Guiding Principles for Use of Technology with Early Learners
The thoughtful use of technology by parents and early educators can engage children in key skills such as play, self-expression, and computational thinking which will support later success across all academic disciplines and help maintain young children’s natural curiosity.
The Departments recognize that families and early educators have many different options for using technology with early learners. The Departments believe that guidance needs to reflect the reality that families and early educators have access to apps, digital books, games, video chatting software, and a multitude of other interactive technologies that can be used with young children. Even as new technologies emerge, the Departments believe that these principles apply, though guidance may evolve as more research on this topic is published.
The Departments’ four guiding principles for use of technology with early learners are as follows:
- Guiding Principle #1: Technology—when used appropriately—can be a tool for learning.
- Guiding Principle #2: Technology should be used to increase access to learning opportunities for all children.
- Guiding Principle #3: Technology may be used to strengthen relationships among parents, families, early educators, and young children.
- Guiding Principle #4: Technology is more effective for learning when adults and peers interact or co-view with young children.
Two documents in particular influenced the development of the Departments’ guiding principles: Uses of Technology to Support Early Childhood Practice and the 2016 National Education Technology Plan (NETP).
HHS published Uses of Technology to Support Early Childhood Practice9 in March 2015 to examine how technology can be used to support and improve the quality of practice of early childhood practitioners, particularly in their own professional development. The report presented an overview of research related to the use of technology by conducting a literature review and consulting with experts on the topic in four key focus areas: 1) instruction and assessment; 2) parent, family, and community engagement; 3) professional development and informal learning; and 4) facilitators and barriers.
At ED, the Office of Educational Technology released the 2016 NETP, the federal government’s flagship educational technology policy document. Titled Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education, the plan articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible for all learners. While acknowledging the continuing need to provide equitable access to technology itself, the plan goes further to call upon all involved in American education to ensure equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology, including for early learners.10
The Departments’ four principles state the position of the Departments on this topic and are expanded below.
Guiding Principle #1:
Technology—when used appropriately—can be a tool for learning.
Developmentally appropriate use of technology can help young children grow and learn, especially when families and early educators play an active role. Early learners can use technology to explore new worlds, make believe, and actively engage in fun and challenging activities. They can learn about technology and technology tools and use them to play, solve problems, and role play.
How Do You Determine What is Developmentally Appropriate for a Child When it Comes to Technology?
In Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers Center state that “appropriate experiences with technology and media allow children to control the medium and the outcome of the experience, to explore the functionality of these tools, and pretend how they might be used in real life11.”
Lisa Guernsey, author of Screen Time: How Electronic Media—From Baby Videos to Educational Software—Affects Your Young Child, also provides guidance for families and early educators. For example, instead of applying arbitrary, “one-size-fits-all” time limits, families and early educators should determine when and how to use various technologies based on the Three C’s: the content, the context, and the needs of the individual child.12 They should ask themselves following questions:
- Content—How does this help children learn, engage, express, imagine, or explore?
- Context—What kinds of social interactions (such as conversations with parents or peers) are happening before, during, and after the use of the technology? Does it complement, and not interrupt, children’s learning experiences and natural play patterns?
- The individual child—What does this child need right now to enhance his or her growth and development? Is this technology an appropriate match with this child’s needs, abilities, interests, and development stage?
Appropriate use in formal early learning settings
Early educators should keep in mind the developmental levels of children when using technology for early learning. That is, they first should consider what is best for healthy child development and then consider how technology can help early learners achieve learning outcomes. Technology should never be used for technology’s sake. Instead, it should only be used for learning and meeting developmental objectives, which can include being used as a tool during play.
When technology is used in early learning settings, it should be integrated into the learning program and used in rotation with other learning tools such as art materials, writing materials, play materials, and books, and should give early learners an opportunity for self-expression without replacing other classroom learning materials.13 There are additional considerations for educators when technology is used, such as whether a particular device will displace interactions with teachers or peers or whether a device has features that would distract from learning. Further, early educators should consider the overall use of technology throughout a child’s day and week, and adhere to recommended guidelines from the Let’s Move initiative, in partnership with families. Additionally, if a child is eligible for services under IDEA and/or Section 504 and Title II, the student may require specific technology to ensure that the student can access the instructional material.
What Are Some Differences Between Using an e-Book and a Physical Book with Early Learners?
E-books have the potential to provide learning experiences for children and they also have capabilities that are impossible to deliver in print format. For example:
- A device can hold a complete library of stories and information for children to explore.
- Words and sentences can be highlighted during oral narration.
- Children can elect to have a pre-recorded narrator read the entire text out loud to them.
- Children can experience embedded interactive features within the text.
On the other hand, research has shown that some interactive features may actually impede a young child’s comprehension.14, 15 An example is a feature that allows children to jump around to different points in the story, which can make it difficult for developing readers to follow a sequence of events.
The optimal way for children to experience a physical book or an e-book is with an adult who is actively involved,16, 17 asking questions that allow children to expand on what they’ve read to make connections and providing opportunities to check for comprehension. However, the design of some e-books may dampen parents’ desires to play that interactive role. Two research studies have shown that when parents read e-books that have features that asked questions, parents were less likely to play that role with their children while reading together,18, 19. On the positive side, another research study showed that children who read an e-book with a parent remembered content better than children who read an e-book alone, regardless of what the parent was saying during the reading.20
When making decisions about incorporating e-books, parents should consider what features are available and when and how they will be used. Bedtime use of e-books may also require additional considerations. For example, currently there is limited research on the impact on sleep when using e-books for bedtime reading, but some research suggests that the backlighting of electronic devices can curtail the amount of time children spend sleeping if a device is used right before bedtime.21
Just as with other educational tools, school-aged children should be taught how to correctly handle and care for devices. These skills and the use of technology should generally not be taught as a separate rotation or class, but rather integrated into the learning objective of the lesson.22 In some cases, however, individualized instruction may be desirable to meet the specific needs of a child. As children grow older, they should continue to build on this basic skill set with lessons in digital citizenship.
What is Digital Citizenship?
In the Ed Tech Developer’s Guide, released by the Office of Educational Technology in April 2015, digital citizenship is defined as “a set of norms and practices regarding appropriate and responsible technology use… and requires a whole-community approach to thinking critically, behaving safely, and participating responsibly online.”23
As early learners reach an appropriate age to use technology more independently, they must be taught about cyber safety, including the need to protect and not share personal information on the internet, the goals and influence of advertisements, and the need for caution when clicking on links. These skills are particularly important for older children who may be using a parent’s device unsupervised. Early childhood educators and administrators should ensure that the proper filters and firewalls are in place so children cannot access materials that are not approved for a school setting.
Distinctions between active and passive use
To understand how to use technology appropriately with young children, families and early educators should understand the differences between passive and active use of technology. Passive use of technology generally occurs when children are consuming content, such as watching a program on television, a computer, or a handheld device without accompanying reflection, imagination, or participation. Active use occurs when children use technologies such as computers, devices, and apps to engage in meaningful learning or storytelling experiences. Examples include sharing their experiences by documenting them with photos and stories, recording their own music, using video chatting software to communicate with loved ones, or using an app to guide playing a physical game. These types of uses are capable of deeply engaging the child, especially when an adult supports them.
Deep engagement is less likely to occur when a device is used passively. In many circumstances, minimal learning occurs when children use devices merely to consume videos on their own. However, screen time should not be the only factor when considering the value of a child’s interaction with technology since high-quality, research-based video content can lead to deep cognitive processing in the minds of young children.24 As most content does not meet this standard, adults need to recognize that what matters most is whether the child’s mind is active and deeply engaged with the content. One way an adult can tell if a child is actively engaging with content is for an adult to watch with them (known as co-viewing) and to guide them to a deeper engagement. Co-viewing and the importance of adult interaction is further discussed in guiding principle #4.
Similarly, adults need to be cautious about assuming that a child using a device in a physically engaging way reflects active learning. While actions such as swiping or pressing on devices may seem to be interactive, if the child does not intentionally learn from the experience, it is not considered to be active use. To be considered active use, the content should enable deep, cognitive processing, and allow intentional, purposeful learning at the child’s developmental level.
Research on Television Use
Research on television has shown that the impact of children passively consuming content is associated with adverse effects on their health in terms of weight25, 26, 27 sleep habits28, 29 and language development30, 31, 32. One study also showed that fast-paced, cartoon television shows can have an immediate negative impact on executive function skills for four-year-olds.33 Executive function refers to a set of cognitive and regulation skills involved in goal-directed problem solving, including working memory, inhibitory control, and flexible shifting of attention. These studies have led to previous recommendations from the AAP limiting the amount of time children have spent with screens.
The Departments further encourage families and early educators to think of ways they can reduce the sedentary nature of most technology use. Technology can encourage and complement physical activity, such as a parent and child using a yoga app together, exploring different varieties of flowers in a neighborhood park while referencing an app to learn about them, or playing console games that encourage adults and children to exercise or dance together.
