Wawatay and Wahsa meetings highlight the growth in on-line opportunities
On Wednesday morning, three members of the Wahsa teaching team (Doug LeConte, Al Morrison and Marvin Osmond) meet at K-Net to get a tour of some of the e-learning tools being utilized by members of Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet team. Some of the potential program and course delivery strategies being explored and developed for students enrolled in the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council include:
- using video conferencing to share high school courses between Wahsa Distance Education Centres located in First Nations across the north, Pelican Falls First Nations High School in Sioux Lookout, Dennis Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay and Eagle Nest High School in Ear Falls;
- developing content and delivering programs and courses using the macromedia Breeze platform;
- integrating and complementing these different delivery tools with an e-learning platform that meets their needs, for example the moodle environment.
On Thursday morning, four members of the Wawatay team met at K-Net to discuss possible program and service delivery strategies for their organization that would support a stronger on-line presence in all their operations (newspaper, radio and television). Martin Tuesday, Alvin Fiddler, Leroy Fiddler and George Witham (via telephone) discussed various strategies for developing their infrastructure to support a variety of on-line applications that would see and support local First Nations being able to develop and deliver a wider range of community radio programming by linking radio stations on-line. Wawatay's web presence is now delivering current news stories and radio programming with the directions lead by Alvin and Leroy.