NCSA NEWS

Native American Seminar Emphasizes Use of New Technologies

released September 7, 1999

Representatives from more than a dozen Native American tribal colleges, school districts and community groups recently participated in a day-long seminar on Distance Education in Native America. The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) and the Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center (AHPCC) at the University of New Mexico, a National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) partner, sponsored the event.

Presentations and discussions at the seminar ranged from basic demonstrations of collaborative and education delivery systems to discussions about tribal community telecommunications services and connectivity frustrations. The discussions stressed that Native colleges must take advantage of the latest technical innovations being developed by the Alliance as it works to create the Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) technology Grid (PACI Grid) and the Access Grid.

The seminar's organizer, Evans Craig of the University of New Mexico, said he would like to see all 32 member tribal colleges of AIHEC become connected to the Internet with at least fractional T-1 bandwidth as soon as possible.

"The whole goal is to get a tribal network in place, not just to provide access for a few researchers," said Craig, who is also a researcher with the EOT-PACI Access and Inclusion team. "A lot of challenges are involved, from infrastructure to technology plans, to making it all relevant to the community at large and the tribal councils."

 

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