Additional guidance for families and early educators
Adults should strive to provide balance and moderation when using technology with children. They should set limits that are developmentally appropriate and meet the needs of their children and family. When introducing technology to children, adults should model behaviors such as using technology to promote positive interaction instead of allowing it to interfere with interactions, designating and enforcing face-to-face time that is free of interruptions, and using technology together before allowing children to use it independently.
What is Developmentally Appropriate Technology Use for Children Aged 0-2?
Research shows that unstructured playtime is particularly important for infants and toddlers because they learn more quickly through interactions with the real world than they do through media use and, at such a young age, they have limited periods of awake time.34 At this age, children require “hands-on exploration and social interaction with trusted caregivers to develop their cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional skills.”35
Research also shows that children aged 0-2 should not watch media or use technology alone. Children age 12-24 months can learn from videos if parents co-view material with them and use the video as a learning tool to build language skills.36 Some studies have shown that children in this age range can learn from videos, but do not retain information as long as comparison groups who learned the same material using books with their parents did.37 When video chatting, children under 16 months show no learning gains,38 though there may be a benefit in promoting bonding when physical distance limits frequent in-person interactions.
Based on this research, the Departments recommend the following:
For children under the age of 2, technology use in early learning settings is discouraged. With families, technology can be used in active ways that promote relationship development, such as using video chatting software to talk to relatives, friends, and families whom they are not able to see on a regular basis. Parents who are interested in using media with their children can start around 18 months with high-quality content, but should always co-view content and use technology with their children. As determined appropriate by the IFSP team under Part C of the IDEA, children with disabilities in this age range may also use technology, for example, an assistive technology device to help them communicate with others, access and participate in different learning opportunities, or help them get their needs met.
For children ages 2-5, families and early educators need to take into account that technology may be used at home and in early learning settings. New recommendations in the AAP’s 2016 Media and Young Minds Brief suggest that one hour of technology use is appropriate per day, inclusive of time spent at home and in early learning settings and across devices.39 HHS supports more limited technology use in early care settings, and more information on their recommendations can be found in Caring for Our Children: National Health and Safety Performance Standards.40 However, time is only one metric that should be considered with technology use for children in this age range. Families and early educators should also consider the quality of the content, the context of use, and opportunities the technology provides to strengthen or develop relationships. At home, parents can use technology to supplement real-world interactions, for instance, by using an app at the zoo or recapping what they experienced while there.
For children ages 6-8 in school settings, technology should be used as a tool for children to explore and become active creators of content. If children have more than one teacher, those teachers should be aware of how much screen time is being used across subject areas and at home. Students should learn to use technology as an integrated part of a diverse curriculum. At home, parents should set limits they feel are appropriate for their children, understanding the differences between passive and active technology use as well as the benefits of using technology with an adult versus solo use. Parents should also be aware of how much technology is being used in the classroom, what is needed for homework, and how this fits into an overall picture of technology use for their child throughout the day. The AAP has created an interactive Family Media Plan Tool on HealthyChildren.org to help parents be thoughtful about media exposure for their children.
Guiding Principle #2:
Technology should be used to increase access to learning opportunities for all children.
When appropriately used by early learners with guidance and modeling by adults, technology can complement or extend learning in ways not easily achieved otherwise. For example, technology can introduce children more directly to cultures and places outside their community. Although children may have access to print resources from libraries, technology can increase the amount of reference information immediately available to them on a given topic and give them the ability to ask questions of people outside of their classroom. Additionally, within a child’s own community, technology should be culturally responsive.
What Does It Mean to Be Culturally Responsive?
Culturally responsive materials are designed to create learning environments that are conducive to learning for all students, no matter their ethnic, cultural, or linguistic background. In a chapter titled “Technology Tools for Family Engagement: The Role of Diversity,” in the book Family Engagement in the Digital Age: Early Childhood Educators as Media Mentors edited by Chip Donahue, Kevin Clark suggests that early educators ask themselves the following questions when selecting media:
- Do children see different types of people, characteristics, and attributes?
- Do children hear a variety of sounds, voices, and music?
- Are a variety of situations being depicted (e.g. family structure, lifestyles, power/working relationships?)41
It is important that these questions are considered across content, including in apps and other media.
Children themselves may be encouraged to take part in creating this content. Technology can help children author their own materials and stories and share their real-life experiences with others, increasing the amount of diverse, culturally relevant, and community-based content in the classroom.
How Does Technology Support STEM and Early Learning?
Technology can be a powerful tool to support learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There are many resources that use technology to make STEM come to life for young children, allowing access to experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have. For example, children can use the panda cams at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park to observe animals that aren’t found in their everyday lives, take virtual tours of science museums, and observe cause and effect through simulations and games, without risk of harm.
When combined with social interactions and guidance from parents and early educators, the combination of video and games (transmedia) can be powerful tools at home and in the classroom to promote STEM learning. For example, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting-PBS, a 2010 grantee of ED’s Ready to Learn Television program demonstrated significant improvement in 4-year olds’ math skills when using the PBS KIDS Transmedia Math Supplement to bolster mathematics instruction.42 The 2015 Ready to Learn Television program grant application included a competitive priority to support scientific literacy, which has additional potential to support young children in STEM.
The “T” in STEM is often confused with technological devices such as tablets, laptops, and other physical devices or with the broad term “educational technology.” Educational technology is content agnostic and describes using technology as a tool to promote learning across disciplines or content areas. The “T” in STEM, however, is intended to introduce children to the underlying concepts of building or creating technology, including computational thinking, which is the basic logic underlying computer science and is beginning to be incorporated into early childhood settings.
Digital use divide
The 2016 NETP presents research that points to a widening digital use divide, which occurs when some children have the opportunity to use technology actively while others are asked primarily to use it passively. The research showed that children at lower income levels are more likely to complete passive tasks in learning settings while their more affluent peers are more likely to use technology to complete active tasks.43, 44
For low-income children who may not have access to devices or the internet at home, early childhood settings provide opportunities to learn how to use these tools more actively. For example, research shows that preschool-aged children from low-income families in an urban Head Start center who received daily access to computers and were supported by an adult mentor displayed more positive attitudes toward learning, improved self-esteem and self-confidence, and increased kindergarten readiness skills than children who had computer access, but did not have support from a mentor.45 Access to technology for children is necessary in the 21st century but not sufficient. To have beneficial effects, it must be accompanied by strong adult supports.
Children with disabilities
The 2016 NETP discusses equity in the context of connectivity, access, and active experiences, including the accessibility of technology by children with disabilities. These include apps, devices, materials, and environments that support and enable access to content and educational activities for all learners.46 The Departments support the creation of “born accessible” materials (a play on “born digital,” which refers to materials created specifically for digital platforms) that use the principles of Universal Design for Learning and follow industry accessibility standards from the very beginning of the development process.47 Accessibility is not limited to those with sensory or physical disabilities; it also includes individuals with intellectual or other developmental disabilities.
Universal Design for Learning
In the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), reauthorized by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is defined as “the meaning given the term in Section 103 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. § 1003).” In that section of the Higher Education Act of 1965, UDL is defined as “a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that—(a) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (b) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who are limited English proficient.”
The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) developed the UDL framework for making a curriculum inclusive of “flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.” The CAST guidelines encourage instructional practices and educational content that embrace the widest possible diversity of learners. The UDL approach encourages the development of tools that consider this diverse range of users in the original design rather than add-on features. To see the guidelines, refer to the CAST website.
When used appropriately, technology has the potential to help learners of all ages and abilities fully engage in learning by providing greater access to curriculum and improving learning outcomes.48 For instance technology may provide children who struggle to communicate with an efficient means of communicating. One example is an app that enables children to point to a picture or a series of pictures and then says the words that correspond to the selected item.
For IDEA-eligible children receiving early intervention services or special education and related services, decisions about assistive technology use would be made by the child’s IEP or IFSP) team under IDEA, as appropriate. For children with disabilities who are not eligible for services under the IDEA, children could receive appropriate technology in a preschool program operated by a recipient of Federal financial assistance or in a public preschool program, regardless of receipt of Federal funds. For students enrolled in public elementary schools who are not IDEA-eligible who are entitled to special education or related aids and services under Section 504, these determinations generally would be made by the group that makes the placement and services decisions for that student under Section 504.
Recommendations regarding active and passive use for entertainment and learning purposes apply to all children, including those with disabilities. For assistive technology that is necessary for the child to communicate with others or allows them to participate in developmentally appropriate activities, age or time limits should be determined together with the child’s IEP or IFSP team.
Dual language learners
For dual language learners, digital resources can support language skills development in the home language and English. For example, students and families can use digital tools to create and share stories in their home language that are culturally relevant for classroom use. Educators can use digital tools to adapt materials with translations in both languages to improve comprehension and communication. In addition, oral language development focused on listening and speaking skills can be enhanced in two or more languages using speech-recording and playback features. When used appropriately and sensitively, technology can help meet the needs of dual language learners as individuals and enhance their learning opportunities.49
Guiding Principle #3:
Technology may be used to strengthen relationships among parents, families, early educators, and young children.
