Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/trainmat/trainmat-minutes-95jul.txt

Text File | 1995-10-18 | 8KB | 189 lines

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Margaret Isaacs/University of Glasgow

Minutes of the Network Training Materials Working Group (TRAINMAT)

The TRAINMAT Working Group met once at the Stockholm IETF on 19 July.
Topics covered in the meeting included a round-up of training
activities, the Catalogue of Network Training Materials, using the
network to deliver training, registration of Powerpoint as a MIME type,
and liaison with other groups.



Round-Up Of Training Activities

The meeting began with a round-up of training activities with which
members were involved:


   o Jill Foster reported on the recent Networking Workshop for
     Technologically Developing Countries in Honolulu in June 1995.  The
     workshop was sponsored by the Internet Society, and other bodies,
     and comprised 180 students from 60 countries, divided into four
     tracks, of which 52 were included in the Network Navigation and
     Services track.  The course covered many aspects of networking
     including information services and services via e-mail, authoring
     and information provision, setting up clients and servers, etc.

   o Jodi Ito from Hawaii described the Hawaiian training program using
     interactive video.

   o Ingrid Melva of Nordunet reported on a Norwegian distance learning
     course in using the Internet utilising e-mail, WWW, and paper.
     URL: http://www.uio.no/wwwfik/inter.html

   o Pien Voortman from SURFnet indicated that there are many varieties
     of user-tailored training and support provided by SURFnet,
     including the SURFnet Guide.

     URL: http:///www.nic.surfnet.nl/surfnet/user-support

   o David Hartland from the UK's Mailbase described how they support
     and train mailing list users and subject-based groups.  He also
     talked about a new large-scale training project called `Netskills'
     at Newcastle, funded under the UK Electronic Libraries Program.
     Netskills will train librarians, information providers, and users.
     At Newcastle, they are looking at WWW and training over the
     network.

   o Nicky Ferguson of the University of Bristol described the current
     subject-based UK training and support program for social science
     researchers and users of social science research.

   o April Marine, NASA contractor at Ames, described an interesting
     multi-agency program called Globe which seeks to involve K12
     students in taking environmental measurements, inputting them via
     the Internet and eventually seeing the results of the analysis via
     the Internet.  Every teacher who is involved in the program is
     trained.  The program is exported to countries outside the US. In
     the US, the Project aims to get 2000 schools connected to the
     Internet, at no cost to the individual schools.

     URL: http://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/


There were some further reports of training activities from the
Netherlands, the UK, Australia, Croatia, Sweden, and Japan.


Catalogue of Network Training Materials

The Fields in The Template

The following fields were introduced at the last working group meeting:


     Content-Subject (General User/Administrator/<subject>)
     Content-Level (beginner/intermediate/advanced)


There was some doubt expressed about what was actually agreed to at the
last meeting.  Today's meeting agreed that the Content-Level field was
useful, but Content-Subject was less so, and therefore should be
scrapped.  Content-Level should be re-named Audience-Level.


Categories

There was some discussion about the additional categories proposed last
time for inclusion, and about the definition of various categories and
whether some materials were adequately catered for in the existing list
of categories.  For instance, it was suggested that handouts be included
with other material with which they are associated, i.e., a handout
relating to a presentation should be classed as presentation material.

A new category of `On-line Collection' was accepted.  This category
would encompass hyper-linked lists of on-line training materials,
servers which offer organised collections of network training materials
or links to them, and so on.  It would effectively broaden the scope of
the Catalogue so that many more training materials could be accessed
through it, without the necessity for describing each one in detail.  A
number of draft entries for items in this category had been prepared by
Margaret Isaacs.

The meeting agreed that the high-level categories proposed at the last
meeting, but not yet incorporated into the Catalogue, should be
dispensed with.  These were:


   o Training Materials
   o Documentation


This would then give the following flat range of categories, e.g.:


   o User guides
   o Resource guides
   o Trainer guides
   o Presentation materials
   o Workshop exercises
   o Self-paced materials
   o On-line collections


The aim of the Catalogue of Training Materials is to provide a select
list of quality items.  At the last IETF, volunteers from the working
group had agreed to take ten each of the existing one hundred items and
cull them.  The catalogue is now in a reasonably good state, with much
out of date and inappropriate material deleted or suggested for
deletion.

One minor anomaly in the present system of input to the Catalogue is
that when the Record-Last-Modified-Name field is modified, only the name
of the last modifier appears in this field, overwriting the previous
modifier or author of the entry.  The meeting did not think this was a
problem, as long as all contributors' names appeared in the list of
acknowledgements.  However, it was pointed out that the acknowledgement
is generated by Record-Last-Modified-Name field.  It was suggested that
the acknowledgement should be manually compiled and maintained.

There was a question about applying some sort of quality control to
input to the Catalogue, as the Web interface effectively makes it
possible for anyone to add any entry to the Catalogue.  It was suggested
that the review group, which currently consists of Jill Foster, Mark
Prior, and Margaret Isaacs, be expanded and volunteers to vet entries
were called for.  Carol Ward was volunteered by April Marine and Robert
Janz from SURFnet also volunteered to find someone.

Some deletions from the Catalogue were suggested.  When amendments have
been made, Margaret will make sure that categories as proposed at
today's meeting are given for every title, and Mark will then have the
Catalogue sorted by category.  Sally Hambridge had volunteered at the
last meeting to check through the Catalogue for consistency.



Using The Network to Deliver Training

The working group has been interested in the use of the MBone to deliver
training.  Joyce Reynolds has tried to get support from technical people
for this but was discouraged.  She will try a route via the IESG to the
relevant MBone working groups.

Ingrid mentioned a report on using the network to deliver training in
Norway and volunteered to give a summary in English of the report to the
[e-mail] list.


Registration of Powerpoint as MIME Type

Jill had been trying since last July to get Powerpoint registered as a
MIME type.  There were initial concerns about the section on ``security
implications.''  These had been addressed, but there were subsequent
quibbles about the exact name of the proposed type, version numbers,
etc.  There was to be a BOF at the IETF about the problems with the
registration procedures.


Liaison With Other Groups

Mark Prior gave a brief review of the situation in Australia where
currently proposals are being received for some government funding for
training.  Meanwhile there is an explosion of Internet service providers
offering training.