Media.Knet.Ca

This week’s issue of Wawatay (October 16) marks another milestone, with the fiftieth story being published on the Kuh-ke-nah page of the newspaper. Each of the 17 issues contains two stories researched and written by Rick Garrick, a First Nations journalist, about how people across the region are using and supporting the on-line resources and services made available by Keewaytinook Okimakanak. The sidebar contained in 16 of these issues is produced by K-Net staff to highlight different on-line applications and services created under Industry Canada’s Smart Communities initiative.

Wawatay News – Biweekly Kuh-ke-nah Page Stories

All stories are posted as .jpeg images at

http://photos.knet.ca/kuhkenah11?&page=3

March 6, 2003

North Spirit Lake’s E-Centre @ http://www.nsl.firstnation.ca

Community champions meet at Broadband workshop

K-Net Server traffic charts – http://tech.knet.ca/~tech/monitoring/webalizer

March 20, 2003

Telehealth: Helping improve access and services

Making the connections work: two ends of K-Net

Knews Schoolnet funding announcement

April 3, 2003

KIHS helps students stay at home while they learn

Meekis and Ostamas share K-Net experiences

First Nations Conferencing Site – http://smart.firstnation.ca 

April 17, 2003

Business side of Kuh-ke-nah Network; a growing concern

Community portals; providing information for communities

May 1, 2003

myknet.org is a unique on-line gathering place

Leaders forging the way for Kuh-ke-nah Network

Kuh-ke-nah Network Operations – http://tech.knet.ca

May 15, 2003

FN computer technicians putting skills to work

Turning Point offers interesting viewpoints, ideas

Visitors to Keewaytinook Okimakanak and K-Net – http://photos.knet.ca

May 29, 2003

Fiddler’s skills and abilities equal IT Hero Award

FN arts and crafts displayed on http://arts.knet.ca

Keewaywin First Nation web portal – http://keewaywin.firstnation.ca

June 12, 2003

Learning"Post Nuke" to better school websites

New and old photographs posted online every day

Deer Lake First Nation web portal – http://deerlake.firstnation.ca

June 26, 2003

First Nation schools get improved Internet connections

knews.knet.ca and community websites provide news

Poplar Hill First Nation web portal – http://poplarhill.firstnation.ca

July 10, 2003

IP telephones improving First Nation communication

Telework a reality for K-Net communities & employees

North Spirit Lake web portal – http://nsl.firstnation.ca

July 24, 2003

KO communities planning online maps and data

Live web casts streaming from First Nations via Internet

Fort Severn web portal – http://fortsevern.firstnation.ca

August 7, 2003

Filmmaker, videographer visit KO communities

Guestbooks offer interesting comments, potential economic opportunities

First Nation artists on-line – http://myknet.org and http://arts.knet.ca

August 21, 2003

Bringing new courses and past history on-line

Building economic initiatives and promoting tourism on-line

Lands & Resources of NAN on-line -

http://myknet.org and http://photos.knet.ca

September 4, 2003

• Learning video production in their communities
• KIHS well prepared for another on-line school year
• Broadband connectivity in remote First Nations – http://tech.knet.ca/photos

September 18, 2003

Keeping their community satellite systems going

Rez Pez: the hilarious on-line diabetes health initiative

First Nation elders on-line – http://photos.knet.ca

October 2, 2003

K-Net now offers Grade 8 supplementary courses

Expressing one’s feelings and support, online via K-Net

First Nation children on-line – http://photos.knet.ca

October 16, 2003

• Organizations and groups @ myknet.org

More First Nation organizations apply to develop broadband connections and applications

Chiefs of KO meetings – http://photos.knet.ca

Brian Walmark recently accepted the challenge with Keewaytinook Okimakanak to help in the development of the First Nations SchoolNet program as part of the Ontario Regional Management Organization (RMO). Brian moved from his position as NAN's Education Advisor to take on this new position as the RMO's Special Projects Facilitator.

This week, Brian met with the KO Management team and the KO Chiefs in Dryden and then travelled to Sioux Lookout to meet with the K-Net team that will be working with him in completing all these different projects. Watch for all the latest initiatives and developments in this project at http://firstnationschools.ca

The Chiefs of Keewaytinook Okimakanak met in Dryden on October 7 and 8 to view KO programs and services. Click here to see the pictures from the meeting.

