 It is Thursday noon our folks, Ted Ralston here, hosting our show, Where the Drone Leads at Think Tech Hawaii in Honolulu. Actually we transpose ourselves to the Quaisaline et al. for today's show. And in an incredible turn of events we have three excellent gentlemen here representing Quaisaline here with us. We have the Mayor of Quaisaline, Harata Kubo. We have the Director of Education for the et al. That would be Jelton and Jane. And we have Scott Paul, who is the City Manager for Quaisaline. So thanks very much for coming out of this show. Came all the way across the Pacific to come to our one half hour show, right? I like that. Actually we have Greg Nakano, who a lot of you our viewers know, a Ph.D. candidate at UH, sitting in the background here, if we go offline in any way he'll fix that for us. But if the table was bigger we'd have Greg here with us. And I think we need to talk to our production staff here about bigger table or two layers or something like that. This show is so popular. So many people want to be on it that we need bigger space. Anyway, thanks for coming on gentlemen. This is your first time on the show. But we can actually get you on by Skype when you're back in the islands as time is appropriate. But why would we have Quaisaline present here at the City Administration level, at the mayor level, at the Commissioner of Education level on our show about drones. This is actually kind of an incredible coming together of initiative of STEM and of opportunity and NASA funding and once again the initiative of Greg Nakano sitting in the background here. We're talking about a program using drones in the islands to generate hands-on collection of information dealing with awareness of what's coming at the islands that the individuals in the schools and in the homes can actually participate in collecting information about their own circumstances and then try to figure out together what to do about it. So drones, an amazing opportunity here and something we wouldn't ever have thought. And we must thank NASA for having funded a program called EPSCORE which will help us move forward. But from the perspective that you've got, Mayor, what's coming at the islands? What's coming at Quaisaline? What's coming at the islands within the at all in terms of future issues in the environment here that we need to hear about more and that you can advise us on by this means? Okay, then to do this I'd be more comfortable by speaking my own language. So these two Quaisalines will maybe interpret it or translate it? Well translate, okay. Every word is going to come out of my mouth. Okay. Let's do it. Thank you. First of all, thank you for this opportunity. Quaisaline is, or he by, is One Island. One of 98 or something like that? Yep, but One Island is one mile, so I'm going to speak my own language. He buys a small island where we come from. He buys a small island which is one mile long and it's so densely populated that there's not enough space for even opportunity to arise out of. So there's about roughly 11,000 to 15,000 people on eBuy and the purpose of our stay here, our trip here is to find opportunities that we can offer for the children of eBuy. Okay. Our priorities are number one priorities. Jalalavijan, Anajir Uro, Anijum Jalalai, we build the future and we join Ejimur and Ajir Uro, Anabara, Jijum Jalalai. So Mayor's priorities during his tenure would be for educated, creative, more reasonable and how do you say, practical education for the people of eBuy and also health and these are the two major priorities that he's working on right now. Okay. So education is the key to understanding what's coming at us in the future and health is the product of having done the education properly and having done some kind of remediation in such property. And then operating the education system, which is where Jolton fits in the picture, sounds like it's key to achieving the Mayor's goals here and then you have to execute the plans that come out of that as city manager. After all, there's ways here. That's why the whole nation is represented here by you guys coming on this trip. So tell us about the kind of threats that are coming. We understand there's a number of small islands in the atal and you're in situations of very low islands, so they can't take much in terms of sea level rise and the... Okay. City manager, can you go ahead and collaborate on that one? Come on, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. That's your job. Okay. Good job. The threats that we're facing right now is facing the climate change. We are the first of the climate change. I know that it's knocking on Hawaii's doors, but right now we're living climate change. We're living inundations, we're living herosians, we're living sea level rise, and now it affects our food and water sources back home since these are low-lying highlands. We do not have mountains, so our major freshwater source would be our waterlands. And since sea level rise is happening, it affects our drinking water source. So we've gone through other means of producing water by reverse osmosis units, and that's basically what we're depending on right now. But it still doesn't help with our