Media.Knet.Ca

The Hon. James K. Bartleman, Ontario's 27th Lieutenant Governor visited Keewaytinook Okimakanak in Balmertown to learn about the Keewaytinook Internet High School and the KO Telehealth initiative. Click here to visit his web site. NAN's Grand Chief Stan Beardy and Red Lake's Major Duncan Wilson joined the Lieutenant Governor during the session.

The visit included a feast hosted by Keewaytinook Okimakanak staff and video conference sessions with First Nation schools and health centres. Click here to view the photo gallery of the visit.

One of His Honours’ goals while in office is to help establish a library in the Aboriginal communities and he asked the students and staff from Fort Severn, Deer Lake, Keewaywin, and North Spirit Lake, how a library would benefit them. Some of the communities have a library already, but were quick to indicate that any additional library resources would be very beneficial and useful to students in northern communities. They look forward to the Lieutenant Governor's support with this in the future.

Each of the above four communities was able to connect with Balmertown and participate in the presentation via video conference. An overview of KiHS was given and then a connection was made to the web site and His Honour was shown how a student would access his/her courses and submit them during a typical school day. The session was very informative and KO was able to successfully demonstrate once again how it was a leading force in the area for an innovative educational experience in our region and even beyond. There were several questions asked as students and staff discussed the Lieutenant Governor’s roles and responsibilities.

The Lieutenant Governor is interested in connecting with as many First Nation communities as possible across Ontario. Keewaytinook Okimakanak hopes that follow up video conferencing sessions can be facilitated to share more information among the First Nation schools and communities across the province.

The new K-Net Network Management Centre is now set up with the connections, staff and equipment completing the move over this past week. Dan and Adi are now working in this centre managing the network and the new server room.

Most of the main servers (knet.ca, kihs, myknet.org, mail, etc) were moved over last evening. The system was shut down for nearly three hours to complete the transfer of the equipment from the main KO office building furnance room over to the new facility.

K-Net quickly outgrew its former server space over the past year with increased demand from the northern First Nations for on-line services. A project with FedNor called the On-line Training Project, made it possible to expand the existing K-Net equipment building to create this new facility located at 115 King Street (click here to see the pictures of the building construction).

Five members of the new Northern Ontario Medical School journeyed to Balmertown on Thursday to meet with the KO team and the Red Lake physicians. They included Dr. David Boyle (Executive Director, Project Development), Martha Musicco (Associate Manager, Project Office), Robert Barnett (Data Researcher, NHIP), Jim Harrold (Interim Theme Coordinator) and the trip organizer, Orpah McKenzie (Interim Director, Aboriginal Affairs). During their visit to the KO office, everyone met with a group of  Poplar Hill community members and health staff via video conference. A second video conference with the Sandy Lake health office also provided the NOMS team with the opportunity to meet with additional community members. Click here to view the photos.

On Friday, several members of the team (including Todd Dufresne) met with the K-Net team in Sioux Lookout to identify strategies to work together. A quick tour of the K-Net facilities, meeting the team and viewing some of the on-line resources provided the NOMS group some additional references for their work. Click here to read the KO briefing paper presented to the NOMS staff. 

Later at the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority, all the tribal councils and other First Nation organizations were invited to meet with the NOMS team to discuss some of the opportunities that exist for the First Nations to work with NOMS. First Nations are being invited to host first year medical students during a four week placement that is to provide an alternative learning environment and development opportunity for the students, NOMS and the communities. The session is called "Aboriginal Year 1 Clerkship Experience".

The "Expression of Interest: Community Information and Guidelines" were distributed to everyone in attendance with additional copies being made available through Orpah McKenzie. As well, the "Report of the NOMS Aboriginal Workshop" (June 2003) was presented to everyone.

NOMS is interested in partnering with First Nations to identify a strategy to create a successful learning opportunity for everyone willing to participate in this work. This will involve identifying and hiring local resource people who will be considered NOMS faculty members to support, assess and providing learning opportunities for the students during these placements.