Connections between home and school
In early childhood settings, technology can be used to strengthen relationships between early educators and family members. For example, digital portfolios documenting student work through photos, audio, and video recordings enable teachers to share what children are learning in class with families more often and more informally than is possible in traditional school-based conferences. This allows parents to track their child’s progress, provides more opportunities for them to validate their child’s efforts and accomplishments, and opens up opportunities for the parents to engage their child about their learning to reinforce or supplement it. In addition to using e-mail, text messages, and social media to make communication between early educators and families easier, technology can also be used to provide information and coaching to parents to reinforce at home what is learned at school. In fact, according to the HHS report, Uses of Technology to Support Early Childhood Practice, 40% of parent, family, and community engagement (PFCE) products used video technology to model ideal parent behaviors or coach a parent’s behavior. An additional 40% of PFCE products were used to present parents with educational materials.50 Technology has tremendous potential to strengthen communication and connection between families and early educators to the benefit of children.
Technology can also be used to enhance relationships between children and adults and between children when distance or other barriers such as health prevent in-person interaction. While video chatting can be done at any age (as interactions tend to be brief and guided by an adult), “new evidence shows that infants and toddlers can attend to and engage in joint attention during video-chat interactions but do so more effectively after approximately 16 months of age and with parental support.”51 Video chatting is not limited to interactions between parents and children or grandparents and children, but is also applicable when children communicate with peers.
While technology has the power to bridge the physical divide between children and loved ones in the ways described, technology should not be used to replace meaningful face-to-face interactions. Precautions should be taken to ensure that technology use does not impede the development of healthy, authentic interactions with adults and peers.
Guiding Principle #4:
Technology is more effective for learning when adults and peers interact or co-view with young children.
Most research on children’s media usage shows that children learn more from content when parents or early educators watch and interact with children, encouraging them to make real-world connections to what they are viewing both while they are viewing and afterward.52
The Ready to Learn Television Program
The Ready to Learn Program: 2010-2015 Policy Brief, published in March 2016, summarized ED’s Ready to Learn Television program research on the effectiveness of three educational television production organizations.53 The brief reported on 15 effectiveness/summative research studies with children aged 3-8 using media in informal learning settings (such as after school or child care programs); 7 of the studies focused on learning at home. From the 7 studies that focused on learning at home, positive associations were found between at-home engagement and children’s math learning with children whose parents received interventions such as content guides and suggestions for supplemental activities. The studies also found that parents’ awareness of children’s math learning increased their likeliness to engage in activities and strategies to help their children learn math.54
While technology such as tablets and smartphones are designed to be handheld and lend themselves to individualized instead of shared experiences, children may benefit greatly when parents are actively involved while children use such devices. One research study of maternal interaction with 15-month olds found that the infants are 22 times more likely to transfer learning from a touchscreen to a real object, but only if the interaction with the mother was highly scaffolded with high levels of maternal input and emotional responsiveness.55
There are many ways that adult involvement can make learning more effective for young children using technology. Adult guidance that can increase active use of more passive technology includes, but are not limited to, the following:
- Prior to the child viewing content, an adult can talk to child about the content and suggest certain elements to watch for or pay particular attention to;
- An adult can view the content with the child and interact with the child in the moment;
- After a child views the content, an adult can engage the child in an activity that extends learning such as singing a song they learned while viewing the content or connecting the content to the world.
How Can We Protect Privacy and Security for Young Children?
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) (15 U.S.C. § 6501–6505) governs online collection of personal information by online services such as apps and websites from children under aged 13. For example, before a developer can collect personally identifiable information from a child under 13 verifiable parental consent is required. Any information collected from a child, including photos of the child or a voice recording, must be protected by reasonable security measures. The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces COPPA, has said that school officials can act in the capacity of a parent to provide consent to sign students up for online educational programs at school.
If technology is being used in a school setting, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) might also protect the child’s privacy online. More information on FERPA is available through the U.S. Department of Education’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center: http://ptac.ed.gov/.
Regardless of whether either of these two statutes applies, families and educators should evaluate an app’s privacy policies prior to using the app. Assistance on what to review for can be found in the PTAC Model Terms of Service.
Advertising and in-app purchases
Beyond ensuring privacy and security, before downloading an app, families, educators, and others who work with young children also need to evaluate whether the app offers in-app purchasing or advertising. Many apps, particularly those that are free, offer advertising or in-app purchases, both of which are generally inappropriate for young children. Many methods of online advertising have the ability to track a user’s behavior across multiple sites and services, putting a child’s privacy and security at risk. Additionally, parents should also evaluate whether the app includes advertising, particularly age-inappropriate advertising. While adults can sometimes protect from in-app purchases by using appropriate passwords or disabling in-app purchases at the device level, a best practice is to choose software for very young children that avoids in-app purchases and advertising altogether.
Parents and early learning educators should stay up-to-date and informed
Parents and early learning educators who follow the Departments’ principles can help ensure that technology is being used intentionally and appropriately to expand a young child’s learning and enable experiences and opportunities that previously were not available. However, not all technology is appropriate for young children and not every technology-based experience is good for young children’s development. To ensure that technology has a positive impact, adults who use technology with children should continually update their knowledge and equip themselves to make sophisticated decisions on how to best leverage these technology tools to enhance learning and interpersonal relationships for young children. Some sources for information on how to do this include: Common Sense Media, Fred Rogers Center, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Zero to Three.


Seventh grade teacher Elizabeth Delmatoff piloted a social media program in her Portland, Oregon classroom. By the end of the year, 20% of students school-wide were completing additional assignments for no credit, grades increased more than 50%, and chronic absenteeism reduced by at least 30%. This school, for the first time in its history, met its adequate yearly progress goal for absenteeism. (Kessler, 2010)
This We Believe
- Educators use multiple learning and teaching approaches.
Middle level educators continuously seek practices to enhance learning and increase achievement of middle level students. Thus, many teachers are integrating technology with instruction especially since young adolescents are frequent computer users and find technology very engaging (Simpson & Clem, 2008). Downes and Bishop (2010), in their four year study on technology integration in middle level education, found that teachers and students feel strongly that technology is an essential learning component because it assists with engagement, makes education relevant to students' lives, and serves as an inspiring force (p. 31).
One type of technology teachers are adopting is the use of social media. Social media are web-based, highly interactive platforms that provide space for creating online communities of people with similar interests and activities where individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content (Kietzmann & Hermkens, 2011; Lamphere, 2012). While most AMLE research summaries tend to report on empirical research, this summary provides current information from a combination of empirical studies and conversation driven by opinion, emotion, and experience. Due to the newness of social media, particularly its use as an instructional tool in education, sharing perspectives—often found on blogs—of those presently using social media in middle level classrooms can help inform educators considering this curricular approach.
As emphasized in This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2010), engaging students in "active, purposeful learning" is one of the hallmarks of successful middle level schools. "Additionally, learning experiences are greatly enhanced when all students have the technology to access rich content, communicate with others, write for authentic audiences, and collaborate with other learners next door or across the globe" (p. 16). Incorporating social media as an instructional tool can provide potential benefits for students and teachers (Krutka, 2014a). In 2010, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 73% of teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use social media (Lenhart, Purcell, Aaron, & Zickuhr, 2010).
Since then, the percentage has probably increased. Integration of social media has the engagement factor teachers and students seek while enabling students to gain a variety of academic and social skills (Richardson, 2011). Many educators are using social media to help bridge the gap between schools and the outside world by finding innovative ways to engage and extend student learning (Storz & Hoffman, 2013; Varlas, 2011). Due to these features, social media has enormous potential in middle school classrooms.
Though social media use by students and teachers is increasingly popular, debate exists on how to best use the medium and how to protect users and ensure ethical use (Kepple, Campbell, Hartshorne, & Herlihy, 2015; Weathersbee, 2008). This research summary provides an overview of social media types, addresses benefits and challenges with incorporating social media into student learning, and offers suggestions for practice. Resources for teaching and learning are also included.
Social Media Types
Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) identify seven types of social media:
- collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia)
- blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter, Kidblog.org)
- social news networking sites (e.g., Digg and Leakernet)
- content communities (e.g., YouTube and DailyMotion)
- social networking sites (e.g., Facebook)
- virtual game-worlds (e.g., Minecraft, World of Warcraft)
- virtual social worlds (e.g., Second Life)
Other common social media sites include FourSquare, LinkedIn, Flickr, edmodo, Pinterest, and YouTube. Some social media are a combination of two or more of the types Kaplan and Haenlein outlined. For example, Shi, Rui and Whinston (2014) explain that Twitter is a blend of broadcasting service and social networking. Many social media sites can be accessed through mobile applications (e.g., iPhone, Blackberry) as well as desktops and laptops.