In preparation for the KO Chiefs’ meeting (October 7 and 8), several members of the KO Management team met with Carl Seibel, FedNor Project Officer, on Oct 6 in Dryden to discuss the work that remains to be completed within the Smart Communities project. KO submitted a request to Industry Canada for an extension to this project but we are still awaiting approval to take this project into the next fiscal year. Click here to check out the pictures from the meeting.

The following tasks are being addressed by the Smart team and are summarized from our request to amend our existing contract.

Broadband Network Deployment:

• Ongoing maintenance and support for the "first mile" cable and/or wireless solution.
• Technical assistance for other partners to ensure a broad base of capacity and resources are available to support the network.
• Helpdesk support services for network management and training purposes in the use of the different hardware and software resources operating across the network.
• Developing partnerships with other regions for sharing resources and accessing additional applications to address First Nation needs.
• Construction and maintenance of a robust network management system for the public benefit satellite resource.
• Broadband applications such as a remote water treatment plant monitoring system to be planned and financing determined.

Keewaytinook Internet High School:

• Support the development of on-line access to high school programming for youth in the Keewaytinook Okimakanak communities and across the region.
• Open source e-Learning platform ongoing support and maintenance by project staff as well as supporting other agencies to begin utilizing this open source tool.
• Infrastructure development is ongoing in some of the partner KiHS First Nations to ensure broadband connectivity (Lac Seul FN, Fort William FN, etc).
• Transfer of the KiHS delivery model along with the platform will be supported internally and with other First Nation organizations.
• Supplementary Grade 8 core curriculum materials will be made available for students in each of the KiHS partner First Nations.
• Installation of portable classrooms in each KO Smart First Nation to accommodate KiHS class growth and space requirements

Community Information Technology Centres (e-Centres):

• Development and support for e-Centres to provide a hub for SMART service access, training along with network operation and administration.
• Organization and facilitation of technology transfer workshops and demonstrations.
• Increased access to IP videoconferencing, coordination of the local cable infrastructure with the development of a web based cable modem management system, upgrading and providing computer workstations for public access and multi-media including video production and editing services
• Central office for the e-Centre Manager, the local Network Technician, and the Multi-Media Producer.
• Development of public library services and resources
• Partnering with other community agencies to plan and develop additional facilities and resources to address local needs.
• Production of a local sustainability plan for their ongoing operation and maintenance.
• The Centre of Innovation / Expertise described in the telehealth application will be a resource that ensures the ongoing development and support for all the various applications being developed and supported by the community e-Centres including research, evaluation and planning functions.
• Completion of renovations to the existing e-Centre space to bring it up to code with running water and expansion for office space
• Installation of three portables (to be doubled with the KiHS portables) to serve as e-Centres in Deer Lake, North Spirit Lake and Keewaywin

Kuh-ke-nah Portal:

• Development of the K-Net Portal (http://knet.ca) as a "community of communities" - a high speed WAN-based gateway that reflects local character and priorities - using open source resources and training support.
• The Portal will continue to support interactive and collaborative relationships among individual users.
• Continue to host web resources that draw on and benefit local people, organizations, businesses and First Nations across the region.
• Continue to support various on-line services including e-mail, discussion forums, personal homepages, community portals and chat services.
• Additional features including live webcasting, streaming audio and video, portal and web development and training resources and provide local and regional links to First Nation businesses, organizations and communities.

Data Warehouse:

• Continue to support and build upon the development of community and regional database projects including KNet News, K-Net Network utilization / traffic data and K-Net photo gallery.
• A major database application developed by K-Net staff is the open source e-learning platform that the Internet High School is now using along with other on-line training initiatives.
• Further development and resourcing of the GIS applications in each KO Smart First Nation targeted to be online and operational in year three.
• Development and utilization of a network scheduling tool to support the use of the various network resources including video conferencing, bridges, gateways, satellite bandwidth, etc)
• Development and utilization of a comprehensive web-based accounting system to support a distributed work place with billing and inventory capabilities.
• Other potential data warehouse applications include:
• First Nation schools ICT capacity
• On-line monitoring and user databases

Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth:

• Development of the integrated IP environment for dynamic (data / voice / video) health services delivery across the Sioux Lookout health zone region (24 remote First Nations).
• Explore and test new telemedicine applications over the next three years under the approved business case presented to Health Canada’s Primary Care Health Transition Fund to expand the KO Telehealth demonstration project and its services to other remote First Nations across the Sioux Lookout Zone region in Northwestern Ontario.
• Support the purchase of specialized telemedicine equipment in partnership with other funding initiatives
• Development and operation of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Centre of Innovation for Research and Development of IP Applications in Remote First Nations (Centre of Expertise for Indigenous Learning Communities)

IP Video Conferencing and Telephony Project:

• Partner with other First Nation communities and organizations across Canada to deploy and support IP video conferencing and IP telephony services as a revenue generating stream for the Kuh-ke-nah Network.
• Manage and support the utilization of the Accord bridge and gateway resources in the Toronto hub.
• Expand and support the network membership and the use of these communication tools
• Develop and maintain an IP telephones and support services with the KO First Nations and other partners.