For more information about these partnership possibilities contact Orpah McKenzie, NOMS Interim Director, Aboriginal Affairs in Thunder Bay or Martha Musicco, Associate Manager, NOMS Project Office in Sudbury

Fernando Oliveira is now preparing to teach the Grade 8 Math supplementary course curriculum starting the week of January 19 in First Nation schools across Ontario. He is doing this from his home office in Toronto by using the internet and other on-line communication tools and resources. Check out this work at http://g8.firstnationschools.ca. Fifteen First Nation schools have registered so far for these supplementary Math units to support the students in their regular classes.

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.

This initiative was first piloted in the spring of 2003 working with the Keewaytinook Okimakanak community partners working together in the development and delivery 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 on-line science units for Grade 8 students in 8 communities. This pilot proved very successful (click here to read the June report).

This past fall, Keewaytinook Okimakanak partnered with Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program to offer a series of on-line Grade 8 supplementary course material to support students and staff in the delivery of the Science, Math and English curriculum. Once again, Fernando agreed to coordinate the development and delivery of this material.

Communications In the Public Interest Vol. 2
Seeking Convergence in Policy and Practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Democratic Deficit in Canadian; ICT Policy and Regulation
Darin Barney, University of Ottawa

Intellectual Property Rights and the Disciplining of Higher Education in Canada and Mexico
Jerrold L. Kachur, University of Alberta

Sewers and Asphalt: The Stuff of Digital Dreams? The re-regulation of telecommunication industries and democracy in Canada
Christopher Bodnar, Carleton University

Public Access, Personal Privacy and Media Interweaving in Everyday Internet Experiences: Exploring Current Policy Concerns Via a ‘Neighbourhood Ethnography’
Andrew Clement, Jane Aspinall, Ana Viseu and Tracy Kennedy, University of Toronto

Living Smart In Two Worlds: Maintaining and Protecting First Nation Culture for Future Generations
Brian Beaton, Jesse Fiddler and John Rowlandson, K-Net

Personal web pages at MyKnet.org continue to be the most popular on-line space for the Nishnawbe Aski to browse. In December there were over 21 million hits on this K-Net server (over 5.5 million more hits from the previous month)! The average daily hits on this server rose to nearly 700,000 hits each day!

All together there were over 29 MILLION hits occurring on the six most popular monitored K-Net servers throughout December. Specifically, on these six servers with traffic graphs, there were a total of 29,020,325 hits made to these on-line services provided by Keewaytinook Okimakanak. The six servers include myknet.org, knet.ca, webmail.knet.ca, hosting.knet.ca, highschool.knet.ca and photos.knet.ca (just click on the server to see the traffic monitoring chart for each server). There were 469,682 visits made during this period to these six servers, indicating that people are exploring these sites more and more.

Most of the K-Net servers that are being monitored for hits, visits and usage statistics using the webalizer program again showed an increase during the month. But http://myknet.org rose by more than 5.5 million hits to demonstrate the rapid take up of these communication tools among users across the north.

Please note:

• other on-line K-Net services, such as K-Net chat and the video streamer are not included in these numbers;
• server traffic monitoring information is located at http://tech.knet.ca/~tech/monitoring/webalizer.
  

Keewaytinook Okimakanak participated in the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva that took place on December 8 to 11, within several venues. These included:

• Jesse Fiddler travelled to Geneva to attend the different sessions and do several presentations about the work being completed by K-Net in partnership with First Nations (see the Wawatay story and other K-News stories);
• Keewaytinook Okimakanak team members connected with other First Nation groups and the folks in Geneva via video conference on two occasions during the Smart Fair in Winnipeg;
• the multi-media presentation and case studies about the work being completed by K-Net were distributed and posted on-line.

The Report from the Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples and the Information Society gathering was released on December 23 by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues. Click here to read the report.

The December 29 issue of Wawatay News contains three more news stories about the work being completed within the Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations demonstration project.

