Field trip on the web

The Bishop Museum has long been an invaluable resource for Hawaii teachers and those seeking knowledge. Its trove of educational treasures is available to anyone who visits the Kalihi institution.

But not everyone can do that, especially folks on the neighbor islands. Now the museum can come to them.

Bishop Museum launched its online learning center this month. The website, bishopmuseumeducation.org, offers resources on Polynesian voyaging, archaeology, astronomy, native plants and Hawaiian culture, with more to come.

"A big part of the reason we did this is because of accessibility to the museum," said Amber Inwood, Bishop Museum’s senior educator of project management and evaluation. "People on Oahu have an easier time coming here. But obviously the neighbor island teachers and people do not. So we wanted to make sure we created something that provided accessibility for people outside of Oahu who couldn’t physically go, especially in the context of education."

In creating the online learning center, the museum worked with educators from around the state. The platform was funded in part by the Hawaii Department of Education’s Native Hawaiian Education Program and NASA’s Celestial Islands Project.

Already uploaded are the resources for the Native Hawaiian Education Program’s "All Together Now" project, which teaches middle-schoolers STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) curriculum through the lens of Polynesian voyaging. Through videos and interactive lessons, kids can learn all about Polynesian navigation techniques, the Hawaiian star compass, moon phases and more.

By the end of next summer, the museum aims to post all the content for the NASA Earth System Science curriculum for third- to fifth-graders.

"As time goes by, we’ll continue to populate it with curriculum that we’ve developed in the past, which we’re re-formatting and slowly but surely getting it on the learning center so it’s more of a one-stop shop for people to go to look for (digital) educational resources," Inwood said.

Eventually the site will include content for all grades to be used in conjunction with additional tools such as games, hands-on activities and presentations.

Every item on the website can be downloaded for use offline, an important feature, as Inwood recently learned.

During the testing stage, she and a colleague flew to Molo­kai for a meeting with five teachers. A storm knocked out Internet service to the school where the group was to meet, so they headed to a nearby cafe that had a wireless Internet connection. But because of bandwidth limitations, they had trouble getting access to the website’s resources.

Right then and there they decided the interactive content had to be accessible offline once downloaded from the site.

"It was this whole thing that happened that really drove a huge change in how we approached it," Inwood said. "It was kind of funny because we’re all sitting there, crowded. Pouring with rain, we’re all having these nice little hot coffees, and we’re like, ‘Well, yeah. If we could have chosen the worst-case scenario to happen, it happened.’ But it was a blessing.

"The whole point is about accessibility — what’s the point in having it if people can’t use it?"

There’s no set schedule for when new material will appear on the site, so Inwood suggests checking it every so often to see what’s available. To reach the site from the Bishop Museum main Web page, click on the Education tab and then on the Online Learning Center link near the bottom of the page.