crops on the outer islands, which do not have this type of technology, except for eBuy, which is where that we are on. But there are some other islands on Kuala Lumpur that are populated that do not have this type of technology and do not have this type of program in regards to food security and water security. So these are other things that we want to address through this drone program that NASA has scored NASA grant that we're engaging in. And with this drone program, we should be able to start measuring some of the factors that are going on, at least characterize the landform, characterize the shape, characterize water locations and such, and observe over a period of time the trends of what's going on. Because by 2023, the Compact of Free Association ends, except for the economic package that goes for a quadruple, and it goes on to 2066 with a 20-year option of renewal to 2086. However, during this time period from now until 2023, we want to establish some data that we can, with these types of programs, with this program, the escort grant, that we can produce after 2023 in order to seek out other assistance if ever needed. But at least we have data that can actually tell us how climate change is affecting the islands. And I'm sure with this type of data, it all ties into not just the GCF mapping and all that, but it also ties into the education factor and health factor. It could also be, you know, we have a project coming up, the shoreline protection project within the next couple of years, and I think these data will be coming out of this project that the students will be doing, you know, the DGEM, digital elevation map. Right, DGEM, right. Yeah, we can use those data to see where it's really effective badly, and we can advise the contractors to, you know, make that protection stronger on that side of the island. So actually, that information you collect could be used to drive the models that are used to determine what the reconstruction has to be or whatever the remediation might want to be. In fact, something just came to mind as we're sitting here talking. There's a guy who used to work at Bellows Field on Winner-O'ahu, that is an Air Force recreation and Marine Corps training ground on the other side of this island, Craig Gorsuch. I would like to hook you up with Craig Gorsuch. He now works, I believe, in the Navy side of the house. I don't know, Greg, if you know if you've met him or not, but Craig has done about a five-year environmental remediation on the sand dunes and the beach area at Bellows and has observed the relationship between the retention of sand and the vegetation that's growing there, the type of vegetation, the big trees. We have these imported Australian ironwood trees, which make the sand storage very difficult, and he's removed those, believe it or not, and found the sand process naturally powered has returned, and he's looking at beach vegetation as opposed to trees as a way to unlike what you might think, actually make the beach and the dunes more healthy. So I will absolutely put you guys in touch with Craig, maybe even, how long are you going to be here this trip? I'm going back tomorrow. Okay. Yeah. All right. You guys are going to have fun. We have emails, so we'll put you in touch with Craig and let his environmental work on Bellows Field have influenced to the extent it can on you, and we've actually used drones there, too, to collect the DEM, the overhead imagery of what the current situation is in order to have a comparison basis for the future. So yeah, so we have some things here we can offer ahead and thought of before. I would call them quickly executable and not rocket science, but they lead to a great understanding that can be put in the hands of people right away. So we can take our first break here, in fact, our only break, and we'll get back after one minute and talk about how we take these steps forward. Okay. All right. It is still the noon hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Rawson here, downtown Honolulu, momentarily transposed to Kwazaleen Atoll with three gentlemen who are basically running the whole show on Kwazaleen these days. In fact, while you're here, I wonder who's in charge, right? We have... Thank you, Ted. Well, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Ted. Jolton and Jane and Scott Ball. And we have the commissioner of education. We have the city manager. And we have the mayor of the entire atoll here, a very critical area in the central western Pacific. And we were talking before the break about the threats that are coming at you. You identified the threats and Scott then amplified them to some extent. And we talked about what your suggestion was, was to use this drone program in the hands of the education system distributed to the kids and their families who may have an interest and may have an appeal for this technology to use that to illustrate to everybody what's going on, not just the island, but to the world, frankly. So how do we actually start something like that? Because editorially, we don't have anything like that here. We have little clubs. We have small groups of people who are four in a school or something like that. We