Benefits of Incorporating Social Media in Middle Schools
Increased Student Engagement, Learning, and Citizenship Education
Social media sites provide a forum for extending the traditional classroom with an array of benefits that fit This We Believe (2010) tenets by capitalizing on students' personal backgrounds and cultural experiences to further learning. Increased student engagement and learning and citizenship education are benefits related to social media use in school. For example, middle grades students can discover how technology-assisted writing can foster innovation, global communication and participation, and creative problem solving with a broader community. Purposeful use of social media can help develop responsible, productive digital citizens whose natural love of learning will travel with them throughout their lives. Ramsay's Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing? Collaborating in Class and Online (2011) shares reflections on the integrated collaborative technology writing activities she incorporated in her classroom to advance students' learning experiences. She found that her students engaged for longer periods of time in writing tasks due to online collaboration. Further, Ramsay purports that technology-assisted writing can nurture student creativity, communication, and problem solving skills while developing digital citizens.
Social media provides students with options for creating authentic, creative products through tools such as blogs, YouTube, and podcasts (Frye et al., 2010; Lamb & Johnson, 2010). Students can also use social media to research content material in order to develop new knowledge (Frye et al., 2010; Lamb & Johnson, 2010). Additionally, social media helps facilitate differentiation by allowing the needs of creative learners to be met through a cooperative learning environment. Students are better able to balance their individualism with the need for contact with others, allowing new ideas to flourish (Garrett, 2011; Shoshani & Rose Braun, 2007).
Collaboration and Relationship Building
Social media can help adolescents develop and strengthen collaboration skills as they share knowledge, learn with and from others, and are active in the learning process (Fewkes & McCabe, 2012; Jackson, 2011; Liu, Liu, Chen, Lin & Chen, 2011;Yu, Tian, Vogel, & Kwok, 2010). Further, through collaboration on social media platforms, constructive and meaningful teacher and student relationships can develop (Connolly, 2011). Social media outlets, such as Twitter, are being utilized by teachers for informal professional development as educators worldwide share resources and best practices (Krutka & Milton, 2013).
Bridge the Digital Divide and Increase Access and Equity
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) states that digital skills are essential for "students to work, live and contribute to the social and civic fabric of their communities" (2014, para 2). Further, ISTE purports that equitable access to technology-integrated learning opportunities is vital to bridge the digital divide and increase students' chances for success (2014). However, as the National Center for Education Statistics shared (2012), the digital divide is increasing and, thus, children without access to technology can be left further behind. Therefore, inclusion of social media in education activities is necessary to help increase equity among students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds by increasing access to information and information technology (Darling-Hammond, Zielezinski, & Goldman, 2014; Grinager, 2006).
Darling-Hammond et al. (2014) recommend the following practices to promote optimal learning opportunities for all students: (a) technology access policies should aim for 1:1 computer access and ensure that speedy internet connections are available, (b) policies and practices should favor technology that promotes high levels of interactivity and engagement and that allows for varying learning choices and opportunities, (c) instructional opportunities should enable students to use technology to create content as well as learn material, and (d) learning environments that provide significant and varied levels of teacher support and opportunities for interactions among students as companions to technology use (p. 14-15).
Challenges Related to Incorporating Social Media in Middle Schools
There are a variety of challenges middle level educators must consider when incorporating social media in young adolescent classrooms. The first issue many educators currently face is equitable access for students and teachers. Further, uncertainty exists on the type and frequency of professional development for middle level educators that addresses ethical and appropriate use of social networking. Additionally, educators must learn how best to help students navigate safely and monitor students in a virtual environment. Lastly, educators must recognize the possibility for distractions and overstimulation that is often linked to certain types of social media and networking activities (Chen & Bryer, 2012).
Access to technology for students and teachers has tremendous benefits particularly if accompanied with appropriate learning opportunities. However, gaining consistent and equitable access remains a challenge for all levels of learners; therefore, making technology available to all students should be a priority among educators (NMSA, 2010; U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Educators and policymakers need to provide the appropriate technology funding and related professional development so students and teachers have the equipment, knowledge, and skills necessary for taking full advantage of what technology can offer.
It is imperative for educators to have professional development opportunities that enable them to learn developmentally appropriate best practices for preparing students (NMSA, 2010). This includes how to utilize all that social networking has to offer. For teachers to understand the features, benefits, and limitations to social media sites, they need appropriate and sustained training, time to practice newly learned skills, and time for collaboration with colleagues to hone teaching practices (Boss & Krauss, 2007). As teachers have different levels of technology use knowledge and interests, department and grade-level conversations should occur to identify specific needs.
Monitoring, Safety, and Ethical Use of Social Networking
AMLE (NMSA, 2010) believes that middle schools must provide adult advocates to middle school students to guide academic and personal development in an inviting, safe, inclusive, and supportive school environment (p. 35). This can be challenging in a face-to-face environment and even more difficult in a virtual environment (Schmitz, Sigler Hoffmann, & Bickford, 2012). Kessler (2010) purports on the blog, www.mashable.com, that the best way to keep young users safe is to teach them how to be safe. Students need to learn how to make great choices about what they share and what are appropriate actions with others, and always review and manage their online reputations in light of others' ability to contribute to that reputation either positively or negatively with a few clicks of the mouse (Richardson, 2011).
Protecting students in all learning environments is essential. Having explicit and consistent conversations and policies about how to do this ethically, legally, and effectively must occur before and during use of social media and involve input from key stakeholders. Edutopia.com, a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and highly regarded by the educational community, provides thoughtful resources on creating social media guidelines for schools. A useful handbook found on Edutopia.com was created by Anderson, in collaboration with Facebook (n.d.), on How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School.
Plagiarism is a challenge many face when incorporating social media activities. Vise (2011) shared that "one-third of all unoriginal content in student papers came from social networks, including Facebook and all of the various 'content-sharing' sites where users post and share information" (para 5). However, using plagiarism checking software like Anti-Plagiarism, DupliChecker, PaperRater, or Plagiarismdetector, can ensure that work presented is the creation of the author with credit provided to sources. In tandem, teachers must continue to address the issue of plagiarism including how to determine if sources are credible and having clear and consistent plagiarism policies regularly disseminated to students and parents.
Classroom Strategies for the Inclusion of Social Media in Learning
Research suggests that discussions and collaborations are the most common social media classroom strategies (Chen & Bryer, 2012). Frye, Trathen, and Koppenhaver (2010) proclaim that blogs offer students the ability to publish work and comment on others' writing, which increases motivation. At the middle level, Wilson, Wright, Inman, & Matherson (2011) provide examples demonstrating best practices of how students use blogs successfully to study current events and respond to textual material and a variety of other assignments. Manfra and Lee's (2011) qualitative case study used audio and video recordings of classroom sessions, student blog comments, and semi-structured interviews to demonstrate the potential of using blogs to differentiate instruction and meet learning goals of at-risk learners. Smith and Throne (2009) also speaks to the value of social media in serving as a tool for differentiation.
Holcomb, Beal, and Lee (2011) present two instructional projects and two instructional tools as examples that suggest Web 2.0 tools can enhance and maximize curricula by giving students the means to "take on real world problems, engage in intensive research using methods suited to their style of learning and share their findings with their collaborators and colleagues" (p. 103). Carano and Stuckart's (2013) qualitative study examined the impact of social media activities between US students and Peace Corps Volunteers in Swaziland and between US students and Malaysian high school students. Findings demonstrate how social media sites can be used to connect classrooms and cultures across the globe while providing students with increased intercultural awareness and student learning.
Cabiness, Donovan, and Green's (2013) middle school case study of students using wikis in a world history class demonstrated that a classroom wiki had many benefits. The flexible environment of the wiki supported collaborative learning allowing for extended learning and opportunities to go in-depth into concepts that may not have been allowed due to regular class time restrictions. Further, higher order thinking skills were evident in the student posts. Additionally, the wiki environment created a learning community that went beyond the regular classroom walls enabling students to collaborate with all six classes of students enrolled in the campus world history courses.
Another classroom strategy has enabled students to instant-message (IM) teachers and peers with homework questions via smartphones (Davis, 2010). Twitter, an online social networking service, provides an IM outlet used to encourage students to engage in class activities through a variety of activities such as centering on primary documents or analytical questions and bringing in outside expert perspectives (Krutka & Milton, 2013). Krutka (2014b) and his 20 social studies methods students examined the pedagogical possibilities for social media use in middle and high school classrooms. Surveys, reflective journals, and field notes indicated that Twitter was the most beneficial social media site to use in the class because of its many possibilities. Dunlap and Lowenthal (2009) suggest that the medium is useful for encouraging concise writing.
Further, Elavsky, Mislan, and Elavsky (2011) employed mixed-methods research to examine student outcomes produced by using Twitter. Using descriptive statistical analysis of tweets and surveys, Elavsky et al. found using Twitter to "back channel,'"—an activity that allows students to maintain a dialogue or ask questions about an activity that is happening concurrently—can expand students' understanding of key class concepts. Finally, the literature indicates that Twitter can also be used as a sharing resource (Matteson, 2010), as a means for historical perspective-taking and reenactment (Krutka & Milton, 2013; Lee, Shelton, Walker, Caswell, & Jensen, 2012), and even as a source for, and subject of, media study (Rinaldo, Tapp, & Laverie, 2011).
