June 2007 - August 2007

The team had a very challenging time during this quarter. On Saturday, June 23, 2007, Canupawakpa experienced a tornado within their small community. As a result of the touch down in their community, a number of homes and some local organizational buildings were damaged. In addition, to the buildings and their structures being damaged, the tornado also destroyed their 120’ wireless Internet tower and all of the equipment co-located on it.
This tower was the main source that provided Internet services into the Adult Education Centre where a Virtual Classroom environment was set up and where MB E provided over 20 refurbished computers for the community. Through a partnership with Manitoba Science, Technology, Energy & Mines (MB STEM) high end video conferencing equipment, monitors and a dedicated broadband connection was provided to this centre for virtual workshop delivery. The unfortunate thing for Manitoba E-Association is that we heavy relied on this equipment so that we could innovatively interact with the Canupawakpa Adult Education Centre either from our main office location in Winnipeg or through our satellite locations in Brandon.
Manitoba E-Association placed resources on finding an alternative solution so that the community could again have high speed Internet. Our organization is working directly with Canupawakpa Dakota Nation and an Internet Service provider (ISP) in order to determine the viability of placing high speed Internet back to the Adult Education Centre and to some of the community serving organizations. It is anticipated that some different solutions will be proposed over the next couple of weeks.
On a final note, Paul Concepcion (MB E) worked extensively during this period on the Interactive Compact Discs (iCD’s). During this quarter, Paul had completed 2 full modules for Canupawakpa consisting of the following:
o Windows Movie Maker
o MSN Messenger