don't have anything organized across an entire school system dealing with something as critical as what you're dealing with. So assuming we have the capability, the knowledge, and the equipment, how do we actually take something like drone functionality into your school system and get it to take root and become self-managed and self-executing? Don't feel any pressure. Yes. Yeah, what we have, we're in partnership with UH Manawa, NASA, and University of Guam, and College of Marshall Islands. And through College of Marshall Islands, the drone projects comes to Guadalcan, to the Guadalcan school system. What we're trying to establish is to get interested young groups of students, maybe sophomores and juniors, maybe 25 from all the schools, public and private schools on eBuy, to start, we want to get them to get their interest in learning this technology and actually to build it and after building it to fly it and take, like I said, elevation map of our shorelines. And the idea behind the reason why we, the mayor and the city manager of myself, we jumped and grabbed this project was our island has been known, or the region, Guadalcan region has been known as the second lowest when it comes to our national STEM dash test results. So we think with the innovation of STEM education, like the drone project and these hands-on activities will bring back that motivation that the students themselves are losing nowadays because like when we were, we are all island boys and our ways of learning back then was by observation and by actually doing it. Perfect, no good drone. Yes. And nowadays we're like stuck in one wall, one four-wall room trying to learn from books and kids are. How do you say the adopted way of, the adopted way of learning? And it took away the hands-on and the tactile feedback and the expression of that interacting with the environment. Kids are, that's what we're trying to do to bring all these projects to the role. Let me just say this, back then the so-called traditional way of learning, like the teacher stands in front of the school and lectures, the classroom and lectures us during while we sit and take notes, I was bored, I was bored back then. Hey, you're not the only one that can confess that one right here. It's modernizing. Yeah. So, getting back to Jeldon, I just wanted to point that out. Okay, you got it. So, project-based learning, that's what we're talking about, project-based learning which is maybe what was done in the past. Project-based learning, place-based learning, threat-based learning in this case. We get the students to go out into the field and that's how they will, by experiencing what they're learning in place. That's cool, because as you say we don't do that with the four walls, but there's another side to this, if I can suggest. Yesterday we witnessed this in the Delmarat Asimov's lab, Evan Kamamuro was sitting there on the computer dealing with the different gains and compensations in the flight control system and observing the behavior changes on the drone because of that technical change. So there is a second layer in here as well, and that's how does this drone actually work? What's inside of it? What's the math going on there? What's the means by which it does what it does? And is there a better way to do it? Is there a more efficient way to do it? Is there a way that works better in the hands of the user? So that is to me is a fascinating subject and get some kids interested in that because the technology evolution that's going to be required for drones requires workforce development, requires the folks who understand the insides as well as how the thing operates on the outside. And it's good that you brought that up, because Mary and Jeldon can really elaborate more on what our goals are, because the overall goal is for us to create a pathway from the elementary level all the way up to the university level, even PhD. And this drone project is just the gateway. We want to use it as a gateway to stimulate interest from the grassroot level, like the elementary students, middle school students, because if I remember, if you cannot get the student interested in this, in engineering or any other types of fuel by the time they're in middle school, then it's a lost cause. And by the time the humans are in middle school, the island is going to be 10 years farther down the road. There you go. So that pathway that the mayor wanted to create from the grassroot level all the way up to PhD level, all that, this is something that we want to establish right away. And Jeldon can elaborate more on how these programs fit into it, these building blocks leading up to the university level. Oh, wow. It's going to be a lot of work, but it's worth it. Yeah, I think right here on the show, they just obligated themselves to serve this mission for a while here. Oh, man. We have so much work to do, we've got to do it. That's what we're here for. Yeah, besides the drone project that we're doing, we have other STEM ideas that we want to bring to our students, like the Marine Science. Yeah. And you saw some of that yesterday, I think, at the Jack Trimble's lab. Yes. Marine Science activities that will be done during our