Social media is an increasingly popular technology medium for educators and students alike. Research shows that social media can increase student learning and engage students who otherwise may be disinterested in the classroom (Darling-Hammond, Zielinski, & Goldman, 2014). Richardson (2011) states:
Social media afford[s] the opportunity for all children with online access to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, do real work for real audiences for real purposes, find great teachers and collaborators from around the world, and become great teachers in their own right. (p. 3)
This real-time communication can increase student accountability, build relationships, allow for differentiation, and expand understanding and skills.
Of course, there are drawbacks for students including security risks or privacy concerns. Some students may find social media activities distracting and lack supervision from an administrator. Yet, these drawbacks can be addressed by thoughtful selection and expectations of activities, set-up, and monitoring of students, process, and outcomes. Used prudently, social media can be a valuable tool in educational settings so middle level learners are provided engaging, relevant, and interconnected learning opportunities (Connolly, 2011).
Anderson, S. (n.d.). How to create social media guidelines for your school. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-anderson-social-media-guidelines.pdf.
Cabiness, C., Donovan, L., & Green, T. D. (2013). Integrating wikis in the support and practice of historical analysis skills. TechTrends, 57(6), 38-48.
Boss, S., & Krauss, J. (2007). Real projects in a digital world. Principal Leadership, 8(4), p. 22-26.
Carano, K. T., Stuckart, D. W. (2013). Blogging for global literacy and cross-cultural awareness. In L. Nganga, J. Kambutu, & W. B. Russell III (Eds.), Exploring globalization opportunities and challenges in social studies: Effective instructional approaches. (pp. 179-196). New York: Peter Lang.
Chen, B. & Bryer, T. (2012). Investigating instructional strategies for using social media in formal and informal learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(1), 87-100.
Connolly, M. (2011). Benefits and drawbacks of social media in education. Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Retrieved from http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/news/coverStories/2011/benefits_and_drawbacks.php.
Darling-Hammond, L., Zielezinski, M. B., & Goldman, S. (2014). Using technology to support
at-risk students' learning. Alliance for Excellence in Education. Retrieved from https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/scope-pub-using-technology-report.pdf.
Davis, M. (2010). Social networking goes to school. Education Week, 3(3). Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03networking.h03.html/&cmp=clp-sbascd
Downes, J.M., & Bishop, P.A. (2010). The intersection between the middle school concept and technology integration research in middle level research online. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/2882051/The_Intersection_between_Technology_
Dunlap, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. R. (2009). Tweeting the night away: Using Twitter to enhance social presence. Journal of Information Systems Education, 20(2), 129-135.
Elavsky, C. M, Mislan, C., & Elavsky, S. (2011). When talking less is more. Exploring outcomes of Twitter usage in the large-lecture hall. Learning, Media, and Technology, 36(3), 215-233.
Frye, E. M., Trathen, W., & Koppenhaver, D. A. (2010). Internet workshop and blog publishing: Meeting student (and teacher) learning needs to achieve best practice in the twenty-first-century social studies classroom. The Social Studies, 101(2), 46-53.
Fewkes, A. M., & McCabe, M. (2012). Facebook: Learning tool or distraction? Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 28(3), 92-98.
Garrett, C., (2011). Defining, detecting, and promoting student engagement in college learning environments. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal, 5(2), 1-12.
Grinager, H. (2006). How education technology leads to improved student achievement. Education Issues. National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/educ/item013161.pdf.
Holcomb, L., Beal, C., & Lee, J. K. (2011). Supersizing social studies through the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Social Studies Research and Practice, 6(3), 102-111.
International Society for Technology in Education. (2014). Standards for students: Digital age learning. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students.
Jackson, C. (2011). Your students love social media ... and so can you. Teaching Tolerance, 39, 38-41. Retrieved from http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-39-spring-2011/
Kietzmann, J. H., & Hermkens, K. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54, 241–251.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 61.
Kepple, M., Campbell, L.O., Hartshorne, R. & Herlihy, C. (2015). An introductory examination of factors influencing K-12 teachers' perceptions and use of emerging technological tools in the classroom. In D. Slykhuis & G. Marks (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2015 (pp. 2414-2416). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Kessler, S. (2010). A case for social media in schools. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/.
Krutka, D. G. (2014a). Democratic twittering: Microblogging for a more participatory social studies. Social Education, 78(2), 86-89.
Krutka, D. G. (2014b). Social media as a catalyst for convergence culture: Immersing pre-service social studies teachers in the social media terrain. In W. B. Russell (Ed.), Digital social studies (pp. 271-302). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Krutka, D., & Milton, M. K. (2013). The enlightenment meets twitter: Using social media in the social studies classroom. Ohio Social Studies Review, 50(2), 22-29.
Lamb, A., & Johnson, L. (2010). Bring back the joy: Creative teaching, learning, and librarianship. Teacher Librarian, 38(2), 61-66.
Lamphere, N. (2012). Introduction to social media. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/xjetcvfh-chj/introduction-to-social-media/.
Lee, V. R., Shelton, B. R., Walker, A., Caswell, T., & Jensen, M. (2012). Retweeting history: Exploring the intersection of microblogging and problem-based learning for historical reenactments. In K. K. Seo & D. A. Pellegrino (Eds.) Designing problem-driven instruction with online social media, (pp. 23-40). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Aaron, S., & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media & mobile Internet use among teens and young adults. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx
Liu, C. C., Liu, K. P., Chen, W. H., Lin, C. P., & Chen, G. D. (2011). Collaborative storytelling experiences in social media: Influence of peer-assistance mechanisms. Computers & Education, 57, 1544-1556.
Manfra, M. M., & Lee, J. K. (2011). Leveraging the affordances of educational blogs to teach low-achieving students United States history. Social Studies Research and Practice, 6(2), 95-106.
Matteson, A. (2010). Tweacher(n): The Twitter enhanced teacher. School Library Monthly, 27(1), 22-23.
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U.S. Department of Education. (2010). Transforming American education: Powered by technology. Office of Educational Technology, Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-final-report.pdf.
Ramsay, J. (2011). Can we skip lunch and keep writing? United States of America: Stenhouse.
Richardson, W. (2011). Publishers, participants all. Educational Leadership, 68(5), 22-26.
Rinaldo, S. B., Tapp, S., & Laverie, D. A. (2011). Learning by tweeting: Using Twitter as a pedagogical tool. Journal of Marketing Education, 33(2), 194-204.
Schmitz, M., Sigler Hoffmann, M., & Bickford, J.H. (2012). Identifying cyberbullying, connecting with students: The promising possibilities of teacher-student social networking . Eastern Education Journal. 41(1), 16 – 30.
Shi, Z., Rui, H., & Whinston, A. B. (2014). Content sharing in a social broadcasting environment: Evidence from Twitter. MIS Quarterly. 38(1), 123-142.
Shoshani, Y., & Rose Braun, H. (2007). The use of the Internet environment for enhancing creativity. Educational Media International, 44(1), 17-32.
Simpson, E. & Clem, F. (2008). Video games in the middle school classroom. Middle School Journal, 39(4), 4-11.
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Varlas, L. (2011). Can social media and school policies be "friends"? Policy Priorities- An information brief from ASCD, 17(4).
Vise, D. D. (2011, May 5). "Study: 8 top sites for potential plagiarism." The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/study-8-top-sites-for-potential-plagiarism/2011/05/03/AFA6IcgF_blog.html
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Wilson, E. K., Wright, V. H., Inman, C. T., & Matherson, L. H. (2011). Retooling the social studies classroom for the current generation. Social Studies, 102(2), 65-72.
Yu, A. Y., Tian, S. W., Vogel, D., & Kwok, R. C. (2010). Can learning be virtually boosted?: An investigation of online social networking impacts. Computers & Education, 55, 1494-1503.
Annotated Reference List
Lamphere, N. (2012). Introduction to social media. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/xjetcvfh-chj/introduction-to-social-media/
This hands-on workshop provides an introduction to the social web and current, popular tools and topics. Definition of terms with related videos are presented as well as resources for publishing, communicating, and sharing images, videos, and bookmarks.
Schmitz, M., Sigler Hoffmann, M., & Bickford, J.H. (2012). Identifying cyberbullying, connecting with students: The promising possibilities of teacher-student social networking. Eastern Education Journal, 41
(1), p. 16–30.
This article provides suggestions of how teachers can productively use social networking to connect with students socially and to identify and supervise cyberbullying. Additionally, a range of school districts' policies on social networking sites are examined with many addressing teacher and student abuses and misuses. Also included are reflections on social media use and cyberbullying as well as implications for providing a safe, inclusive, and supportive school environment.
Smith, G. E. & Throne, S. (2009). Differentiating instruction with technology in middle school classrooms. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education
This book explains the benefits of combining differentiated instruction (DI) with technology, encouraging teachers to "re-engage students by bringing lessons out of the past and into the student-centered reality of digital-age learning." Resources are offered that can help make DI a reality in the middle school classroom. Also included are sample activities for incorporating DI in a variety of core subjects and areas.
