🗣️ IMSPARK: Pacific Voices Sharpened by AI 🗣️

 🗣️ Imagine... Pacific Voices Sharpened by AI 🗣️

💡 Imagined Endstate:

A future where Pacific Islander students and teachers use generative AI tools to preserve and strengthen heritage languages, to gain fluency, and to teach with confidence. Where language learning is accessible, culturally rooted, adaptive, and where speaking one’s language is not a struggle but a strength.

📚 Source:

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. (2025, July 29). Global educators explore AI in language learning at UH Mānoa. UH News. Link. 

💥 What’s the Big Deal:

Over 220 educators from 14 countries gathered at UH Mānoa’s 8th FLEAT conference to explore how generative AI is reshaping language teaching and learning globally 🌍. For Pacific Islander learners, this isn’t just about newer technology, it’s about reclaiming voice. With generative‑AI agents, students can practice speaking heritage or less‑commonly taught languages in a low‑stakes environment, receiving personalized feedback that adjusts to their level and learning style. 

UH’s National Foreign Language Resource Center and Center for Language and Technology are helping teachers design curricula that integrate AI tools so instruction is dynamic, culturally responsive, and skill‑focused 🔧. This work builds teacher capacity and student confidence, especially in islands where language teachers are few and oral practice opportunities limited 🎙️. Preserving Pacific languages means preserving identity. Using AI to support these languages ensures that traditions, stories, and knowledge are not lost but passed on, with clarity and fluency. 

It’s skill building at the deepest level, language is one of our most potent human resources, and this moment allows it to be nurtured rather than diminished.

#PacificLanguage, #AIforLearning, #SkillCapacity, #CulturalResilience, #UHManoaInnovation, #HeritageFluency, #LanguageTech,#IMSPARK