CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Jennifer Sellers/NASA IITA - Sterling Software and Jodi Ito/University of Hawaii Minutes of the Internet School Networking Working Group (ISN) First Session - 4 April 1995 The minutes of the first session were submitted by ISN co-Chairs Jennifer Sellers and Jodi Ito, based on excellent notes taken by Pat Smith. Following the usual custom of ISN meetings, the participants introduced themselves and explained their interest in ISN. It was noted that the ISN mailing list has moved. The new address for subscribing is listmanager@nasa.gov (subscribe isn-wg ) and the address for posting is isn-wg@nasa.gov. Document Repository Project The first order of business was a discussion of the document repository project. The repository is in place at www.lloyd.com and is ready to be populated with documents on the technical issues related to helping schools get on-line. Two documents were suggested for inclusion, one a United States survey on telecommunications in K-12 US schools, and one entitled ``Stages of Internet Connectivity for School Networking'': http://info.ckp.edu/publications/articles/stages/stages.html The group discussed its responsibility for the repository and agreed that the volunteers who have agreed to maintain the data (i.e., check to ensure that documents are current and links are correct) should keep that responsibility, while the group's milestone would be to issue an FYI RFC announcing the location, nature, general contents, and how to contribute to the repository. A draft of this FYI will be ready by the time of the Stockholm meeting. The group will also investigate the possibility of having a gopher and/or e-mail server with search capabilities to facilitate access by those that do not have sufficient Internet access. K-12 Directory Project The next item was a discussion of the K-12 Directory project. The group will iterate, via the mailing list, the fields considered best for the directory template. InterNIC staff will do their best to map the fields to those available in existing implementations, possibly X.500. When that outcome is posted to the list, we will contact CoSN and ask if it looks as if the proposed information to be gathered will meet their needs and to get their input before proceeding. In addition, an item was added to Wednesday night's ISN session with educators to get input from them as to whether a directory of people or one of projects would be more useful. In the short term, the group will use the InterNIC's Directory of Directories as a starting point to begin collecting project information. That directory includes an Education Directory. We will get the template and post it to the mailing list for group input, and some members will get input from educators with whom they work. Then we will post the template to a number of education mailing lists, soliciting contributions to the database. FYI 22 -- FAQ for Schools The group discussed FYI 22 (RFC 1578), a document of Frequently Asked Questions for schools. The document will be updated, and a draft is planned for the Stockholm meeting. There are some questions to be resolved, the most important of which is, ``Is there anything out there which supplants this document and makes an update unnecessary?'' Some discussion ensued about what should be added or changed in the document; the group gave good feedback. It was suggested that we take the list of questions to the Wednesday night ISN session to get feedback from educators, so that item was added to the agenda. Any further comments on the FAQ document -- and further comments are most welcome! -- should be directed to Jennifer Sellers sellers@quest.arc.nasa.gov and Julie Robichaux julie@sura.net. Milestones Review The group reviewed the milestones in the charter, which will be updated to reflect work that has been completed and include the new milestones that the group agreed on. The new charter will be posted to the ISN list and placed in the proper repositories. Agenda for Next Session Finally, the group drafted a short agenda for Wednesday night's ISN session, which a number of local educators are expected to attend. The meeting was then adjourned. Second Session -- 5 April 1995 Minutes of the second session were submitted by ISN co-Chairs Jodi Ito and Jennifer Sellers, based on excellent notes taken by Ed Klein. This second meeting of the ISN Working Group was convened with local educators invited to attend and get their feedback on current ISN projects. The evening began with introductions around the room, approximately twenty people giving a brief explanation of their reasons for attending. User Services Area Director Joyce Reynolds then gave an overview of the IETF and the USV area, explaining our history and function. Co-chair Jodi Ito followed with a summary of current ISN projects, including the Document Repository, the Directory (person/projects) Project, and the FYI 22 update. Co-chair Jennifer Sellers discussed the RFCs that ISN has put out, and explained how to access them, then proceeded to discuss the FYI 22 update, handing out a list of the questions posed in the current FYI to help solicit feedback. Discussion A discussion of the Directory project followed, bringing out much useful feedback from educators. There seemed to be a rough consensus that project information would be more useful than people information if only one were possible, but that some kind of cross-linked service would be optimal. There is a yellow-pages of projects that already exists, and Jennifer will try to identify who is in charge of it. The InterNIC Directory of Directories does part of the people-directory function already. With respect to projects, there should be a field describing the criteria for interaction. (Do the current project leaders want new sites involved, and if so, to what degree?). A criteria is needed for what projects go into the database (even if those criteria are ``anything that anyone wants to put in it''), as well as some aging scheme so that out-of-date information gets culled out. We need to ensure that the database is searchable based on geographical location, and that the following information is available: grade level, language, computer hardware/software used, subject (math, science, etc.), type and speed of connectivity (14.4 dialup, dedicated T1, etc.), size of organization, type of organization (public, private, religious affiliation, etc.), start date/end date, participant criteria, content/methods of access, and status (complete, planned, operational). The next item of discussion was the repository of documents to help schools and service providers in getting the schools on-line. The groups' comments on the document repository project reiterated the need to have the information available via gopher and e-mail (in addition to WWW) and to have the documents searchable. The group then discussed FYI 22, soliciting possible additional questions for the document to address. A question and answer pair along the lines of, ``Why don't things always work?'' was suggested, as an effort to promote more realistic expectations for new users. The group also recommended that a section on the Web needs to be included. The meeting was adjourned.