a history of curriculum services canada

1995-1996
Throughout the spring, materials were gathered for the spring catalogue update—94 new
listings plus announcements, teacher comments, and an article about curriculum
development by Sylvia Lee of the Metro Toronto Board. Work also began on creating index
terms for the catalogue’s Catholic resources. After a home page had been designed, the
new OCC website went live at www.curclear.org on 20 March!
Also in the spring, MET was invited and agreed to participate in a pilot project for the
Evaluation Tool. The pilot produced helpful feedback and the tool was generally considered
extremely promising. OCC received many requests for copies, but decided to hold
distribution until the final version was ready in late fall.
MET also agreed to link their new website to the OCC home page. (TVO did the same and
created a special announcement for OCC.) In addition, the Minister agreed to send a
representative to attend Work Group meetings. At OCC, MET’s continuing participation
engendered cautious optimism about the 1996-97 funding.
Meanwhile, Paul Kropp, who had done work with OTF, was brought in to help develop an
OCC communications plan. The Clearinghouse needed a higher profile among teachers who
were not involved in curriculum development and among non-mainstream educators.
April was the Executive Director’s final month and the Work Group realized they would
have to advertise for a replacement even though funding had not yet been approved.
Advertisements were prepared and placed in appropriate venues.
The remainder of the year was very busy. With a web page and handy CD-ROM and
diskette versions of the catalogue to display and demonstrate, OCC participated in many
conferences—Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO), Manitoba
Librarians’ Association, OPSOA, and others. As well, extensive follow-up work was done
on the various spring initiatives—especially, fine tuning the Evaluation Tool and analysing
feedback results on the different versions of the catalogue. And, of course, the web version
of the catalogue was in development for September.
As for incorporation, once all of the options had been considered, the Work Group had
determined to seek “not-for-profit, charitable” status. Papers were filed at the end of June,
after approval in writing was received from each of the partners. At the same time, after
little success, the pursuit of corporate sponsorship was put indefinitely on hold.
At the final meeting of the Work Group on 21 June, Kevin O’Connor was elected by
acclamation as Chair for the coming year, while Janice Crawford (MET) would chair the
Policy Committee and Margaret Aubé (MET) the Finance Committee. And so the year
ended with funding for 1996-97 still unconfirmed. Fund-raising initiatives had been deeply
discouraging and a workable plan for self-sufficiency was urgently needed. Though the year
had been successful in many ways, profound challenges faced the new Executive Director.
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