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, wg-isus@rare.nl. To join, mail a request to mailserver@rare.nl and include ``subscribe wg-isus firstname lastname'' in the text of the message. Attendees Nashwa Abdel-Baki nashwa@frcu.eun.eg Sepideh Boroumand sepideh@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov Lloyd Brodsky lbrodsky@rocksolid.com Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Ann Cooper cooper@isi.edu Sheryl Erez erez@cac.washington.edu. Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov Dawn Mann dawn@infoods.unu.edu April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov Marilyn Martin martin@netcom.ubc.ca Kim Morla kmorla@pucp.edu.pe Marsha Perrott perrott@prep.net Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Patricia Smith psmith@merit.edu Simon Spero ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu Phil Wintering pvw@americast.com Philip Wood cpw@lanl.gov