This week's issue of the Kuh-ke-nah page in Wawatay News include the following articles:

• New satellite dish to offer more opportunities: Keewaytinook Okimakanak is working with Industry Canada’s FedNor program to construct a new 7.3m satellite earth station in Sioux Lookout. This dish will expand the capabilities for remote and rural, satellite-served communities to develop, deliver and access broadband applications and services. Across Northern Ontario, there are presently 12 satellite served First Nations. K-Net is also working in partnership with the Kativik Regional Government in Northern Quebec to bring these services into their 14 member communities. (read the entire story)
• Resiliency stories & workbook online @ knews.knet.ca: Lorraine Kenny, while working with the Sunset Women’s Aboriginal Circle, created a workbook intended to assist residential school survivors to create their own personnal story that highlights their resiliency in dealing with their past experiences and recognizing their special gifts and strengths to survive today. (read the entire story)
• K-Net Showcase - contains photos from the different photo galleries located on the K-Net servers. This week’s pictures are from the Fort Severn, Deer Lake and Sandy Lake web sites describing some of the history that is being documented on-line about these communities. These partnerships with K-Net are creating innovative applications as well as deliver new services for all the communities across Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

Rick Garrick is researching additional stories for future articles. If you have a story that you want to share about this project and the work that is happening in your community to get connected, please send us an e-mail.

Various newspaper articles are being scanned and stored for reference purposes in this photo gallery.

Workshop instructors Jesse Fiddler and Cal Kenny worked with First Nation reps this week to develop First Nation school web sites using the open source Post Nuke document management platform. Several First Nation schools in the North sent local community members to this workshop that is sponsored by Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program. The Sioux Lookout workshop provided participants with all of the knowledge necessary to create free web sites for their schools on the First Nations SchoolNet web portal at http://firstnationschools.ca. The Sioux Lookout Aboriginal Area Management Board once again supported the delivery of this workshop by providing the use of their boardroom.

If your First Nation school would like more information about these free workshops,  email brianwalmark@knet.ca (Special Projects Coordinator for the Ontario RMO project). These workshops are coming to a community near you in the new year!

The First Nations SchooNet Helpdesk (staffed by John Moreau - jmoreau@knet.ca and Jamie Ray - jamieray@knet.ca) prepared and supports a training lab for these workshops. Technical support for hardware and software issues is available by calling these two at 877-737-KNET (5638). Barb Wong (barbwong@knet.ca) is working with Brian as the SchoolNet project administrator out of her Sioux Lookout office.

Participants at the Sioux Lookout workshop included Simon McKay, Chairman of the Michikan Education Authority, Pauline Beardy (Bearskin), Michael Rashleigh and Rosemary Erb (Wapekeka), William Mekanak (Kingfisher), Robert Semple (Kasabonika), Shawn Kakegamic and Stan Beardy (Muskrat Dam) and Margaret Angeconeb (Windigo Education Authority).

Click here to view the photos from the workshop.

The December 11 issue of Wawatay News contains three more news stories about the work being completed within the Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations demonstration project.

This week's issue of the Kuh-ke-nah page in Wawatay News include the following articles:

• Harnessing ICTs: a Canadian First Nations experience: Jesse Fiddler’s trip to the World Summit on the Information Society gatherings in Geneva, Switzerland is described in this article. The on-line multi-media production with various video productions describing the work completed under the Kuhkenah Smart First Nations demonstration project is also described. This production (and each of the accompanying publications) is available at http://smart.knet.ca/kuhkenah_flash.html.
• Telehealth to be offered in SL Zone nursing stations: Bob Nault, on behalf of Health Canada, announced the launch of the $6.4 million Keewaytinook Telehealth Initiative. Over the next two and half years, the Keewaytinook Okimakanak telehealth team will be working with our partners to support the development of telehealth services in all the health centres across the Sioux Lookout Health Zone. See the announcement.
• K-Net Showcase - contains photos from the K-Net photo gallery at http://photos.knet.ca and First Nation web sites describing the partnerships involved with K-Net to create innovative applications and deliver services with the communities across Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

Rick Garrick is researching additional stories for future articles. If you have a story that you want to share about this project and the work that is happening in your community to get connected, please send us an e-mail.

Various newspaper articles are being scanned and stored for reference purposes in this photo gallery.