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About iWIN
Who
is the “i” in iWIN? Is
it the 15 year-old Native youth who can’t decide what career to
choose? Is it the 18
year-old high school graduate in Ottawa who wants help in choosing a
college program? Is it the
unemployed farm worker in Southern Ontario who wants to change careers?
Or, is it the woman in Belleville who is thinking about starting
her own business? The “i” is all of these people and anyone else who needs information to make decisions about education, training, career planning and jobs. There’s lots of information on these topics available all of the time. The problem is that information providers often focus on the information instead of the individual who is going to use it. And the individual gets lost. One of the goals of creating iWIN is to focus on the individual: the “i” in iWIN. The Internet can help people find the information they need. Agencies and government departments would like people to get information for decision-making. Now, there’s a network that can bring these individuals and agencies together through the Internet. The idea for iWIN came from a 15 year-old artist named Justin Towell of Goulais River, Ontario, who designed an icon of a stylized eye for this web site. His idea was that people could see information about their futures. The concept of an “eye” became the “I” or individual, and this led to the focus on people rather than information. The “winners” are the people who make the right decisions for themselves. The creators of iWIN hope that the Local Area Training Boards and Community Partners who use this manual and “iWIN” will always focus on the individual, so that they’ll be winners too. top of page
Imagine
a huge bulletin board. There
are no sections, no guides, no subject divisions and no rules: this is
what the World Wide Web is like. The
Web contains millions of sites, on every subject.
Many of these sites relate to employment and career planning.
These sites are usually free to visit, quick to use, and often
contain up-to-date information. But, how does the average person find sites in
“cyberspace” that are useful? A
search engine can help by listing sites, but these sites might not meet
the needs of the visitor or user. A
work information network (WorkinfoNet) is an electronic network that
makes this link between visitors and the information they need. Work information networks provide a central Web site, or
address, where a person can find career planning and employment
information for a certain geographical region. A work information
network provides the first link to sites evaluated as being useful for
many people in the area. The sites are organized so visitors can decide
to view a site and link to it in one easy step. And, the network is a
cooperative venture, with partners who work together to develop and
maintain the site. In short, a WorkinfoNet organizes huge amounts of
information into a framework that is useful to the visitor. An Individual WorkinfoNet model (referred to as iWIN) is now available to Canadians seeking information about employment, labour market information (LMI), education and training, and career planning. This Internet directory model focuses on the individual. There are two main reasons for taking this approach. First, there is so much information available in so many places that it is often overwhelming to begin a search. iWIN gives visitors control over the search process. Second, visitors anywhere in the province have equal access, providing the technology and hardware for the Internet is available. This means that technology can help provide a more level playing field for residents of rural areas, First Nations’ communities, small towns or large urban centres. Individuals
looking for employment information are not the only ones who can benefit
from iWIN. Employees of social services departments, job centre workers,
guidance counsellors, Band job developers and other helping
professionals also need access to employment information to assist their
clients in reaching their
goals. These professionals play a dual role: they help visitors to the
site find information, and they supply local information to the site for
posting. This manual is designed to help these professional partners to
complete, maintain, and improve the iWIN Web site. top
of page
Canada
has a national work information network administered by a national board
called CANWIN. It is a
partnership of national, provincial and community organizations
providing a link between individuals who are seeking training,
employment and career planning information, and the sites where that
information is located. Canada
WorkinfoNET includes organizations, private sector companies and
government agencies as its partners, and draws on them to create a Web
site that meets individual needs in a form that is sustainable and
flexible. The information on Canada WorkinfoNET is bilingual. You can
visit this site on the Internet at http://www.workinfonet.ca.
Canada WorkinfoNET is one of 13 work information networks in
Canada. top
of page
Ontario
WorkinfoNet (OnWIN) is the provincial level of the work information
network for Ontario. OnWIN provides Ontario residents with links to
information about training, employment and career planning in Ontario.
It is a partnership of government agencies, educators, and other
organizations working together to create and sustain an Internet site
that will provide a first stop for anyone seeking employment information
or for anyone seeking to deliver that information for Ontario. The
main partners in OnWIN are the Ontario Ministry of Education &
Training; Human Resources Development Canada, Ontario Region; and,
Canada WorkinfoNET. OnWIN
was created in 1998, and it has since built a directory of over 1,800
links and sites. You can visit the OnWIN site on the Internet at http://www.on.workinfonet.ca.
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of page
The
Individual WorkinfoNet (referred to as iWIN) is the most specific level
of a Workinfonet. iWIN focuses on the visitor’s unique information
needs. Electronic work information web sites have often lacked local
information related to career planning and employment on the Internet. So,
iWIN is a system that brings together the people and agencies who have
information on local employment, and the people who want to find
information that is focused on their own communities. It also provides
easy access to the other work information networks. The iWIN Hub site
is the first of its kind. It is also founded on the partnership concept,
in this case using partners in Ontario communities and Local Area
Training Boards, to collect and organize information about employment
and career planning. Any area of information can be viewed in its most general, or broadest sense, or it can be broken down into more and more specific parts. The more specific a subject, the more likely it will be important to a subject “expert”. The information in this case is labour market and career planning information and the subject expert is the individual visitor to the iWIN site. Similarly, Community Partners and Affiliate Partners are experts on their communities and the opportunities there. Each part of the WIN group is connected to the others and each part contributes to the structure of the whole (See Figure below). The visitor can enter the WorkinfoNet at the local level (iWIN) at the provincial level (OnWIN), or at the national level (Canada WorkinfoNET), and move freely among these levels, in either official language. top of page
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