summer camp in 2018 in July. We have a summer camp that is coming up. We're trying to fit in the drone education summer camp, Marine Science, by sailing club and theater drama into that one. So all of these are active, you know, we are learning. That's how we can get our students to be motivated to learn. I'm glad you brought in the theater and expressive arts aspect. I think we don't pay enough attention to how important that is, at least in my personal education and such. And oftentimes engineers and scientists have a difficulty expressing themselves or reacting to how people need to have information provided. If we ran them all through an acting class, they might be one step closer to being able to communicate in a dynamic environment in a way that isn't quite what they had thought about in the first place. In fact, going back in the history of engineering, basically a lot of what is in engineering today is characterizing observations people made in the past using terms that the artists actually created, like force and thrust and work and energy. Those aren't terms that came out of engineering, they came out of philosophy. And then engineers figured out, okay, there's probably a structure we can wrap around that word, now we'll calculate how to do it. So there's a tie between engineering and art that I think in our modern situation we've separated somewhat and you outlined a path that connects it all together in a very critical and timely environment, I might say. So doesn't a thought go through my mind if I can ask you. The kids say seven, eight, nine years old, you know, second, third, fourth grade, something like that, they're going to be starting this program. Their perception, they can't have a perception that there's a threat coming or a risk coming. I've heard that, but they don't know how to internalize it. They don't know how to make it personal. Is that something that you will strive to do in this drone program to measure something, measure how the changes are occurring and let them express that in a threat that they can, that they can aren't frightened by, but they can be rationally inspired to go work on? I was going to mention the resolution that we talked about. There's a resolution that we're planning on passing this coming full council for Quadri-Linato. It's about incorporating climate change into the curriculum for the public school systems back in the e-bac. Okay. So you have a framework in which this information can fall. And that'll actually tie him down, it'll tie him down to make sure he gets it done. Well interestingly enough, we have a resolution going through the legislature here that generates a working team to figure out how to use drones properly within all the custody issues and all the privacy and all the land ownership. We've had to tie those two together. And we don't have, I don't think, have a climate change motivation yet, but we should certainly tie these together. You know, while you said that, a perfect test site for that to practice what you want to do there in regards to drones would be Quadri-Linato because I don't think there's any regulation. Okay. That's great. So that's an offer to us. Yeah, that's an offer to you with the consent of the mayor, the leadership of Quadri-Linato. And making sure it fits in the education system. Yeah, there you go. So let's keep this conversation going. Our show is about out of time here, it does go by pretty quickly. Let me just thank you for coming on, first of all, mayor and commissioner of education and city manager. And let's keep the conversation going. But can you give us one last word of guidance to these guys, first of all, that they do the job right? That's number one, of course. But what would you like us to do collectively, Hawaii and Marshall Islands together? What would be number one on the hit parade, the things we ought to do together to move forward here? Wow. Yeah. That is a good question. I have so many. We can get it next time. We'll get you on by Skype on the show next time and... And then, by the end of the year. Okay? By the end of the year. The vendor. Just that continued collaboration. It's collaboration. Yeah. Excellent. Because the last time I came here, I went to a mayor office. Yes. And then we were actually on the, on the end. That was tight. Yeah. And so, it's something that you got to go and try to... Okay. Primo. Are you familiar with Primo? It's a city here. But... The Pacific Risk Management, Ohana, that has an annual conference every year that talks about these things. We'll take care of that offline because we are out of time, but Primo might be an opportunity to connect in with the evolving themes and such that are taking place elsewhere as well. Anyway, mayor, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Ted. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much. Once again, Jelton. John. Jelton. I like to call you Jelton John. Jelton. Okay. And we'll see you guys on Skype next time. Yeah. And we'll hook you up with Greg Garshups, who is good at environmental work on the beach. And then we'll figure out some way to make collaboration a permanent connection between us all. Thank you. All right. Okay. Mahaa.