Commoncraft, (https://www.commoncraft.com/) is a website that contains engaging, informative short videos for introducing various topics to teachers and students. The topics include money, politics, history, society, safety, with a majority of topics on technology. Specifically, there are videos addressing social media that include Twitter, online photosharing, social bookmarking, wikis, and many others that would be of interest and use to middle school students and teachers.
Traffikd, (http://traffikd.com/social-media-websites/) contains a list of social media and social networking sites that is updated frequently. The range of categories shows the potential in a wide variety of classes and learning experiences for middle level learners.
Onlineuniversities.com offers 100 ways to use social media in classrooms, http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/05/100-inspiring-ways-to-use-social-media-in-the-classroom/. Ideas for the K-12 classroom and university level are provided including class projects and ways to increase collaboration and communication between peers and between students and teachers and for preparing students for life outside of the classroom.
Edudemic: Edudemic, http://www.edudemic.com/guides/, connects education and technology providing many useful and popular resources and teaching guides for using "some of the best and most popular resources available today" including Twitter, flipping classrooms, keeping students safe online, choosing the best digital content for students, and others added frequently. Edudemic offers dozens of articles with resources and "how to" information for using social media in ways that foster student learning.
Edmodo: Located at https://www.edmodo.com/, Edmodo is a free social networking platform that has been referred to as the Facebook for schools and is a safe and teacher-controlled environment in which students must be provided an access code to join and anonymous posting is not possible. Edmodo is primarily a tool for within-class communication, but it also provides several ways for classrooms to connect with other classrooms. There are many features and ways to use Edmodo. A few classroom examples include sharing files and resources with students and other classrooms in real time, creating polls for students to vote online, writing short summaries of lessons for absent students, and posting homework information.
#edchat: An ongoing Twitter (https://twitter.com/) discussion that serves as informal professional development for educators by allowing participants to join to discuss and learn about current teaching trends, how to integrate technology, transform their teaching, and connect with inspiring educators worldwide. Moderated topical chats are held at noon and 7 p.m. (EST) each Tuesday with different topics.
Alicia Wenzel is an associate professor of education specializing in curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Western Oregon University. Much of her research has focused on curriculum, assessment, and middle level education.
Kenneth T. Carano is an associate professor of social studies education at Western Oregon University. His research interests include using technology to teach from a social justice framework in an increasingly interconnected world.
Wenzel, A., & Carano, K.T. (2015). Research summary: Social media for middle level classrooms. Retrieved [date] from http://www.amle.org/TabId/270/artmid/888/articleid/553/Social-Media-for-Middle-Level-Classrooms.aspx


|Native to||Hawaiian Islands|
|Region||Hawai?i and Ni?ihau|
|Hawai?i Sign Language (HSL)|
Official language in
| United States|
Hawaiian (Hawaiian: ʻ?lelo Hawaiʻi, pronounced [?o:'l?lo h?'v?j?i]) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the State of Hawaii.King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840.
For various reasons, including territorial legislation establishing English as the official language in schools, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to less than 0.1% of the statewide population. Linguists were unsure if Hawaiian and other endangered languages would survive.[failed verification]
Nevertheless, from around 1949 to the present day, there has been a gradual increase in attention to and promotion of the language. Public Hawaiian-language immersion preschools called P?nana Leo were established in 1984; other immersion schools followed soon after that. The first students to start in immersion preschool have now graduated from college and many are fluent Hawaiian speakers. The federal government has acknowledged this development. For example, the Hawaiian National Park Language Correction Act of 2000 changed the names of several national parks in Hawaiʻi, observing the Hawaiian spelling. However, the language is still classified as critically endangered by UNESCO.
A creole language, Hawaiian Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole English, HCE), is more commonly spoken in Hawaiʻi than Hawaiian. Some linguists, as well as many locals, argue that Hawaiian Pidgin is a dialect of American English.
The Hawaiian language takes its name from the largest island in the Hawaiian state, Hawaii (Hawaiʻi in the Hawaiian language). The island name was first written in English in 1778 by British explorer James Cook and his crew members. They wrote it as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee". It is written "Oh-Why-hee" on the first map of Sandwich Islands engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter in 1781. Explorers Mortimer (1791) and Otto von Kotzebue (1821) used that spelling.
The initial "O" in the name is a reflection of the fact that Hawaiian predicates unique identity by using a copula form, o, immediately before a proper noun. Thus, in Hawaiian, the name of the island is expressed by saying O Hawaiʻi, which means "[This] is Hawaiʻi." The Cook expedition also wrote "Otaheite" rather than "Tahiti."
The spelling "why" in the name reflects the [hw] pronunciation of wh in 18th-century English (still used in parts of the English-speaking world). Why was pronounced [hwai]. The spelling "hee" or "ee" in the name represents the sounds [hi], or [i].
Putting the parts together, O-why-(h)ee reflects [o-hwai-i], a reasonable approximation of the native pronunciation, [o h?w?i?i].
American missionaries bound for Hawaiʻi used the phrases "Owhihe Language" and "Owhyhee language" in Boston prior to their departure in October 1819 and during their five-month voyage to Hawaiʻi. They still used such phrases as late as March 1822. However, by July 1823, they had begun using the phrase "Hawaiian Language."
In Hawaiian, ʻ?lelo Hawaiʻi means "language: Hawaiian", since adjectives follow nouns.
Hawaiian is a Polynesian member of the Austronesian language family. It is closely related to other Polynesian languages, such as Samoan, Marquesan, Tahitian, M?ori, Rapa Nui (the language of Easter Island) and Tongan.
According to Schütz (1994), the Marquesans colonized the archipelago in roughly 300 CE followed by later waves of immigration from the Society Islands and Samoa-Tonga. Their languages, over time, became the Hawaiian language within the Hawaiian Islands. Kimura and Wilson (1983) also state:
Linguists agree that Hawaiian is closely related to Eastern Polynesian, with a particularly strong link in the Southern Marquesas, and a secondary link in Tahiti, which may be explained by voyaging between the Hawaiian and Society Islands.
The genetic history of the Hawaiian language is demonstrated primarily through the application of lexicostatistics, which involves quantitative comparison of lexical cognates, and the comparative method. Both the number of cognates and the phonological similarity of cognates are measures of language relationship.
The following table provides a limited lexicostatistical data set for ten numbers. The asterisk (*) is used to show that these are hypothetical, reconstructed forms. In the table, the year date of the modern forms is rounded off to 2000 CE to emphasize the 6000-year time lapse since the PAN era.
|PAN, c. 4000 BCE||*isa||*DuSa||*telu||*Sepat||*lima||*enem||*pitu||*walu||*Siwa||*puluq|
|Fijian||dua||rua||tolu||v?||lima||ono||vitu||walu||ciwa||tini (archaic: sagavulu)|
|M?ori||tahi||rua||toru||wh?||rima||ono||whitu||waru||iwa||tekau (archaic: ngahuru)|
|Leeward Islands dialect||tahi||rua||toru||f?||rima||ono||fitu||varu||iva||'ahuru|
|Cook Islands M?ori||ta'i||rua||toru||?||rima||ono||itu||varu||iva||ta'ingaoru|
Note: For the number "10", the Tongan form in the table is part of the word /ho?o-fulu/ ('ten'). The Hawaiian cognate is part of the word /ana-hulu/ ('ten days'); however, the more common word for "10" used in counting and quantifying is /?umi/, a different root.
Application of the lexicostatistical method to the data in the table will show the four languages to be related to one another, with Tagalog having 100% cognacy with PAN, while Hawaiian and Tongan have 100% cognacy with each other, but 90% with Tagalog and PAN. This is because the forms for each number are cognates, except the Hawaiian and Tongan words for the number "1", which are cognate with each other, but not with Tagalog and PAN. When the full set of 200 meanings is used, the percentages will be much lower. For example, Elbert found Hawaiian and Tongan to have 49% (98 ÷ 200) shared cognacy. This points out the importance of data-set size for this method, where less data leads to cruder results, while more data leads to better results.
This method will recognize sound change #1 as a shared innovation of Hawaiian and Tongan. It will also take the Hawaiian and Tongan cognates for "1" as another shared innovation. Due to these exclusively shared features, Hawaiian and Tongan are found to be more closely related to one another than either is to Tagalog or Amis.
The forms in the table show that the Austronesian vowels tend to be relatively stable, while the consonants are relatively volatile. It is also apparent that the Hawaiian words for "3", "5", and "8" have remained essentially unchanged for 6000 years.
Jack H. Ward (1962) conducted a study using basic words and short utterances to determine the level of comprehension between different Polynesian languages. The mutual intelligibility of Hawaiian was found to be 41.2% with Marquesan, 37.5% with Tahitian, 25.5% with Samoan and 6.4% with Tongan.
