Media.Knet.Ca

http://myknet.org is another Keewaytinook Okimakanak on-line service that continues to grow in popularity. The DAILY average of visits in February was 30,583 with an average of over 2.8 million hits each day. The total number of visits to this server in February was 856,349 with nearly 80 million hits occurring in this short month!

MyKnet.org is primarily made up of personal homepages created and maintained by First Nation members across northern Ontario. There are over 14,000 homepages on this server today. This on-line space is rich in the sharing of personal experiences, stories, pictures and events. Everyone helps to make it the positive learning and sharing environment that the chiefs wanted to create by making sure the content on each page is suitable for all ages of people who check out these homepages.

If anyone has any concerns about the content of any of these pages, they are invited to send an e-mail or phone any of the K-Net staff to have the offending page suspended until the offensive material is removed.

The Chiefs of Ontario office, in partnership with the Union of  Ontario Indians is hosting "A gathering for First Nations youth in Ontario"

For more information or to register contact Nathan Wright at 1-877-517-6527 or by email at nathan@coo.org

Purpose: The purpose of the Symposium is to bring together a collection of youth and enhance their ability to return to their community to influence positive change. The theme of Social Development has been selected as a result of the rising social challenges that each individual First Nation faces.

Place: Valhalla Inn - Thunder Bay, Ontario

Time: March 18, 2005 to Sunday, March 20, 2005

Accommodations: Chiefs of Ontario will be covering the cost of accommodations for each registered delegate. Once registered, the Chiefs of Ontario will arrange your accommodations at the Valhalla Inn.

Meals: The Chiefs of Ontario will be providing meals for each registered delegate. Meals provided will include Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner on Saturday, as well as Breakfast and Lunch on Sunday. Meals will be available at the Valhalla Inn.

Travel: The Chiefs of Ontario will reimburse a portion of the travel for each delegate. Travel reimbursement forms will be available upon registration. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints, Chiefs of Ontario cannot commit to reimbursing full travel costs at this time.

Age: Delegates must be between the ages of 18-29.

BE SURE AND VISIT THE CHIEFS OF ONTARIO WEBSITE for more information.

The 5th annual Northern First Nations Hockey Tournament is well on its way to being another success for everyone involved ... the hockey players, the organizers, the fans and the host community of Sioux Lookout. Tournament coordinator, Margaret Kenequanash promises another exciting week of hockey at the Sioux Lookout arena. The tournament's web site at http://firstnationshockey.ca has the schedule and the list of teams in each pool (see below).

On March 2 and 3, 2005, the chiefs from the First Nations of Deer Lake, Fort Severn, Keewaywin, McDowell Lake, North Spirit Lake and Poplar Hill met with Keewaytinook Okimakanak staff to discuss programs and services being delivered by their organization. The chiefs form the Board of Directors for Keewaytinook Okimakanak (KO). KO is a tribal council receiving annual funding support from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada for several of the core second level services delivered by the KO team.

Special guests at the meeting on the first day included Arun Dighe, Associate Regional Director and Joe Young, Financial Manager from INAC's regional office in Thunder Bay.

Click here to check out the pictures from the meeting.

Tabatha Jourdain, the SchoolNet Youth Employment Project Coordinator travelled to Big Grassy First Nation along with two of the youth workers this past Thursday, Feb 24. Danica Medicine from Rainy River First Nation and Karmyn Kelly from Onegaming First Nation were also able to participate in this event. Click here to check out the pictures from this event.

Check out http://firstnationschools.ca for more news story about all the work being completed under Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program.

NEWS FLASH — $5,000 cash prize to the winner of the new
RBC Financial Group award supporting small business skills development.
Visit http://www.conferenceboard.ca/education/awards/ for program updates.

Tara Toulouse, Jamie Ray, and KORI’s Brian Walmark will be flying to Vancouver to deliver a presentation on the Youth Employment initiative that is being funded by Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program through the KO Regional Management Organization. This CRACIN workshop on "civic participation" is part of the larger Summit 2005 gathering that is happening at the same time.  Click here to check out the workshop pictures that Jamie is posting from Vancouver.

Tara, a youth worker in her home community of Sagamok FN, is sharing her thoughts about what it is like to be involved in the Youth Initiative Training (YIT) program as well as a youth worker in her community. Jamie Ray, a trainer with YIT and the on-line CISCO ITE1 program, will be discussing what it is like to be involved in a peer-to-peer, on-line learning environment such as YIT.  Brian Walmark will also be attending and will provide the CRACIN participants with an overview of how YIT fits into the larger context of Industry Canada’s First Nations SchoolNet in Ontario and K-Net Services specifically. Adam Fiser, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto and a member of CRACIN, will be exploring topics of academic research associated with YIT.

The third CRACIN workshop is being held Friday Feb. 25 and Saturday Feb. 26 in Vancouver, BC.

For those of you who cannot join us in Vancouver, the CRACIN workshop is being webcast using the K-Net Breeze webcasting platform. Breeze supports remote participants to watch presentations in real time and features an interactive text chat function.

The agenda for the CRACIN workshop is available the CRACIN website at http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/cracin/events/index.htm#w3

Please note that the times noted on the agenda are Pacific, so adjust your watches accordingly. The first session on Friday begins at 10:30 am Vancouver time. The sessions are also being recorded and make them available as archives for those unable to join us in real time.

Details on using Breeze are below.
Macromedia Breeze:

The CRACIN Breeze Meeting room is accessible at http://breeze.knet.ca/r42234647/
for those who already have a Breeze username (your e-mail address) and password.

If you have not used Breeze before, then you need a username and password. Please self-register by going to this url:

http://breeze.knet.ca/r42234647/?access-key=eheu8ndt8mphwifn

System Requirements:
Windows (98se, ME, XP, NT 4.0, 2000)
Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 
Netscape Navigator 4, 6.2, 7.1 
AOL 8 
Compuserve 7 (2000 & XP only) 
Mozilla 1.2 
Opera 7 

Macintosh (9.2, OS X 10.1 or later)
Safari 1.1, 1.2 
Netscape 6.2, 7.1 
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 
CompuServe 7 (OS 10.1 or later) 
Mozilla 1.2

Additional Requirements 
Macromedia Flash Player 6.0.65 or higher for embedded video and Breeze Live

To hear the meeting, you'll need either headphones or speakers on your computer.

More FAQs on Breeze:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_18815