Tag: Culturally relevant technology

Module 2 Weblog Entry#3 by Dilip Verma

The Inupiaq Dictionary Project

Web Site URL: http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/Category:Inupiaq_dictionary

This is a school based project inspired by Audie Chikoyuk of Marshall, Alaska in the Bering Strait School District that uses Wiki technology to encourage indigenous students to build a language dictionary.

The Wiki contains links to each Inupiaq word entered into the system. Each word has it’s own page with a word, definition, MP3 audio file, image and any other additional relevant information. Since it is a Wiki, anyone can add or make changes to the content, which may or may not be a good thing in the long run. It is a very simple site, and still quite small, but has grown to include a dictionary in Yupik as well. This is an important site as it demonstrates indigenous youth creating and sharing a product that promotes an internal discourse with very little investment. The fact that it is an oral dictionary is important in my quest for digital products that can be used in Mexican Indigenous communities, because these languages often do not have a globally accepted written form. Since Indigenous languages tend to vary from community to community, the Wiki technology gives students from different communities the opportunity to add variations to the same entry, encouraging a peer-peer discourse.

Module 2 Weblog Entry #1 by Dilip Verma

The Four Directions Project

Web site URL: http://www.4directions.org/

The LTC (Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin ran the Four Directions project from 1995 to 2001 as an Indigenous Model of Education. The 4Directions website is administered by the Pueblo of Laguna Department of Education. It received funding from the Technology Innovation Challenge Program of the U.S. Department of Education.

The site appears to be no longer maintained, as there are broken links and the site is small. However, the site proposes and demonstrates several uses of technology for indigenous students to record and share objects of cultural relevance. It demonstrates a way for indigenous groups that are physically separated from each other to form a database of culturally relevant media.

The site contains an example of a student based virtual project, the 4Directions Virtual Museum (http://www.4directions.org/resources/features/qtvr_tutorial/4DVMuse.htm).

The project is very small but uses QTVR (Quick Time Virtual Reality) to record artifacts of significance to the American Indian students and place them in a virtual museum along with additional material that explains their significance produced by the students.

There is also a virtual tour of the National Museum of the American Indian, created by American Indian students. They have chosen objects of interest to them and when the visitor clicks on one of these “hot spot” objects, apart from viewing an image, a commentary written by the student appears about the artifact

Finally there is a database of lesson plans and other didactic material.

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