Smart Management and Organization:

• Support the integration of ICT and broadband tools throughout all Keewaytinook Okimakanak programs and services to better meet the needs of the member First Nations.
• Encourage the modelling and support the use of ICTs and smart applications to ensure the increased use of these tools within other organizations and communities.
• Continue to develop the distributed financial accounting system to support member First Nations to access the advice they require to develop smart management systems in their local organizations.

Other Smart Applications to be developed during this period:

• the international gathering to celebrate and share the stories, best practices and lessons learned in the development of broadband applications in First Nations;
• the third year project evaluation process and report that will provide a model and work plan for ongoing community data collection, review and strategic planning;
• supporting the development and expansion of new partnerships for the use of the broadband network and new applications, for example the new Northern Ontario Medical School, other BRAND applicants, other regional clusters, etc;
• application to develop the Virtual Reality Lab resource in partnership with Laurentian University’s MIRARCO initiative, the two gold mine in Balmertown (Gold Corp and Placer Dome) and the new medical school;
• identifying and integrating additional broadband applications and support services into the overall operation of the network and the existing applications to ensure efficient and sustainable utilization of the infrastructure and capacity;
• completing and updating the performance measurement and sustainability strategies as presented within the project business case.

Robert Hunter, KO’s Data Warehouse Coordinator and Cal Kenny, K-Net’s Graphic Design Technician joined Fort Severn elders and community leaders this week as they travelled throughout their traditional territory. The group are travelling by freighter canoes from one of Fort Severn members’ original communities of Rocksand back to Fort Severn. Along the way, they will be visiting grave sites and other significant sites to identify and document their traditional trap lines, camps, hunting and fishing sites.

Robert is working with Cal and other members of the team to identify these sites using a GPS so the points can be mapped onto a regional map. At the different sites, the elders will share their memories and stories about each of these significant locations. Cal will be recording this information and the trip using the KO video camera. Traditional activities such as hunting and fishing are also being recorded as much as possible.

Plans to use the information gathered throughout the trip include creating digital maps of Fort Severn’s traditional territory that contain testimonials and other documents clearly detailing Fort Severn historical rights to access and manage the resources and lands across this vast region of Northern Ontario. Video material will be produced to support ongoing efforts to preserve and protect the traditional languages and cultures of the people across this region.

Snowfall and other weather conditions have challenged everyone to get this trip underway. Matt Mitchell flew his Caravan to Fort Severn to transport the canoes, supplies and people to the starting point of this adventure. Here on the first scheduled day of the trip, the charter sits idle in Sioux Lookout waiting for the snow to stop. The team did get to fly to Fort Severn on Wednesday but had to stop the shuttle of equipment when another snowfall hit the region on Thursday. Everyone hopes that by the weekend, the entire team will be out on the land starting this challenging journey that is supported in part by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and Industry Canada’s Smart Communities Demonstration project.

George Ferreira, a PhD candidate from the University of Guelph, and Les Meekis, KO’s Community Manager travelled to Fort Severn to continue their data collection and video production training with the local Smart team and community members. The week is filled with the video taping of interviews with community leaders, students, teachers and residents who are utilizing ICTs as part of their work and daily lives. Along with the video taping of individuals, the local Smart team are involved in the planning and development of a short video production that will be posted on-line. The new video production and editing equipment has been acquired as part of Fort Severn’s Community Access Program.

For more stories and pictures of the training and production work, check out the Fort Severn First Nation portal.

Nathan Taylor, Project Officer with HRDC’s Office of Learning Technologies’ Community Learning Networks (OLT / CLN) program arrived in Red Lake on Oct 1 to meet with members of the Smart project team. As part of the visit, Nathan met with the KO Finance team (Penny Carpenter and Kevin Houghton) to complete an audit of the OLT / CLN reports submitted to their office. Today, Nathan and Brian Beaton are flying to Deer Lake to meet with community members and the local Smart team in that community.

