New programme to develop Māori information literacy

University librarians are developing a project that aims to foster Māori information literacy in school-leavers.

Pūnaha Pānui Kōrero will eventually be available on personal computers and mobile phones as a series of interactive learning games.

Moheka Williams is a Māori liaison librarian at Waikato Institute of Technology (WINTEC) and part of the team developing the programme.

“My hope is to create a generation of information-literate rangatahi [young people],” says Williams.

The eight stand-alone modules use Māori learning styles and concepts to teach a specific skill related to information technology.

One of the modules focuses on keyword searches on the Internet. It incorporates wānanga [mind-mapping] and hui [brainstorming] as Māori learning styles.

Spencer Lilley is also a university librarian, working as kaihautū Māori at Massey University. He says information literacy is an important issue for modern Māori.

“More and more information is being made available online these days by the Government and education providers,” says Lilley.

““If you do not have the ability to access information and you need to make a decision, then you’re not going to make the right decision.

“Or you’ll make an uninformed decision,” he says.

Lilley says Māori learning techniques are not always encouraged within the New Zealand education system.

“There is more emphasis on individual development,” says Lilley. “Traditionally, Māori acquired knowledge through a whānau approach to learning.”

Lilley says adult students can often only come to terms with information technology if they are helped by younger students.

“We see some reciprocity coming back in — teaching some of the younger student’s life lessons and they in turn are being helped with some of the information technologies,” he says.

The programmes being developed by Williams’ team aim to address areas of technology literacy in Māoridom, using a Māori learning style.

The series of modules is called The Amazing Adventures of Kupe. In Māori legend, Kupe originally visited Aotearoa and returned to his homeland Hawaiki.

The island of Hawaiki is the setting for the learning games. Students help Kupe prepare to kill an octopus that has been eating all the food and starving the village.

Williams became part of a general information literacy team in 2005 and asked for a Māori component to be added to the project.

The original team consisted of 11 people in 2006, but Williams says it has now been stripped back to five, thanks to the “ebbs and flows of funding”.

The team is predominantly Pākehā, with Williams being the only fluent speaker of te reo Māori.

He says a lack of Māori information technology professionals has been a “huge problem” for the team.

“It’s harder for me to explain Māori concepts to non-Māori,” says Williams.

“Not because of their lack of trying — just because they don’t have rooted understanding in those concepts,” he says.

Because of a lack of programmers to write the code, the modules are not yet completed. All modules have been written and are in the process of being coded.

Williams says he hopes the programme can be made available to schools for free, providing there is enough funding to do so.

“What I hope for, in terms of Māori information literacy, is that students will hear their own stories,” says Williams.

He believes that by creating more literate school-leavers, the modules will help develop “life-long learners”.