From KAREN wiki

KAREN Champions Video Conferencing series

October 3, 2008

This Friday’s event proved to be another productive conference with the KAREN champions, we have the attendance of Mr. Andrew Dunningham from Scion Research and Ms. Geraldine Howell of the National Library, David Clough Project Manager for the National Education Network.

This week’s conference is about how the KAREN Videoconferencing service can support the research and information requirement of member schools of National Education Network.

Summary points:

David Clough, REANNZ project manager for the National Education Network (NEN) provided the participants an insight of what the NEN project is all about. Some of the discussion includes, what is the current status of the project, who are the people and organizations involved, what are the expectation of the schools with regards to the benefits they can get by join the KAREN community.

David is continuously working with the Ministry of Education to gather information on what specific requirement do the NZ School has to determine how REANNZ can find a match for this with any CRI, University or the National Library.

Ms. Geraldine, the director services to young New Zealanders at the National Library, is very keen in using the KVC service and learning more on how to use it and get the schools involved in the use of information available at the National Library. Initially, she outlined two (2) programs that she thinks would best fit in using the KVCS as the means of promoting this information.

Curators using the KVCS to talk to class room and giving lectures to students from the collection of information from the library.

Professional training and lectures for the development of teachers. This has been done before using videoconferencing thru the help of professional lecturer.

Andrew Dunningham, Scientist of Scion Research have also expressed his willingness to support the NEN schools and is keen in getting in contact with them particularly the intermediate levels. Scion currently has the available resources to support the research requirement of schools, it is a matter of knowing what specific area of research is needed in order to tap the right expert for the event.

Finally, one of the regular activities that will be included in every KAREN champion conference is the regular updates about the KAREN VC service, this will include from time to time the basic information about its benefits and values to KAREN members. Some of the conference participants are not fully aware of the service or have limited experience in using it. Thus, REANNZ wants to promote this service and start educating people.