Rural Alaska

'Hackathon' aims to empower Kotzebue kids by connecting them to technology

Dozens of kids crowd the halls of Kotzebue's Chukchi College with laptops and cellphones in hand. They're using the devices to control small, blue robots as they zoom around corners, up and down the walkways, and occasionally over toes and into walls.

They are part of the first-ever ArcTech Community Hackathon, a daylong programming and robotics event sponsored in part by Community Church in Seattle, a predominantly Korean congregation of which Han Lee is a member.

"Some of the questions we are asking today are what kind of miracle would you like to see? And how can you use this technology to impact your community locally?"

Lee grew up in Alaska, living in Kotzebue through the third grade. The son of a savvy businessman, Lee spent his formative years watching his father successfully navigate the difficult and often prejudiced world of small business in Bush Alaska, opening Korean restaurants and other mom and pop shops in remote communities around the state.

Though he moved around a lot as a teenager and young adult, he found himself returning to Kotzebue again and again. It holds a special place in his heart.

"I see so much opportunity here," he said.

Tapping into that opportunity is the reason behind the Hackathon. He hoped to foster a creative environment in which local students could get hands-on experience with new technology and continue to develop those skills in the future.

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"My belief is with technology and with these tools, it can't be about show and tell; you really need to equip [kids] with the resources," said Lee. "And that's what I've been trying to do, going around town trying to get our community to buy into our children's future. We want these kids to become technology producers, not just consumers."

He sought out sponsors from around the state and received both monetary support and donations from several companies and organizations in both Alaska and Seattle, including from The Arctic Sounder's parent company, Alaska Media.

With the help of some of his fellow congregation members, he put together a team of tech experts to travel up to Kotzebue and work with the kids one-on-one, teaching them basic robotics using the Makeblock mBot and Scratch coding, an open-source programming language developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specifically for use in educational settings.

"He was talking almost every day about Kotzebue and Alaska and what an amazing place it is," said Andrew Ahn, who works for an e-commerce startup in Seattle. "We are really excited to help the kids here experience emerging technologies. We love to be able to help kindle and kickstart their imagination and creativity and hopefully we can do follow-up programs after this event. That's the whole goal."

One of those kids is 12-year-old Ayiana Browning. She's in seventh grade and is busy twirling her mBot in precise circles on the floor, preparing for the competition later in the day.

"My old teacher used to tell me if you don't get used to technology now, it's not going to get any better," said Browning. "So it's always good to know about technology today. I think it could really benefit us in the future."

She, like fellow student and 13-year-old Kai Whitmore, has had experience programming in the past.

"I did coding in fifth grade for a little bit but I stopped so I was happy to do it again," he said. "I like the different things you can make with it and do with it, like drones and robots and 3D printers."

Electronics are second nature to this group of kids, who raise their eyebrows at terms like "floppy disk" and "typewriter."

"I think we do have a good thing with technology now because it opens more doors for us to do more things and get more jobs," said Whitmore.

That's the hope of local techie Jung Im, who works in Maniilaq's information technology department and has a passion for drones.

"I've seen kids that have awesome ingenuity," said Im. "They have awesome ideas. It's just finding them the pathways to do it properly."

He sees the practical applicability of the skills being taught here today and gaps in the current market that could easily be filled by a thoughtful student with a keen eye for technology and entrepreneurship.

"For some of us who are already in technology, we feel that this is just a glimpse of the technology that will be out there in the future and it's like the tip of the iceberg," said Bill Roh, a neuroinformatics system analyst at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Thinking about the future of everything from wildlife management to search and rescue, Im said there's a place for emerging technologies like drones and 3D printing in rural Alaska.

"With 3D printing you take it to the next level and say, hey, I want to fabricate a new part for my snowmachine or four-wheeler and reduce the cost and carbon footprint of shipping," said Im. "You can produce merchandise and turn around and sell it yourself. I think that's a real benefit. Let's utilize the technology and expand our minds and opportunities."

When he first heard about the Hackathon, Im admits he was skeptical. Perhaps it would just be another short-lived diversion for the kids with no lasting benefits. But he did some serious thinking and said he realized just how much technology could play a part in bettering the lives of the younger generation in Kotzebue.

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"If we can create an atmosphere where they see an idea and run with it, who knows?" he said. "The guy next door to me could be the next leader in technology. He's only five years old right now, but 10 or 15 years in the future he could be."

Throughout the day, Im made his way from room to room, talking with kids and answering their questions. One of the students he spoke with was 13-year-old Walter Gregg III.

One of Gregg's favorite things to do is Eskimo dancing. He's performed around the state with his group and loves the feeling of being connected to his culture. He wants to find a way to copy his dance moves into a program which can then be used to teach others.

"Jung Im was talking to me about how, with my Eskimo dancing, I could [code] the motions in scripts and then share that with other people," said Gregg. "I would do that because I like the dancing, it's fun, it's in my culture. And [I would like] just showing other kids that you could join in with your culture and be willing to help other people."

Gregg doesn't think that the past and the future are mutually exclusive, but rather he wants to find a way to use emerging technologies to preserve the culture he deeply cares about.

"I go hunting with my dad and help him with the sno-gos and Hondas, but I also like games," said Gregg. "I think both traditional stuff and technology can be together."

College student and coding instructor Jason Cho agrees. He's studying sociology and history at Amherst college in Massachusetts, but has had a passion for programming since he was in elementary school. He sees immense potential for integrating technology into the preservation of local knowledge, especially native languages.

So much of modern language preservation involves machine translation nowadays, said Cho, and that relies on the innate knowledge of native speakers for precision.