In 1778, British explorer James Cook made Europe's initial, recorded first contact with Hawai?i, beginning a new phase in the development of Hawaiian. During the next forty years, the sounds of Spanish (1789), Russian (1804), French (1816), and German (1816) arrived in Hawaiʻi via other explorers and businessmen. Hawaiian began to be written for the first time, largely restricted to isolated names and words, and word lists collected by explorers and travelers.
The early explorers and merchants who first brought European languages to the Hawaiian islands also took on a few native crew members who brought the Hawaiian language into new territory. Hawaiians took these nautical jobs because their traditional way of life changed due to plantations, and although there were not enough of these Hawaiian-speaking explorers to establish any viable speech communities abroad, they still had a noticeable presence. One of them, a boy in his teens known as Obookiah (ʻ?p?kahaʻia), had a major impact on the future of the language. He sailed to New England, where he eventually became a student at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. He inspired New Englanders to support a Christian mission to Hawaiʻi, and provided information on the Hawaiian language to the American missionaries there prior to their departure for Hawaiʻi in 1819.Adelbert von Chamisso too might have consulted with a native speaker of Hawaiian in Berlin, Germany, before publishing his grammar of Hawaiian (Über die Hawaiische Sprache) in 1837.
Like all natural spoken languages, the Hawaiian language was originally just an oral language. The native people of the Hawaiian language relayed religion, traditions, history, and views of their world through stories that were handed down from generation to generation. One form of storytelling most commonly associated with the Hawaiian islands is hula. Nathaniel B. Emerson notes that "It kept the communal imagination in living touch with the nation's legendary past".
The islanders' connection with their stories is argued to be one reason why Captain James Cook received a pleasant welcome. Marshall Sahlins has observed that Hawaiian folktales began bearing similar content to those of the Western world in the eighteenth century. He argues this was caused by the timing of Captain Cook's arrival, which was coincidentally when the indigenous Hawaiians were celebrating the Makahiki festival. The islanders' story foretold of the god Lono's return at the time of the Makahiki festival.
In 1820, Protestant missionaries from New England arrived in Hawaiʻi, and in a few years converted the chiefs to Congregational Protestantism, who in turn converted their subjects. To the missionaries, the thorough Christianization of the kingdom necessitated a complete translation of the Bible to Hawaiian, a previously unwritten language, and therefore the creation of a standard spelling that should be as easy to master as possible. The orthography created by the missionaries was so straightforward that literacy spread very quickly among the adult population; at the same time, the Mission set more and more schools for children.
In 1834, the first Hawaiian-language newspapers were published by missionaries working with locals. The missionaries also played a significant role in publishing a vocabulary (1836) grammar (1854) and dictionary (1865) of Hawaiian. The Hawaiian Bible was fully completed in 1839; by then, the Mission had such a wide-reaching school network that, when in 1840 it handed it over to the Hawaiian government, the Hawaiian Legislature mandated compulsory state-funded education for all children under 14 years of age, including girls, twelve years before any similar compulsory education law was enacted for the first time in any of the United States.
Literacy in Hawaiian was so widespread that in 1842 a law mandated that people born after 1819 had to be literate to be allowed to marry. In his Report to the Legislature for the year 1853 Richard Armstrong, the minister of Public Instruction, bragged that 75% of the adult population could read.  Use of the language among the general population might have peaked around 1881. Even so, some people worried, as early as 1854, that the language was "soon destined to extinction."
When Hawaiian King David Kal?kaua took a trip around the world, he brought his native language with him. When his wife, Queen Kapiʻolani, and his sister, Princess (later Queen) Liliʻuokalani, took a trip across North America and on to the British Islands, in 1887, Liliʻuokalani's composition Aloha ʻOe was already a famous song in the U.S.
The decline of the Hawaiian language was accelerated by the coup that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and dethroned the existing Hawaiian queen. Thereafter, a law was instituted that required English as the main language of school instruction. The law cited is identified as Act 57, sec. 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaiʻi:
The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department.-- The Laws of Hawaii, Chapter 10, Section 123
This law established English as the medium of instruction for the government-recognized schools both "public and private". While it did not ban or make illegal the Hawaiian language in other contexts, its implementation in the schools had far-reaching effects. Those who had been pushing for English-only schools took this law as licence to extinguish the native language at the early education level. While the law did not make Hawaiian illegal (it was still commonly spoken at the time), many children who spoke Hawaiian at school, including on the playground, were disciplined. This included corporal punishment and going to the home of the offending child to advise them strongly to stop speaking it in their home. Moreover, the law specifically provided for teaching languages "in addition to the English language," reducing Hawaiian to the status of an extra language, subject to approval by the Department. Hawaiian was not taught initially in any school, including the all-Hawaiian Kamehameha Schools. This is largely because when these schools were founded, like Kamehameha Schools founded in 1887 (nine years before this law), Hawaiian was being spoken in the home. Once this law was enacted, individuals at these institutions took it upon themselves to enforce a ban on Hawaiian. Beginning in 1900, Mary Kawena Pukui, who was later the co-author of the Hawaiian-English Dictionary, was punished for speaking Hawaiian by being rapped on the forehead, allowed to eat only bread and water for lunch, and denied home visits on holidays.Winona Beamer was expelled from Kamehameha Schools in 1937 for chanting Hawaiian.
However, informal coercion to drop Hawaiian wouldn't have worked by itself. Just as important was the fact that, in the same period, native Hawaiians were becoming a minority in their own land on account of the growing influx of foreign labourers and their children. Whereas in 1890 pure Hawaiian students made 56% of school enrollment, in 1900 their numbers were down to 32% and, in 1910, to 16.9%.  At the same time, Hawaiians were very prone to intermarriage: the number of "Part-Hawaiian" students (i.e., children of mixed Caucasian-Hawaiian marriages) grew from 1573 in 1890 to 3718 in 1910.  In such mixed households, the low prestige of Hawaiian lead to the adoption of English as the family language. Moreover, Hawaiians lived mostly in the cities or scattered across the countryside, in direct contact with other ethnic groups and without any stronghold (with the exception of Ni?ihau). Thus, even pure Hawaiian children would converse daily with their schoolmates of diverse mother tongues in English, which was now not just the teachers' language but also the common language needed for everyday communication among friends and neighbours out of school as well. In only a generation English (or rather Pidgin) would become the primary and dominant language of all children, despite the efforts of Hawaiian and immigrant parents to maintain their ancestral languages within the family.
In 1949, the legislature of the Territory of Hawaiʻi commissioned Mary Pukui and Samuel Elbert to write a new dictionary of Hawaiian, either revising the Andrews-Parker work or starting from scratch. Pukui and Elbert took a middle course, using what they could from the Andrews dictionary, but making certain improvements and additions that were more significant than a minor revision. The dictionary they produced, in 1957, introduced an era of gradual increase in attention to the language and culture.
Efforts to promote the language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian-language "immersion" schools are now open to children whose families want to reintroduce Hawaiian language for future generations. The ʻAha P?nana Leo's Hawaiian language preschools in Hilo, Hawaii, have received international recognition. The local National Public Radio station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day" and a Hawaiian language news broadcast. Honolulu television station KGMB ran a weekly Hawaiian language program, ʻ?haʻi ʻ?lelo Ola, as recently as 2010. Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the largest newspaper in Hawaii, feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale written entirely in Hawaiian by teachers, students, and community members.
Today, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian, which was under 0.1% of the statewide population in 1997, has risen to 2,000, out of 24,000 total who are fluent in the language, according to the US 2011 census. On six of the seven permanently inhabited islands, Hawaiian has been largely displaced by English, but on Niʻihau, native speakers of Hawaiian have remained fairly isolated and have continued to use Hawaiian almost exclusively.
Ni?ihau is the only area in the world where Hawaiian is the first language and English is a foreign language.-- Samuel Elbert and Mary Pukui, Hawaiian Grammar (1979)
The isolated island of Ni?ihau, located off the southwest coast of Kauai, is the one island where Hawaiian (more specifically a local dialect of Hawaiian known as Niihau dialect) is still spoken as the language of daily life.Elbert & Pukui (1979:23) states that "[v]ariations in Hawaiian dialects have not been systematically studied", and that "[t]he dialect of Ni?ihau is the most aberrant and the one most in need of study". They recognized that Ni?ihauans can speak Hawaiian in substantially different ways. Their statements are based in part on some specific observations made by Newbrand (1951). (See Hawaiian phonological processes)
Friction has developed between those on Ni?ihau that speak Hawaiian as a first language, and those who speak Hawaiian as a second language, especially those educated by the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai?i at Hilo. The University sponsors a Hawaiian Language Lexicon Committee (K?mike Hualelo Hou) which coins words for concepts that historically have not existed in the language, like "computer" and "cell phone". These words are generally not incorporated into the Ni?ihau dialect, which often coins its own words organically. Some new words are Hawaiianized versions of English words, and some are composed of Hawaiian roots and unrelated to English sounds.
