Keewaytinook Okimakanak staff visits First Nation schools in Thunder Bay region
Under Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program, Keewaytinook Okimakanak's Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) is the Ontario Regional Management Organization providing a variety of support services for First Nation schools across the province.
Visits to the First Nation schools are providing the K-Net team with the latest information about the status of work that is required to ensure every First Nation is able to access broadband services for their community. As well, these visits are providing those communities that are planning for their broadband connections and applications with an opportunity to discuss and share development strategies and options so the local school is able to access broadband services. Various information documents are being shared to support the First Nations and their local schools in this community planning process. These documents and video material are available on-line and include:
- the Community Aggregation model connecting all the local businesses, homes, organizations together to share in the ongoing operational costs for community network;
- the e-Community Concept paper describing some of the broadband applications and support services available for First Nations;
- the Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) description highlighting partner communities and services available;
- the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth paper, "Turning the Corner with First Nations Telehealth" (May 2005);
- the DVD called "Turning the Corner - Effective Use of Broadband in Canada's North" describing broadband applications operating in First Nations across northern Ontario and Canada.
This past week, Jamie Ray, K-Net's Helpdesk Technician made the trip to visit Constance Lake (elementary, high school, Adult Education and Alternative Education programs), Pic Mobert school, Pic River elementary and high school, Long Lake 58 elementary, Gingogaming high school, Aroland school and Rocky Bay school. Click here to check out the pictures from his visit to these schools.
On Thursday evening he wrote (in part) ... "Every place I stay at has no high speed in the community for connections in the hotels ... and trying to get on out on our dial-in service is next to impossible (busy all the time). So I was lucky tonight to have been able to dial-up to deliver this report ....
I spent some time with teachers and admin going through how to better control their internet connection and content filtering, discussed software (deepfreeze..cybersitter) and our experiences and recommendations for other schools like KiHS.
Also, lots of interest in moving connections into the community in Long Lake 58. .... And Rocky Bay's Ec Dev officer happened to have a meeting arranged next week with Fednor to discuss connections for that community.
All of the sites on the Superior Wireless connections are really eager and hoping for the upgrade to 10meg in Geraldton if it happens. I explained that we don't know if it will, and was careful to not make any false promises...but on the other had, I had to tell them this was in the works as any further building beyond the schools would add too much congestion to the shared T1 in Geraldton.
They all report that things have gotten a lot slower since the beginning.
In each community, where I could...I described the model community handout I had, and talked about options for getting connected and trying to make it sustainable. I was asked a couple times about $$$ for these types of things, especially in Long Lake 58. I know they are expecting some kind of follow-up in these terms, so I will prepare contact info for Brian to hopefully pick up where I left off. They were quite receptive, as well as Rocky Bay and Aroland, to us advising them in getting started and sharing our experiences.
Well...I'm out of breath, the words were flowing out faster than I could type. Unfortunately, I'd be here until Saturday trying to upload pics to the website. So I'll work on that as soon as I get something better than 19,200 dialup.Gotta love it."