Media.Knet.Ca

Luis Barnola, ICA Program Officer for the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (ICA) organized a video conference meeting between K-Net team members (Dan and Brian), Guelph University partners with KO (Dr. Ricardo Ramirez and grad student Andres Ibanez) and two delegates from Guatemala and Argentina (Marleny Tzicap and Ignacio Francisco Prafil). Click here for more information about the guests from Central and South America.

Click here for some pictures from the meeting

The guests are in Ottawa as part of the Connectivity and Indigenous Peoples Conference. "Marleny Tzicap, a K'iche' Mayan from Momostenango, Guatemala, an expert in linguistics and in the use of ICTs for education, and Ignacio Francisco Prafil, a Mapuche from the Southern Region of the Province of Rio Negro in the Patagonia, Argentina, will speak at the "Promoting Cultural Diversity through ICTs" panel."

Geordi Kakepetum, Executive Director of Keewaytinook Okimakanak along with Ross Mamakeesick, All-Weather Road Coordinator and Dan Pellerin, Kuhkenah Network Manager met with the Honourable Andy Scott, Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada on Sunday, March 13. Roger Valley, MP for the Kenora riding along with Robert Howsam and other members of the INAC team attended the meeting which was held in Kenora.

Geordi present the INAC minister with eleven briefing notes highlighting some of the different issues being addressed by the Keewaytinook Okimakanak team. The briefing notes contained the issues, background and requirements presently facing ...

• the Keewaytinook Internet High School
• the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth Initiative
• the Kuhkenah Network
• the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Research Institute
• the KO Regional Management Organization with Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program
• the KO Health Services
• the KO Financial Assistance Services initiative
• the KO Education Advisory Services
• the KO All-Weather Road initiative
• the KO National Satellite Initiative with Industry Canada
• the KO First Nations Infrastructure Requirements (ie Fort Severn's school, Keewaywin's water treatement plant, etc)

1. Everyone can watch, listen and share their thoughts using a computer AND a high speed internet connection. This is being done using two programs being made available by Keewaytinook Okimakanak (K-Net). Each computer does require some plug-ins to be loaded so these programs are able to display all the information.
2. The first program is called Breeze (produced by Macromedia). It allows meeting participants to watch the powerpoint presentations and chat on-line with other people who are also connecting to the meeting over their internet connection. Adam Fiser is managing the breeze presentation for this meeting. Everyone can connect to this on-line meeting at http://breeze.knet.ca/r29635251/
3. The second program is a Video Streaming program (produced by Starbak) that will webcast the video conferencing portion of the meeting providing the picture and sound for the meeting. Everyone is invited to check out the short test session that took place on Tuesday at http://webcast.knet.ca/RICTA
4. If people need HELP getting their computers set up then they are welcomed to call our helpdesk toll free at 877-737-KNET (5638) and ask for John or Jamie or Lars to walk through the steps of testing their machines so they can see the Breeze environment and the Webcast using the video streaming service.

Lead by Grand Chief Gary Merasty, seven members of the Prince Albert Grand Council along with two people from the Keewatin Career Development Corp in La Ronge are meeting with the Keewaytinook Okimakanak team in Balmertown for two days. The visitors included:

• PAGC Grand Chief Gary Merasty
• Darrell Haysom – PAGC Special Projects Coordinator
• Larry Goldade – PAGC Director of Education
• Ernie Sauve – PAGC Director of Health
• Philip Bear – Director of Education – Stanley Mission
• Vincent Hill – Special Projects Coordinator – PAGC Education
• Don Dorè – Technology Consultant – PAGC Education
• Randy Johns – Manager, KCDC
• Ted Green – e-Learning Coordinator, Northern Lights / KCDC

Click here to see some pictures from the visit

The opportunity to share best practices and lessons learned between the two councils is building a relationship that will support the development of complementary efforts in a number of different fields. Three main streams, e-health, e-learning and network development were examined on the first day of the meetings. Demonstrations and discussions were conducted with different partner First Nations and team members. Acting Grand Chief Goyce Kakegamic of Nishnawbe Aski Nation joined the group for the evening banquet.

On Thursday, both teams will gather to continue the sharing of information and experiences. A meeting between the PAGC group and the RICTA group that will be visiting Deer Lake First Nation is planned for the afternoon.

These meetings and exchanges are being supported in part by Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program as a means to support the development of broadband solutions for the schools across Northern Saskatchewan.

The new Northern Ontario School of Medicine is preparing to invite medical students from southern Ontario to spend two weeks in rural and remote First Nations in June 2005. These pilot placements will help the NOSM staff and the participating First Nations determine the needs and priorities for the first year placement of NOSM students in the spring of 2006.

Two NOSM pilot project coordinators, Tom Terry and Cindy Crowe have been contracted to meet with First Nations and support the implementation of this pilot project. They are working closely with Orpah McKenzie, NOSM's Aboriginal Liaison Director to ensure the participating First Nations are ready for a successful experience during these placements.

Last week, the NOSM team consisting of Dr. Dan Hunt, Orpah McKenzie, Martha Mussico, Tom Terry and Cindy Crowe met with the Sioux Lookout Zone Health Directors to discuss this pilot project and identify possible placement sites for June 2005. That evening, they met with Keewaytinook Okimakanak staff (Penny and Brian). The next day, Tom Terry made a presentation to the Chiefs of Keewaytinook Okimakanak about the pilot project. He invited the Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations to participate in this pilot and showcase the telehealth services being delivered from the health centres in each of their health centres.

Orpah McKenzie, Aboriginal Liaison and Tom Terry, Pilot Project Coordinator work with Cal Kenny to set up the NOSM pilot project web site.

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.

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.

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