Hawaiians had no written language prior to Western contact, except for petroglyph symbols. The modern Hawaiian alphabet, ka p?ʻ?p? Hawaiʻi, is based on the Latin script. Hawaiian words end only in vowels, and every consonant must be followed by a vowel. The Hawaiian alphabetical order has all of the vowels before the consonants, as in the following chart.
This writing system was developed by American Protestant missionaries during 1820-1826. It was the first thing they ever printed in Hawaiʻi, on January 7, 1822, and it originally included the consonants B, D, R, T, and V, in addition to the current ones (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), and it had F, G, S, Y and Z for "spelling foreign words". The initial printing also showed the five vowel letters (A, E, I, O, U) and seven of the short diphthongs (AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU).
In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant allophones (called "interchangeable letters"), enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one-phoneme, and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn the reading and writing of Hawaiian. For example, instead of spelling one and the same word as pule, bule, pure, and bure (because of interchangeable p/b and l/r), the word is spelled only as pule.
However, hundreds of words were very rapidly borrowed into Hawaiian from English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. Although these loan words were necessarily Hawaiianized, they often retained some of their "non-Hawaiian letters" in their published forms. For example, Brazil fully Hawaiianized is Palakila, but retaining "foreign letters" it is Barazila. Another example is Gibraltar, written as Kipalaleka or Gibaraleta. While [z] and [?] are not regarded as Hawaiian sounds, [b], [?], and [t] were represented in the original alphabet, so the letters (b, r, and t) for the latter are not truly "non-Hawaiian" or "foreign", even though their post-1826 use in published matter generally marked words of foreign origin.
For examples of the ʻokina, consider the Hawaiian words Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu (often simply Hawaii and Oahu in English orthography). In Hawaiian, these words are pronounced [h?'i.?i] and [o'.hu], and are written with an ʻokina where the glottal stop is pronounced.
Elbert & Pukui's Hawaiian Grammar says "The glottal stop, ', is made by closing the glottis or space between the vocal cords, the result being something like the hiatus in English oh-oh."
As early as 1823, the missionaries made some limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used it to distinguish koʻu ('my') from kou ('your'). In 1864, William DeWitt Alexander published a grammar of Hawaiian in which he made it clear that the glottal stop (calling it "guttural break") is definitely a true consonant of the Hawaiian language. He wrote it using an apostrophe. In 1922, the Andrews-Parker dictionary of Hawaiian made limited use of the opening single quote symbol, then called "reversed apostrophe" or "inverse comma", to represent the glottal stop. Subsequent dictionaries and written material associated with the Hawaiian language revitalization have preferred to use this symbol, the ʻokina, to better represent spoken Hawaiian. Nonetheless, excluding the ʻokina may facilitate interface with English-oriented media, or even be preferred stylistically by some Hawaiian speakers, in homage to 19th century written texts. So there is variation today in the use of this symbol.
The ʻokina is written in various ways for electronic uses:
Because many people who want to write the ?okina are not familiar with these specific characters and/or do not have access to the appropriate fonts and input and display systems, it is sometimes written with more familiar and readily available characters:
A modern Hawaiian name for the macron symbol is kahak? (kaha 'mark' + k? 'long'). It was formerly known as mekona (Hawaiianization of macron). It can be written as a diacritical mark which looks like a hyphen or dash written above a vowel, i.e., ? ? ? ? ? and ? ? ? ? ?. It is used to show that the marked vowel is a "double", or "geminate", or "long" vowel, in phonological terms. (See: Vowel length)
As early as 1821, at least one of the missionaries, Hiram Bingham, was using macrons (and breves) in making handwritten transcriptions of Hawaiian vowels. The missionaries specifically requested their sponsor in Boston to send them some type (fonts) with accented vowel characters, including vowels with macrons, but the sponsor made only one response and sent the wrong font size (pica instead of small pica). Thus, they could not print ?, ?, ?, ?, nor ? (at the right size), even though they wanted to.
Due to extensive allophony, Hawaiian has more than 13 phones. Although vowel length is phonemic, long vowels are not always pronounced as such, even though under the rules for assigning stress in Hawaiian, a long vowel will always receive stress.
|Plosive||p||t ~ k||?|
|Sonorant||w ~ v||l ~ ?|
Hawaiian is known for having very few consonant phonemes - eight: /p, k ~ t, ?, h, m, n, l, w ~ v/. It is notable that Hawaiian has allophonic variation of [t] with [k],[w] with [v], and (in some dialects) [l] with [n]. The [t]-[k] variation is quite unusual among the world's languages, and is likely a product both of the small number of consonants in Hawaiian, and the recent shift of historical *t to modern [t]-[k], after historical *k had shifted to [?]. In some dialects, /?/ remains as [k] in some words. These variations are largely free, though there are conditioning factors. /l/ tends to [n] especially in words with both /l/ and /n/, such as in the island name L?naʻi ([la:'ni]-[na:'ni]), though this is not always the case: ʻeleʻele or ʻeneʻene "black". The [k] allophone is almost universal at the beginnings of words, whereas [t] is most common before the vowel /i/. [v] is also the norm after /i/ and /e/, whereas [w] is usual after /u/ and /o/. After /a/ and initially, however, [w] and [v] are in free variation.
Hawaiian has five pure vowels. The short vowels are /u, i, o, e, a/, and the long vowels, if they are considered separate phonemes rather than simply sequences of like vowels, are /u:, i:, o:, e:, a:/. When stressed, short /e/ and /a/ have been described as becoming [?] and [?], while when unstressed they are [e] and [?]. Parker Jones (2017), however, did not find a reduction of /a/ to [?] in the phonetic analysis of a young speaker from Hilo, Hawai?i; so there is at least some variation in how /a/ is realised./e/ also tends to become [?] next to /l/, /n/, and another [?], as in Pele [p?l?]. Some grammatical particles vary between short and long vowels. These include a and o "of", ma "at", na and no "for". Between a back vowel /o/ or /u/ and a following non-back vowel (/a e i/), there is an epenthetic [w], which is generally not written. Between a front vowel /e/ or /i/ and a following non-front vowel (/a o u/), there is an epenthetic [j] (a y sound), which is never written.
|Ending with /u/||Ending with /i/||Ending with /o/||Ending with /e/|
|Starting with /i/||iu|
|Starting with /o/||ou||oi|
|Starting with /e/||eu||ei|
|Starting with /a/||au||ai||ao||ae|
The short-vowel diphthongs are /iu, ou, oi, eu, ei, au, ai, ao, ae/. In all except perhaps /iu/, these are falling diphthongs. However, they are not as tightly bound as the diphthongs of English, and may be considered vowel sequences. (The second vowel in such sequences may receive the stress, but in such cases it is not counted as a diphthong.) In fast speech, /ai/ tends to [ei] and /au/ tends to [ou], conflating these diphthongs with /ei/ and /ou/.
There are only a limited number of vowels which may follow long vowels, and some authors treat these sequences as diphthongs as well: /o:u, e:i, a:u, a:i, a:o, a:e/.
|Ending with /u/||Ending with /i/||Ending with /o/||Ending with /e/|
|Starting with /o/||o:u|
|Starting with /e/||e:i|
|Starting with /a/||a:u||a:i||a:o||a:e|
Hawaiian syllable structure is (C)V. All CV syllables occur except for w?;wu occurs only in two words borrowed from English. As shown by Schütz,Hawaiian word-stress is predictable in words of one to four syllables, but not in words of five or more syllables. Hawaiian phonological processes include palatalization and deletion of consonants, as well as raising, diphthongization, deletion, and compensatory lengthening of vowels.
Hawaiian is an analytic language with verb-subject-object word order. While there is no use of inflection for verbs, in Hawaiian, like other Austronesian personal pronouns, declension is found in the differentiation between a- and o-class genitive case personal pronouns in order to indicate inalienable possession in a binary possessive class system. Also like many Austronesian languages, Hawaiian pronouns employ separate words for inclusive and exclusive we (clusivity), and distinguish singular, dual, and plural. The grammatical function of verbs is marked by adjacent particles (short words) and by their relative positions, that indicate tense-aspect-mood.
Some examples of verb phrase patterns:
Nouns can be marked with articles:
ka and ke are singular definite articles. ke is used before words beginning with a-, e-, o- and k-, and with some words beginning ʻ- and p-. ka is used in all other cases. n? is the plural definite article.
To show part of a group, the word kekahi is used. To show a bigger part, mau is inserted to pluralize the subject.
This site was designed to provide quick and easy access to real property tax assessment records and maps for properties located in the County of Hawai?i and related general information about real property tax procedures.
Over the last decade, there has been an attempt by many well-meaning locals (Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian) to use substitute characters when true diacriticals aren't available. ... This brings me to one of my pet peeves and the purpose of this post: misuse of the backtick (`) character. Many of the previously-mentioned well-intentioned folks mistakenly use a backtick to represent an ?okina, and it drives me absolutely bonkers.
La?akea Community formed in 2005 when a group of six people purchased La?akea Gardens.
|journal=(help) Memoir 19 of the International Journal of American Linguistics.