Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/trainmat/trainmat-minutes-94mar.txt

Text File | 1994-10-13 | 9KB | 215 lines

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Jill Foster/University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Minutes of the Network Training Materials Working Group (TRAINMAT)


These minutes were derived from notes taken by Jodi Chu.


Administrative Matters

The agenda of this meeting and the minutes of the Houston meeting were
approved.


Catalogue of Network Training Materials

Margaret Isaacs produced a catalogue of training materials at Newcastle
in 1992.  As a first cut at the TRAINMAT catalogue, volunteers were
taking those entries and mapping them into the TRAINMAT templates.  At
the last IETF, several fields of the template were revised.
Additionally, the information now needs to be updated.  A list of
entries was circulated around the room so volunteers could sign up to
complete the remaining entries.  The target date for completion is one
month after the revised template is sent out.  More volunteers are
required!

The group asked and answered the following questions:


   o Is the record-maintainer ``permanent''?  Yes, it is.

   o For multiple access-types, can you just list the multiple URLs?
     This seems reasonable.  Jill will check with Top Node.

   o Books and articles are catalogued differently (library-style);
     should they be catalogued differently in templates?  No---keep it
     simple this time around.  To help with this, ``articles'' will not
     be included.


Revised templates will be mailed out to the list for review.  Mark will
send a request out to the mailing list asking for information on new
materials and will send out the current list of materials and volunteers
for group members' reference.  Simon Spero suggested that people be
allowed to add/update their own information by submitting their link
information on a standard template (for Web/Gopher server).

The group discussed having a controlled list of subject headings.  It
was decided to look at the list of items after it has been compiled and
then develop a short list of suitable subjects or categories of training
materials.

Information will be available on-line via FTP, Gopher and WWW.
Previously, both CNIDR and the InterNIC had offered to host the
information.

The mechanism for maintaining information has yet to be decided.  Jill
suggested that perhaps the InterNIC would adopt the responsibility for
maintaining the information, once the working group had gathered it.


Review of Available Materials

Where are the gaps?  (A current list of existing materials is available
via Gopher on trainmat.ncl.ac.uk.)  There seems to be plenty of material
to cover the basic introduction to the benefits of networking and
information resource discovery and retrieval.  Users are becoming more
sophisticated now and the gap seems to be in the provision of more
``technical'' training materials.

The interest seems to be moving towards a client/server model and
towards Mac/PC platforms.  Users need information on PPP/SLIP, including
why they need it (i.e., direct connection).  The situation for PCs is
particularly confusing as there are a variety of TCP/IP implementations
to choose from.  Bunyip has written a series of seminars that is being
used by the InterNIC. Part of this is of a technical nature and deals
with how to set up clients and servers.  There needs to be more material
developed to cater to this level of user.

The University of Newcastle is continuing to develop their tailorable
training materials.  These are intended for trainers to use to train
their users.  The latest module is freely available (for noncommercial
use):

     ftp://ftp.ncl.ac.uk/pub/network-training/*
     or
     gopher://trainmat.ncl.ac.uk/NetTrainPack

It is called ``Slicing Through the Maze of Networked Information.''
This material has been retrieved by trainers all over the world.
Newcastle would like feedback on the network training materials pack.


Subject Resource Guides (Top 10 Resources in Subject ``X'')

At the last TRAINMAT meeting, it was suggested that pooling short
subject resource guides covering the major resources in a particular
subject area would enable us to tailor network training to particular
communities more easily.  There are now many such initiatives (see the
University of Michigan's Clearinghouse for Subject Resource Guides,
Gopher Jewels and the more general initiatives such as the EuropGopher's
Subject Tree, NCSA and CERN's WWW Virtual Libraries, Sunsite's subject
tree for politics, history, and many others).


