On Monday morning, all gathered (Picture 1, Picture 2) at Presentation Junior High for the main part of the conference. Greetings were brought by various members of the community and the mornings presentations included one by Douglas Hull of Schoolnet. Other out-of-province guests at the conference included Linda Harasim and Lucio Teles of Simon Fraser University, Trevor Owen of WIER, and Arnold MacPherson of New Brunswick. As you can see. the west coast of the province did us proud weather wise as we hosted our guests. Weather was the responsibility of conference co-chair Dave Quick and we thank him for doing such a good job with this part of his duties.
Monday also saw the launch of Schoolnet RINGS. This is a national Class Project system which is being piloted during the coming school year. The pilot is based at the STEM~Net Class Project Network. Two flagship projects for RINGS were announced. The first, Project Groundhog, is a K-3 project that was previously run on the STEM~Net Class Project system. This was very enthusiastically and creatively launched by primary teachers Wendy King and Bill Jameson. The pictures just don't do justice to Bill's shadow puppet versions of Harvey Weir and Jaap Tuinamn. The second flagship RINGS project is Project Rivers which is a STELLAR Schools Project. This was presented by Gilbert Bennett of Cable Atlantic and Nancy Parsons Heath of STEM~Net (much less creatively, this was an engineer and a chemistry teacher).
Monday afternoon concluded with a forum on computer networking and distance education.
Monday evening was enjoyably spent at a barbecue at the Marble Mountain Lodge (Picture 1, Picture 2). The food was excellent (Dale definitely thought so) and entertainment was provided by the Sharecroppers. A good time was certainly had by all.
Tuesday brought the second day of conference presentations, including the Community Access Project in Newfoundland presented by David Gale of the Public Libraries and a presentation on public access networks by Yvonne Bradbury Wiseman of the Enterprise Network. Edith Lynch discussed her use of STEM~Net as a research tool and Leon Cooper and Alex Hickey of the Department of Education presented an overview of the TILE report. Brian McCormack of Presentation Junior High presented one schools experience in networking.
Also on Tuesday afternoon, conference participants were given a brief overview of the follow-up workshops to be held during the remainder of the week (Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3).
During the conference on Monday and Tuesday, there was also a Hook Line and Net kids camp offered for the children of conference participants. This was definitely where the most enthusiasm could be found and also the most exhausted leaders. (Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3, Picture 4)
For the final three days of Hook, Line and Net '95, workshops were offered in web page development, Schoolnet RINGS, and Linux/Windows NT. In addition, the Community Access Program and Professional Development ran three day workshops.
Overall, a tiring, exciting and very productive week of networking. We hope to repeat and improve next year so watch for the announcement of Hook, Line and Net '96 for St. John's, August, 1996.
