Ka Leo ʻĀina (The Land’s Voice)

Reflecting on my own educational experience, I’m only beginning to build my connection to wai (fresh water) and ua (rain) as a native Hawaiian woman and mother. Why? Because, the history and moʻolelo of my kūpuna (ancestors) as water protectors and stewards was not part of my educational experience in Hawaiʻi. My kūpuna had the utmost reverence and respect for water. I yearn to develop this mindset and practice so that together with our keiki, we can forge an epic future for water stewardship in Hawaiʻi. 

Ka Leo ʻĀina Rain Watch wearable sensor (Ka Leo ʻĀina) cultivates three skills for our keiki: kilo (observation), data collection, and decision making. Water becomes the medium that bridges Hawaiian culture to the foundational subjects taught in Hawaii’s schools. Wearable sensors will link to schools’ water management infrastructures via wifi so students can decide water allocation in real time as their kūpuna did.

In 2017, native Hawaiian children represented 26% of the student population in the public school systems. As a teacher in environmental and technology education, I believe we lead in this educational movement on many levels. However, I see an opportunity to develop a more culturally integrated curriculum to implement in Hawaii’s public school institutions. This is important because research has shown that native Hawaiian students’ academic success is linked to strong cultural identities. Furthermore, there’s an opportunity to aim higher and create a pathway for our native Hawaiian children to find success beyond schools and lead in ʻāina (land) stewardship.

Faced with the mandate to meet the Next Generation Science Standards and Nā Hopena Aʻo, a native Hawaiian focused framework for K - 12, there is no better time than today to build this pathway.

Water, one of the most important resources to Hawaiians and the foundation of our wealth (waiwai), needs to be the focal point in learning in public school institutions. In order to secure the rightful usage of water by our children, we cannot escape our responsibility to cultivate culturally grounded hydrologists and water stewards that will carry out the water practices of our kūpuna in perpetuity. 

Ka Leo ʻĀina Rain Watch Wearable Sensor is a wristband that alerts users when the ground sensor detects a rain event. Instead of a digital user interface, Ka Leo ʻĀina utilizes haptic signal technology so that students experience the outside as their user interface. 

Once the rain event is triggered, the rain starts collecting in rain barrels distributed and connected to the schools water management infrastructure, including gutters and drains. After students kilo, they collect data, including the duration of the rain event and the volume collected. The real magic of Ka Leo ʻĀina lies in fundamentally shaping our childrens’ relationships to rain and water and allowing them to decide how to utilize the collected water. We envision our children making decisions about water allocation for school gardening, scientific exploration, and Hawaiian cultural studies. We also see an opportunity for language acquisition and revitalization. 

The development of Ka Leo ʻĀina will allow us to expand upon our company’s (Kilo Books Hawaiʻi) desire to complement, Kilo Ua Rain field guide that we published in 2019. We believe that the next stage for our company is to move into Hawaii’s schools to kilo and create opportunities for data collection, and decision making. 

The target population for this solution will be to work with students at Hawaiian focused charter schools, in particular with students grades K - 5. Over the last four years, I have worked as a coding instructor for Purple Maiʻa Foundation, a Hawaiʻi based technology education non-profit. My experience as a coding instructor has revealed that students are engaged with technology but a blended learning model that places their culture at the center of their through direct connection to the ʻāina and our cultural practices results in the highest engagement that I have seen. Last year, we had the opportunity to test this model by piloting Purple Maiʻa Foundation’s Kūkulu Curriculum. This curriculum aims to cultivate the builder within teaching our students both hale (traditional house) building and website development. We believe that Ka Leo ʻĀina is another instrument to build our childrens’ cultural identity while also creating pathways and careers that are in alignment with who they are as native Hawaiians.

Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Fellowship and your selected dimension.

Ka Leo ʻĀina (The Land’s Voice) Rain Watch Wearable Sensor, is an educational curriculum plus wearable sensor that serves as a direct link to wai (freshwater) and ua (rain), that defines aspects of our native Hawaiian identities and cultural practices. By centering our children’s learning experiences around water, we further our cultural revitalization efforts, provide high quality educational experiences rooted in Hawaiian culture while also supporting the usage of our language and cultural practices. Ultimately, we aspire to influence the securement of water through our long-term plans to build the next generation of water protectors and culturally grounded hydrologists.   

Ka Leo ʻĀina’s innovation lies in the use of haptic technology paired with sensors + curriculum that links Hawaii’s children back to ka wai ola (the waters of life). The goal of our solution is to cultivate the next generation of indigenous water protectors, hydrologists, and water policy makers through the lens of our kūpuna. The use of our technology is to connect our children to kilo, the native Hawaiian practice of observation.  Through haptic technology we maintain tactile and sensory experience for our children with a wearable that has no interface. Ultimately, Ka Leo ʻĀina aims to connect children to the interface between their observations of rainfall.