Using the Network to Deliver Training

Jill is keen to see groups starting to experiment with using the
network to deliver training.  This will enable trainers to be in a
position to take advantage of the bandwidth as soon as it becomes
available and feasible, and will help to ensure the needed functionality
is developed at an early stage.  At present, most trainers and end users
do not have high-end workstations and there needs to be a drive to bring
``high-end'' applications to ``low-end'' machines such as PCs and Macs.


   o Larry Masinter developed a Gopher interface to Moo.  Trainers and
     trainees could explore Gopher space together from within Moo.

   o CU-See-Me/Maven is being developed for video/audio over the network
     for Macs and PCs.  It is being used by the K-12 community in the
     Global Schoolhouse Project.

   o Pat Smith reported that the Merit CHI group (NSF project) is using
     the network for delivery of upper atmosphere radar scans in a real
     time co-laboratory situation.

   o The MICE project at UCL regularly uses audio/video conferencing and
     shared white board.  There are proposed European projects using
     MICE such as live teaching of surgery, language teaching, etc.

   o The User Services Area needs higher visibility.  Why not experiment
     with USV-TV for training using multicasting?  High-end equipment is
     still needed and the quality is not that good, but we need to make
     a start with experimenting.

   o Sheryl Erez is producing a series of videos for broadcast over the
     Seattle public cable (she was videoing ``famous'' IETFers).

   o Joyce Reynolds offered to investigate whether it would be possible
     for us to do some trials with multicasting.  It was decided that if
     there was approval, we would use Simon Spero's video tape of an
     HTML authoring tutorial, combined with the relevant Web pages and a
     short question-and-answer session.


Liaison with Other Groups

Liaison with NETTRAIN, the RARE ISUS Working Group and UK mailbase/ITTI
network training materials is ongoing.  Susan Hares is still reading the
NETTRAIN mailing list on behalf of the User Services Working Group
(USWG) and TRAINMAT, but most of the items on this particular list have
been of a very general nature over the past few months.


Sharing Experiences

Sheryl Erez, of the University of Washington, is producing a series of
videos on the Internet.  It will probably be ready in the summer and
will be in the format of a news magazine.

Sepideh Boroumand, of NASA GSFC, is teaching twenty-four teachers to use
the Internet, and how to include Internet resources in the curriculum.
It is geared towards earth and space science.

Jodi Chu, of the University of Hawaii, has produced three ``Internet
awareness'' segments for broadcast over public cable.  They are looking
at producing a series of video training modules with a hands-on exercise
segment.  They are also looking at producing an additional video series
to air over public cable in the fall of 1994.  Honolulu Community
College is producing an ``Introduction to Internet'' Mosaic document.
Videos are used to accompany self paced hands-on training.  The user
watches the video and then is told to pause it while they use a PC/Mac
to access a particular service over the network.  Jodi will post the URL
to the list when the project is complete.


AOB

The meeting adjourned at noon.  The group will not meet in Toronto.

This group is a joint RARE/IETF working group.  In addition to the
us-wg mailing list on nic.near.net, RARE also has a list,
[e-mail].  To join, mail a request to [e-mail] and
include ``subscribe wg-isus firstname lastname'' in the text of the
message.


Attendees

Nashwa Abdel-Baki        [e-mail]
Sepideh Boroumand        [e-mail]
Lloyd Brodsky            [e-mail]
Jodi-Ann Chu             [e-mail]
Ann Cooper               [e-mail]
Sheryl Erez              [e-mail].
Jill Foster              [e-mail]
Alisa Hata               [e-mail]
Lenore Jackson           [e-mail]
Dawn Mann                [e-mail]
April Marine             [e-mail]
Marilyn Martin           [e-mail]
Kim Morla                [e-mail]
Marsha Perrott           [e-mail]
Mark Prior               [e-mail]
Joyce K. Reynolds        [e-mail]
Patricia Smith           [e-mail]
Simon Spero              [e-mail]
Phil Wintering           [e-mail]
Philip Wood              [e-mail]