In 2010-2011, my graduate studies were supported by a GA-ship helping to develop math and science educational WebQuests for the “Ka‘imi loa o ka hihi” Project in the College of Education's (COE) Center on Disability Studies (CDS) in consultation with Hawaiian cultural specialists from Alu Like.

WebQuests are online exercises which lead students through a series of steps to acquire knowledge and skills. The goal of the Kahihi project was to design WebQuests within a Hawaiian cultural context — to increase relevance and integrate traditional knowledge — which fulfill DOE math and science standards.

There are over 50 Kahihi WebQuests accessible here. Probably the easiest way to get a good overview of the project is through the informational page for teachers. For teachers thinking about using these in their classes, there is also a flyer on integrating webquests in curriculum.

Basing these exercises on online materials was challenging, because often websites written on cold continents overlook the different realities of the the tropics and the islands. I put together some information on tropical plants and on energy use for some of the exercises... and still occasionally add new material to these pages.

The Kahihi Webquest project provides dictionaries of math and science vocabularies, which include Hawaiian translations of each term, but never indexed the Hawaiian terms posted, so here is a table of the words used: