Media.Knet.Ca

Jesse Fiddler and Cal Kenny spent four days video taping and participating in the Pii Waseya gathering in Eagle Lake First Nation. Click here to see pictures from the gathering. Everyone who attended the gathering is invited to sign the guestbook expressing their thoughts about this event.

This Residential School and Family Wellness Gathering took place from July 1 to 4, 2004 on the shores of Eagle Lake at the local traditional camping grounds.

Pii Waseya is the Ojibway description for the dawning of a new day ... when those first rays of light begin to show. Pii Waseya was a gathering designed by a committee made up of Eagle Lake residential school survivors, local program staff, council members. This group was supported by other residential school programs from Lac Seul First Nation and Kenora, along with the provincial Integrated Support Services Unit. The planning committee wanted to provide survivors and their families with tools that everyone can use to support strong and healthy family units and communities.

Fernando Oliveira, the grade 8 (G8) supplementary online courses program coordinator and teacher, produced a final report for the first year highlighting the development process of this program and its delivery. Click here to read the report (282K, PDF).

From the report ...

The project, named the G8 Supplementary Courses Program (www.g8.firstnationschools.ca), was initially piloted with the launch on April 14, 2003 of a Grade 8 Science course. This pilot involved eight First Nations communities. The pilot was funded under the Kuhkenah Network, Smart Communities project with funding support from Industry Canada.

After this initial pilot, there was general agreement among teachers and students that the pilot program was very successful. Survey results revealed that both groups were quite open and eager to incorporate e-learning into their regular classroom activities. The full survey results of this pilot course may be accessed at www.g8.firstnationschools.ca/feedback.html.

In September 2003, the G8 Program was sponsored by Keewaytinook Okimakanak (Northern Chiefs) and made available under the umbrella of Industry Canada's First Nation SchoolNet Program and the Ontario Regional Management Organization. During the 2003/04 school year, the G8 Program ran three courses within a three-term framework:

Term

Course

Period

1

Science

October 20, 2003 to December 19, 2003

2

Math

January 19, 2004 to March 22, 2004

3

English Literacy

April 26, 2004 to June 20, 2004

Two important web sites for young people are now accessible directly from the K-Net homepage. TCS Youth and Youth Careers provide another exciting on-line location for youth to explore some healthy options for their lives.

Tina Kakepetum-Shultz worked with a great team of young people to design and publish a web site (http://nahsema.knet.ca) that will help every visit think twice about how they use tobacco. Health Canada's Tobacco Control Strategy (TCS) program provided some resources. Hopefully everyone will check out Blue Mason's (Keewaywin FN) TCS theme song and the accompanying animated graphics created by Derek Kenny (Bearskin FN). The Lung Brothers, Louie the Lung and Bruiser the Loser have a lot of valuable lessons to share for everyone to learn about the effects of smoking on our bodies.

The Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation team lead by Kevin Sherlock created an on-line careers in technology, science and engineering to encourage and support youth to explore these exciting career options. CoolCareers.ca is a great place to learn about other Aboriginal youth who are choosing these types of important careers along with many other sources of information to assist everyone in making these types of career choices.

OFNTSC received funding support for the CoolCareers.Ca site from Keewaytinook Okimakanak's Regional Management Organization, a service created by Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program. Other useful web sites created by this project include:

• Nishnawbe Aski Nation's Decade for Youth web site that contains important information from young people's perspective on the topic of suicide. Be sure to check out the video produced during a traditional gathering of elders and youth at Mishkeegogamang.
• Noojmowin Teg's First Nation's health and education resource web site contains lots of information about healthy lifestyle choices. Be sure to check out the red zone for various on-line activities.
• The other three web site development initiatives under this project were completed to support teachers and students in the classroom. They included:
• Wawatay's Online Learning Tools
• Seven Generations Ojibway Language Curriculum
• Grade 8 Online Supplementary Science, Math and English Courses

Dan Pellerin, K-Net's Network Manager left Monday, June 21 to attend meetings with the Kativik Regional Government (KRG) in the Nunivik Region of Northern Quebec. Meetings are being held to discuss strategies for utilizing the existing NSI satellite bandwidth to serve the different applications in the 14 KRG communities. The Kativik Health Authority is also meeting with KRG and K-Net to determine how to access the bandwidth they require for their telehealth applications.

Travelling from Sioux Lookout to Winnipeg and then on to Montreal and finally up to Kuujjaq required one overnight in Montreal. While in Winnipeg, Dan met with the Manitoba government's Provincial Data Network (PDN) to discuss ways to partner with the Keewatin Tribal Council's efforts to connect satellite served remote First Nations into the Kuhkenah satellite network.

Rather than closing its doors to celebrate National Aboriginal Day, the KO sub office in Balmertown flung them open for area elementary school students...

Fernando Oliveira is the program developer and instructor for the First Nations SchoolNet on-line Grade 8 Supplementary courses. Over this past year, he explored different on-line delivery methods to support Grade 8 students and teachers in their classrooms.

The teacher evaluation of the English Literacy course is now available on-line. Here are some of the comments from the teachers that took the time to complete the course survey ...

• I think this is a great program for the students to experience. It helps them with their English skills as well as provides them with practice with their computer skills.
• I think this is an excellent course, and if you are having these courses next year we would like to be involved again.
• It was refreshing to see our students so excited about a school program. I think the combination of games, videos and personal profiles, along with the regular assignments, made the program effective and enjoyable. Computer skills are way up. Thanks for bringing something new into our classroom.
• Overall, this was an excellent experience for my students. I noticed that many were more motivated, attended more regularly, and made more of an effort than they normally would have.

The Grade 8 course took on a new look for the English Literacy material. Fernando worked with a team of developers to adapt the open source Moodle e-learning platform to accommodate the different classrooms, students and learning materials.

The fall semester Fernando delivered a variety of Grade 8 Science supplementary units in 11 different First Nation classrooms. Click here to read his report and the comments from the teachers about this experience.

The winter semester saw 17 First Nation schools sign up for the Math supplementary on-line course that Fernando offered. Click here to read his report and the comments from the teachers about the Math on-line course.

This initiative was first piloted in the spring of 2003 working with the Keewaytinook Okimakanak community partners who are part of  the Keewaytinook Internet High School. Fernando, who use to teach with KiHS in the remote First Nations of Poplar Hill and Fort Severn, agreed to develop and facilitate the delivery of the first on-line science units for Grade 8 students in 8 communities. This pilot proved very successful (click here to read the results of this pilot project). This pilot was funded by the KO Smart Communities project.

Twila Kakegamick, a grade 8 student attending Keewaywin Elementary School in Keewaywin First Nation, won this year's Creative Writing Challenge. The writing contest was hosted by the On-line Grade 8 Supplementary English Literacy course being facilitated by Fernando Oliveira as part of Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program.

Click here to read Twila's winning poem, "One Day" (scroll down to see the news story) and to see the other winning participants who submitted their stories and poems.

.Poplar Hill's new KiHS building is nearing completion. Located near the local elementary school, this new building will be used by those students wishing to stay in their community for their Grade 9 and 10 programs. Click here to see all the pictures of the construction process.

The other four KO First Nations (Deer Lake, Fort Severn, Keewaywin and North Spirit Lake) are also getting similar KiHS buildings for their students to be able to participate in the Keewaytinook Internet High School. As well, Deer Lake, Keewaywin and North Spirit Lake are constructing new e-Centres to better meet the needs of their community members. Langreen shipped these modular units on the winter road and is working with Keewaytinook Okimakanak Public Works and Neegan Burnside to get them built this summer for the start of the new school year in September.

Funding for these eight modular units came from the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Smart Communities project with the actual funds coming from FedNor and the Smart Communities program.

The contractors and the satellite dish pieces arrived in Sioux Lookout on Wednesday, June 2. Thanks to some great coordination by the team from Cygnial (Tom Wolstencroft), K-Net, and everyone else involved, it now looks like everything is now in place to begin constructing the new satellite earth station. 

Two large transport trucks delivered the various components that will be assembled over the next two weeks. Paul and Pat arrived from Toronto to begin putting the various pieces together.

K-Net will be documenting this ongoing development on-line. Watch this construction project unfold by visiting the photo gallery and clicking on each of the days to watch this new dish become a reality.

MyKnet.org went over the 50 million hits in one month for the first time in May with a total of 52,763,717 hits from 550,976 visitors. The daily averages also went up in May for this server with over 1.7 million daily hits created by over 17,000 visitors each day!

There was a total of 59,675,849 hits occurring on five of the monitored K-Net servers over the month of April. The six servers generating this amount of traffic include myknet.org, knet.ca, webmail.knet.ca, highschool.knet.ca, and photos.knet.ca (just click on the server to see the traffic monitoring chart for each server). These hits were made by the 799,986 visitors to these servers during the month.

These numbers do not include the traffic to the FirstNation.ca, FirstNationSchools.ca, hosting, along with other servers that K-Net maintains.