Hello Regional Leads and Course Delivery Mentors,

I hope everyone is enjoying this great weather.  As a wrap up for 2009, there are a few housekeeping items for us to clean up.

1.     If you can find anyone interested in the Dec 15 “Animal Diseases: The dark side of the petting zoo” Wired Campus session, please let us know.  The numbers are low for that session and we are hoping to have more participants in it.

2.     Does anyone have any plans to do sessions in January or February on the Olympics or Chinese New Year?  We are planning to do something on these topics and would love to know what you are doing, if anything.

3.      Given the nature of things in the VCRLN, I have been unable to connect with every RL and CDM on an individual basis.  I am working on the reports I need to complete and I am asking every RL and CDM to give me a brief (1 pager at most) write up of what they have been doing in their capacity with the VCRLN.  I want to merge all these together to include the details of what everyone is doing in the field.  Any specific details of teacher and student comments would be greatly appreciated.  If people could get them to me by December 15, that would be great.

4.     There will be a formal evaluation of the VCRLN starting early in the new year so be aware that it will be happening.  It will include surveys and interviews so I will be tapping you to complete a survey.

5.     As of this week, we have a new [0.5] Regional Lead Teacher in Region 6.  We would like everyone to welcome Thaine Olsen from the Westwind Alternate School Magrath Campus.  We will be updating our mailing lists shortly.

6.     The final clean up item has emerged recently about scheduling of the VC meeting rooms.  Currently, we have 7 meeting rooms (1 for the provincial team and VC Cafes [3300] and 1 for each of the PD regions).  We have been informed by Alberta Ed that while 3300 is used a great deal, the rest of the rooms are used “rarely”.  We are wondering how the use of these other rooms [3301-3306] is being scheduled?  There does not seem to be a standard system across the regions. To maximize the resources available, we would like to organize the scheduling of the meeting rooms across the province.  The provincial team is willing to set up a booking system which shows if a room is booked or not.  We have some ideas for a flexible system that allows for people to drop into a room for a few minutes to do a connection test, but also eliminates piles of email across the region to ensure that different groups are not trying to meet at the same time in the same room. If you have plans already for the usage of these rooms, please let us know because we do not want to interfere anything to have planned or have working right now.

I know that seems like a lot of stuff, but I thought you would prefer it to 6 separate emails.

Thanks for all your hard work this year and I am looking forward to some more amazing stuff next year,

Thanks, Doug

Doug,

We at Ottewell would be very interested in anything to with China or Chinese New Years.  I am not aware of Region 3 using the meeting rooms for anything.  I have been focusing on Ottewell so far this year but I did send out a Gift certificate to a school in Northern Alberta.  I plan to visit Parkland school division (High Park School) to help them deliver two virtual fieldtrips.  They have recently acquired vc equipment.  I have helped Nurit Reshef in the training of two junior high schools in EPSB, Dan Knott and JD Bracco.  We have gotten Ottewell's kitchen off the ground and had a couple sessions with Dan Knott.  My goal is to have every teacher at Ottewell take part in some form of vc this year.  We will be presenting as a region in the spring for Teachers convention and possibly the Computer conference again.