hawaii Islands Exchange Project is an innovative distance-learning program linking three schools in two states. Teachers at Oro Grande, CA, Konawaena, HI, and Pahoa, HI are receiving equipment, training, and distance learning resources for use in their classrooms in rural, low-income communities. Using the project's Full Circle teaching and learning methodologies students begin participation by conducting online research. They then circle out into the local community to conduct field studies at partner agency parks and facilities. To complete the circle, students then return to the classroom and computer technology to self publish their research findings. Students and teachers are learning to use online, multimedia, digital imaging, and GPS technologies in the classroom and out on mobile research projects.

The project's distance learning content provides in-depth cross-curricular learning units on the themes of California Channel Islands Studies and Hawaiian Islands Studies. Students use language arts/literacy, history/social studies, science and math online resources provided by the project to learn about their own state's islands. Students then make comparison studies that enable them to learn about the similarities and differences between the cultural and natural history of these island chains.

Thanks to the unique characteristics of online distance learning students are able to share their research findings with one another across vast geographic distances and are being given an opportunity to learn directly from scientists and experts located across the United States. Without this innovative educational technology environment students would not have had the opportunity to conduct online and field research projects in a distance learning community of supportive peers, experts, and career role models.

Examples of classroom and field study research projects are native plant studies, combining online, university, Bishop Museum, Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden content and resource experts in Hawaii; prehistoric culture and paleontology studies with related native legends from the Chumash in California; and rock art research and comparisons between Hawaiian and Californian archaeological sites.

Strategic multi-agency partnerships are another innovative project feature. Partners are providing online content, video interviews, site visits, and live online Q & A with resource experts, bring the real world into the classroom and offering students field studies opportunities that bring the classroom out into the real world. Partners include the world-renowned Bishop Museum, Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, and the Hawaii Tropical Garden in Hawaii; national parks and marine sanctuaries in California and Hawaii; Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Ghannawalska Lotusland, and USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on Catalina Island, in California; and the Southwest Volcano Research Centre in Arizona.

Launched in 2004, the project has rapidly gained momentum and there is now a waiting list of rural and urban schools in Hawaii and California interested in joining the project. The next group of schools to participate will be on Catalina Island and in Ojai, California, and Kauai and Maui in Hawaii. We thank the teachers, students, and resource experts for participating in this exciting project and look forward to new developments that will include expansion into summer camp activities in conjunction with Jean Michel Cousteau's Ambassadors of the Environment and the Tropical Reforestation and Ecology Education program in Hawaii.

A big thanks and mahalo to the USDA Rural Utility Service distance learning program and the Oro Grande Elementary School District for providing the initial funding for this project.