Our technology utilizes the internet of things (IoT). The image below demonstrates how the current Ka Leo ʻĀina Prototype works:

• Raspberry Pi--Single Board Computer and connected to internet 

• Moisture Sensor--detects rain event

• Android phone has app 

• Bluetooth connection between phone and wearable

• Haptic motor controller--controls buzz on vibration motor

You can watch our demo video in which we are testing the soil moisture sensor signal to the phone which in turns signals the wearable which triggers the hapticʻs vibration.

Below is a illustration of Our Theory of Change for Ka Leo ʻĀina:

Currently, our solution is serving 0 individuals. We hope that in one year we can serve up to 50 students. In five years, we hope to be serving up to 10,000 elementary school students in Hawaiʻi with a focus on serving elementary school students attending Hawaiian focused charter schools. We believe that we are able to scale to thousands of students within five years because the current technology that we piece together to create Ka Leo ʻĀina is readily available through various vendors and established hardware companies like Adafruit, Sparkfun & Raspberry Pi.

Over the next year, we would like to improve upon our current Ka Leo ʻĀina prototype by utilizing LoRa technology to communicate directly to our haptic wearable. By doing this, we aim to eliminate the mobile phone in our current set up. Furthermore, LoRa technology enables us to expand our solution and move into the second stage of experimenting with sensor placement across a school’s rain gutter system to realize the potential for real time data collection during rain events. Lastly, we hope to work with teachers to create an intersectional curriculum that links Hawaii’s children back to ka wai ola (the waters of life)

Within five years, our goal is to have working partnerships in place with all 17 Hawaiian focused charter schools and that we have successfully transitioned Ka Leo ʻĀina out of the prototype phase and into a marketable wearable + curriculum that can be easily adapted by teachers and students. 

Prior to this year, time was our largest barrier. However, this year, I’m taking a teaching sabbatical from Purple Maiʻa so I will be teaching half time this year. With that being said, our current barrier is the finances involved with creating a new prototype and exploring a new technology pathway for Ka Leo ʻĀina without knowing the associated costs for time and labor. 

In the next five years, I think scaling our operation presents some barriers including finances, time, and the possibility that we may need to hire a few more people to work full-time with us, if we intend to scale our reach to 10,000 students.

One solution that we may have to the scaling issue in regards to the production of the wearable is to bypass the need to produce the wearable elsewhere by implementing it as a highschool or college project within Hawaiʻi and pass production on to our students as a learning experience and as an internship opportunity. This could bring our scaling costs down.

Part-time: 2

Our team is well positioned to deliver this solution because together we have over 10 years of collective experience as software and hardware engineering. Additionally, Marion brings over 6 years of teaching experience in coding and design. She has also been a co-developer on two mobile applications that have successfully launched in the app store. More importantly, Marion has been exploring the pedagogy behind teaching modern technologies coupled with traditional technologies along with her colleague, Tiana Henderson at Purple Maiʻa Foundation.

Currently, we are not working with any partners.

We see that our pathway to financial sustainability will depend on:

1. Selling our current field guides and teaching services to Hawaii’s Public School Systems. Currently, we are marketing and selling our products to Hawai’i families.

2. Partnering with a technology based non-profit to obtain grants to continue our pathway from prototype to wearable product that can be sold on the market, either as a DIY kit or fully assembled product.

3. Depending on our pathway to scaling, we may raise capital or explore crowd sourced funding (i.e. kickstarter) to fund the production of Ka Leo ʻĀina.

4. Securing a team that is capable and knowledgeable to carry out the work involved in developing Ka Leo ʻĀina.

We’re applying to Solve because we believe that the future of Hawaii’s water resources depend on our ability to educate our children differently about water. Additionally, we know that our native Hawaiian identities are inextricably linked to water itself. We believe that our use and application of technology can play a vital role in helping our school systems to reach our native Hawaiian students to cultivate and grow their own indigenous minds and ways of knowing to navigate the protection and rightful use of water in perpetuity for generations to come.

Our solution is in very early prototype stages and I think we need the most support in Solution technology and working with mentors and teachers to help us develop a working prototype that can scale to our goal to reach 10,000 students in five years. With that said, we look to leverage current technologies and hardwares that are available to help us keep production costs as low as possible. With that said, seed funding can really help us to explore and understand how we can create the Ka Leo ʻĀina Rain Watch Wearable that we envision!

Lastly, we would like to learn how to set up monitoring protocol and ways to evaluate the success of our wearable + curriculum model.

I think it would make sense for us to partner with organizations like Purple Maiʻa to implement our solution across Hawaii's public schools. We would also like to partner with hardware companies like Adafruit or Sparkfun to create a DIY version of Ka Leo ʻĀina.