In the fall of 1999, KO received a grant from OLT/CLN to assist in the preparation of a business case to develop the "Centre of Expertise for Indigenous Learning Communities". One component of this initial grant was the planning and consultation workshop held in Red Lake in November 1999. KO engaged four resource people from the Telecommons Development Group (Drs. Don Richardson and Ricardo Ramirez) along with Florence Woolner and John Rowlandson to work with KO in the development of this business case.

During the November Red Lake Workshop, KO was contacted by Industry Canada that they were one of five selected from 19 other Aboriginal applications, to prepare a comprehensive business case to become Industry Canada’s Aboriginal Smart Communities demonstration project. A second part of the community consultations into how the KO First Nations wished to utilize Information and Communication Technologies included one community workshop in Fort Severn First Nation in December 1999. These early consultation and planning workshops assisted in the preparation of the winning submission to make Keewaytinook Okimakanak Industry Canada’s Smart Communities Demonstration Project (announced in May 2000). Be sure to check out the "rich pictures" prepared during the Fort Severn Workshop describing how Fort Severn community members wanted to utilize ICTs in their community in the development of better local government, improve their education system and their local health services.

With the successful Smart Communities designation, KO then worked the different government agencies and programs to secure the necessary matching funds to complete the work as present in the business case. In August 2001, a three year contract was signed with HRDC’s OLT/CLN program to develop the "Centre of Expertise for Indigenous Learning Communities" as an integral component of the Smart Communities Demonstration project.

From the proposal ...

The goal of this project is to demonstrate how Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations can collaboratively use ICTs to re-determine their relationship with Canada and the world. This goal is embedded in meeting three primary objectives. New learning and information technologies must facilitate new opportunities for lifelong learning and community well-being; they must support community autonomy, self-determination and governance; and, ICTs must enhance local capacity for sustainable cultural and economic development.

Work on this project has progressed over the past two years, with the successful completion of all the deliverables outlined in the original proposal. These include:

Project Goal:

Empower Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations to take control of the ways that electronic information and communication technologies are used in their lives.

Primary Objectives:

Identify and train six First Nation facilitators to work with Indigenous communities in Canada and worldwide to plan and track implementation of ICTs.

Use Learning Workshop methodologies to determine local priorities for ICTs and to develop community-based action plans, benchmarks, tracking mechanisms and indicators.

Identify and acknowledge exemplary practices, techniques and approaches to the use of learning technologies in Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations.

Enhance access to learning opportunities that effectively meet local learning styles and challenges and engage culturally appropriate resources and forms of interaction.

Develop an on-line database that captures community experiences, issues, and innovations related to the implementation and use of learning technologies and network strategies to support, modify and manage applications.

Share lessons learned, identify challenges and opportunities and formulate standards of improved practice for broadband network applications in First Nations settings.

Personal web pages at MyKnet.org are a popular on-line space for people to browse. In September there were over 11 millions hits on this K-Net server with over 200,000 visits throughout the month (an average of 6,671 per day)!

All together there were over 18 MILLION hits occurring on the monitored K-Net servers throughout September. Specifically, on the seven servers with traffic graphs, there were a total of 18,267,458 hits made to these on-line services provided by Keewaytinook Okimakanak.

All 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 4 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.

The K-Net "shed" is getting a face lift. This is the space where the first MSAT / DirecPC connectivity solutions were tested, where the original K-Net Bulletin Board System was hosted for a number of years, where Peewee Linux and the K-Net router was hatched, where the multi-media team moved and entertained others from First Nations, where computers and servers were set up before being sent up north, where all these K-Net happenings and developments occurred over the past few years.

Now, while the snow flies at the end of September, the space is being doubled to accommodate additional office space along with the new server facility for Keewaytinook Okimakanak. The space is required to support the various broadband applications and on-line training and education services that are being developed under a FedNor funded project.

Hans Jansen, a consultant working with the provincial Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology's (MEST) Connect Ontario program and Industry Canada's BRAND program, spent Sunday and Monday (Sept 28 and 29) meeting with K-Net staff. He is examining the some of the "Best Practices" that have gone into developing the Kuh-ke-nah Network and the various broadband applications that are being delivered in the Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations.

On Monday afternoon, Hans and Carl Seibel flew to Fort Severn to meet with the community leaders and the local Smart team members to discuss how the network and broadband services are working for their community.

Here Hans is discussing some potential GIS applications with Robert Hunter, KO's Data Warehouse and GIS Coordinator.