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"Each language has their own connotations behind words. And that's really hard to translate off a dictionary," said Cho. "You can't do that unless you're a native speaker. So, native speakers have a really big place in coding and machine translating. I do believe that if you want to preserve a language and keep it alive for future generations, it's great if you can bring your expertise to these people who are really looking of these kinds of native experts."

This blending of cultural connectivity and technological opportunity was an underlying theme throughout the day.

Though a diverse state, Alaska often struggles with racism and cultural bias, and Kotzebue is no exception. For Lee, providing Korean-American role models for these young students was a way of breaking down preconceptions and cultural divides and rebuilding cross-cultural relations.

For the team from Seattle, being able to experience Inupiaq songs, dances, foods and lifestyles was a fascinating and thought-provoking opportunity.

"I see a lot of mixture here between the traditional Alaska Native community and high tech, so I'm kind of excited to be part of it and to help the local community become more empowered to leverage technology to enhance their next generations," said Ahn.

Both the local and Seattle-based participants found common ground throughout the day, especially during the lunch hour when the team trudged across Kotzbue's frozen streets to Siikauraq Martha Whiting's house for home-cooked moose and caribou, frozen muktuk, blackberries, and aqpik jelly on Pilot Bread.

While the muktuk raised some eyebrows at first, one by one the visitors stepped up to give it a shot.

"It's chewy and nutty. I actually kind of like it," said Mark Hong, who worked with Microsoft for many years and now works for Amazon.

Hong spent some time in Nome as a child and said he's happy to be back trying things he didn't have the chance to before and sharing his passion for technology with the students.

Standing over the counter, Siikauraq cuts up more muktuk with an ulu.

"I think it's awesome because how often do you get a whole group coming in from Seattle that spends a lot of time and resources to share technology?" she said. "We now have all those robots. And the beautiful thing is it's also about spirituality. It all ties in -- technology, feeling good, cultural exchange."

Gee Won, who lives in Anchorage, helped Whiting cook the traditional lunch.

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"Our culture, our background is very similar," she said. "It's a very profound foundation."

Siikauraq nodded her head in agreement.

"The whole thing is if I went to your place, you would treat me the very same way that I'm treating you," she said. "You would make sure that I'm taken care of and it's just that respect and that helping each other."

For these two women, neither of whom considers themselves to be particularly technologically savvy, demonstrating the need for human connections alongside technology was of the utmost importance.

"We have people sitting right next to each other and they're both looking at their cellphones and they're not talking with each other," said Siikauraq. "What the kids will see here is that it's important to have technology but to have that human connection. It makes it a powerful, feel-good, connection with a different culture. We embrace each other, we acknowledge each other and in turn, we end up loving each other as human beings."

That establishes the building blocks of a compassionate, supportive community that accepts diversity and opportunity as it comes, she said.

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At the end of the day, local leaders like former Mayor Maija Lukin and two police officers handed out certificates of completion to each and every participating student. Homegrown role models were an integral part for Lee of maintaining interest and support down the line.

"Especially if the awards are being presented by one of our leaders in town, it's just so much more encouraging for our kids just to be able to be uplifted in that way because they can always use anything to boost their self-esteem," he said.

That's the reason 26-year-old Chrishawna Yazzie, her husband, and her mother accompanied her 9-year old sister, April, to the Hackathon.

"I want to be able to help her out when she's at home and be able to know what she knows and give her that motivation," said Yazzie. "I don't want her to come here and then when she goes home, nobody gives her that motivation. Nobody says, 'Let's take out your mBot and do this as a family.' I think for parents and grandparents and guardians, it's very important for them to be involved. To give them these opportunities is very important because even though it might only happen once, it's going to inspire curiosity in their mind and that needs to be encouraged."

As for April, she didn't seem too keen on being interviewed, but she was intently focused on making the mBot do what she wanted it to. That was the basic draw for her and many of the other students. In April's words, it was interesting not because anyone showed her how to do it but "because we can control it ourselves."

That drive and self-determination was one of the reasons sociology student Cho made the trip up from Seattle.

There's a lot of talk about technology being the great equalizer between advantaged and disadvantaged communities and individuals. But it's not just about bringing new, shiny robots to Kotzebue. It's about providing options.

"Equalizing means giving each person and each family the ability to say 'yes' or 'no' to certain decisions in their lives and how technology impacts that. And people in the city have so much more access to these opportunities to say 'yes' or 'no.' Some people out here may never even have that choice," he said.

It could be something as small as choosing to play a video game over going for a walk or something as large as a community wanting to develop indoor farming in the Arctic. If, in order to do that, the community needs to know about and have access to certain technologies and don't, they don't even have that option.

"I think that's where the real inequality comes into play," he said. "It's the power to make that decision, to say 'yes' or 'no,' and if we want to do this, we have the opportunity to do it. So these classes hopefully will inspire these kids to say, now we actually know what's out there and now we can actually determine what we want our lives to be like."

Now that the first Hackathon is finished, Lee is on to thinking about what comes next.

He's determined not to follow the model of parachute help from the outside coming in to Alaska and then leaving without a trace. He hopes to set up remote mentoring opportunities between the leaders and the kids and develop additional partnerships outside of Seattle. But he underscored it will take involvement at home as well as afar.

"How can we partner with people from all over the world to find a solution for Kotzebue?" he asks a group of parents and grandparents waiting for their kids to finish the day. A few of them offer up ideas and suggestions.

"Now that's what technology allows us to do, is bridge those relationships so that we're able to really do that and take advantage of the world out there," he said. "These are the tools that they need to start with. From here, it's really up to the community and parents to decide how far they want to take it with their kids. Where do you want to go from here?"

This story first appeared in The Arctic Sounder and is republished here with permission.

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