a history of curriculum services canada

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XI. 2001 January - June The Curriculum Foundation The new year started with The Curriculum Foundation finally receiving its new Charitable Number. This meant that fundraising could now begin in earnest. The goal of the Foundation was to present Curriculum Foundation Awards three times a year to practising classroom teachers across Canada, to help them develop classroom materials. Recipients of the awards would be chosen on the basis of the strength and practicality of their proposed curriculum ideas, and OCC review teams would be assigned to each recipient to help mentor the projects. Promotional strategies for the Foundation included a Media Release, and advertising in the Ontario College of Teachers’ magazine, Professionally Speaking. Funding for a Canada-wide gap analysis of needs for resource development was also sought. Two OISE Intern students were recruited for a month to coordinate this strategy and to provide additional information about learning resource evaluation. An agreement was struck with Advance Planning and Communications Inc. to manage CSC’s communication needs. The focus was to attract media interest and to provide public profiling of the website. Additional tasks would be to vet communication pieces that were developed inhouse. Part of the communication strategy encouraged was to send out a media release to refer to the Federal Speech from the Throne, with its emphasis on educational opportunities for high risk youth, Aboriginal children, adult literacy, early start programs and children in poverty. The media release would also draw attention to the shared goal of the promotion of “a strong global brand for Canadian excellence.” (quote is from the throne speech) CSC was also approached by a Federal registered lobbyist, Jim Head, who encouraged CSC to apply for funding from the National Children’s Agenda Caucus Committee, to support the CSC’s expansion across Canada. A full-day staff planning session took place in January. The session was productive, not only because of the action plan developed, but also because it helped everyone to align themselves with the new organizational goals. Certain partnerships took on new dimensions in the new year. A two-year Letter of Intent was renegotiated with le Centre de leadership en éducation, with the right to continue using CSC’s evaluation tools and processes, as required by EDU, for francophone textbook evaluations. ©2008 Curriculum Services Canada 55
Meetings with the Independent Learning Centre (ILC) were also held, in light of their recently announced merger with TVOntario. This merger was expected to expand the range and number of evaluations available to CSC. A Memorandum of Understanding for partnerships in learnware evaluation and for CSC evaluation of all ILC products for marketing outside Ontario was to be developed over the next few months. By April, 28 ILC self-study courses for Grades 1 to 8 were to be reviewed, and 97 Elementary Curriculum Units were reviewed by over 100 elementary educators across Ontario. A review of the strategies for the review of Supplementary Materials was initiated in the new year, with the ongoing concern for more aggressive marketing procedures. Gina Melvin was given responsibility as Project Manager for this initiative, with a goal of raising $55,000 in revenue. This market was expected to continue to expand. Another initiative in the new year was the hiring of a French consultant, on a part-time basis, in an effort to provide curriculum services in French. This was a part of the more global strategy to expand the scope and range of services across Canada. In this initiative, six provinces were involved in establishing pan-Canadian English and francophone standards and a validation process for learning resources. In addition, a review team with western, eastern, and central representation was established and trained to pilot a cross-Canada review processes. From March to June, Grade 11 textbooks for the Ministry Call for Resources were reviewed. OCC was also selected to conduct a review process for the development of Ministry funded Grade 11 and 12 Workplace Learning Resources from April 2001 to January 2003. Three Ministry contracts were also signed in the last week of March, ensuring a solid revenue base for the beginning of the new fiscal year (2001/2002) of about $750,000. Website hits continued to be monitored in the new year and, by April, 300,000 hits were recorded for the Grade 9 and 10 Course Profiles alone. In April a Charity Gallery, worth an estimated $98,000, was offered on the new website, with over 100 works of donated art scanned, as well as biographies about the artists. Funds raised by the Charity Gallery would be channeled back into The Curriculum Foundation. There were several updates at the April Board Meeting regarding the website. A Learning Resources@Home project with the Waterloo DSB had been initiated and the groundwork for Learning Resources@Home across Canada was also laid. All major publishers except Scholastic had listings on the website. Marketing to school boards across Ontario to use pdstore.com as a “business to business” solution for procurement was begun. Finally, Ministry approval was given to market the optional services of pdstore.com to manage their Grade 11 textbook purchases. These were all important markers in the continuing success of the website. Given the growing scope of CSC, concern was expressed regarding about the expansion of the 2001 ©2008 Curriculum Services Canada 56
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A HISTORY OF CURRICULUM SERVICES CA
Page 4 and 5:
The “Clearinghouse” Concept: A
Page 6 and 7: Also discussed in initial meetings
Page 8 and 9: First Steps addressed the core busi
Page 10 and 11: III. 1994 The Work Group lost no ti
Page 12 and 13: the process by which the Executive
Page 14 and 15: achieve this goal rested directly u
Page 16 and 17: TVOntario), and an online version t
Page 18 and 19: IV. 1995 First Catalogue Launched i
Page 20 and 21: intended to work with boards and st
Page 22 and 23: 1995 sought to determine: • What
Page 24 and 25: 1995 in all Ontario schools, boards
Page 26 and 27: V. 1995-96 Part of the summer of 19
Page 28 and 29: 1995-1996 Second Update Released Oc
Page 30 and 31: 1995-1996 others—to help position
Page 32 and 33: 1995-1996 formats.) The second impo
Page 34 and 35: VI. 1996 The consuming activity of
Page 36 and 37: available to users who would pay a
Page 38 and 39: VII. 1997 January - March The new y
Page 40 and 41: March was full of activities geared
Page 42 and 43: Discussions of the appropriate kind
Page 44 and 45: VIII. 1998 January The new year beg
Page 46 and 47: A new Draft Business Plan for 1998
Page 48 and 49: 1998 the experience it needed to be
Page 50 and 51: and offline learning resources such
Page 52 and 53: 1999 planned for later in November
Page 54 and 55: The two-day pan-Canadian meeting in
Page 58 and 59: 2001 Board across Canada, and a mee
Page 60 and 61: 2001 include the management of TCF
Page 62 and 63: 2003 XII. 2002 January - June The y
Page 64 and 65: XIII. 2003 At the annual meeting of
Page 66 and 67: Atlantic Provinces would be open to
Page 68 and 69: XIV. 2004 Another year of varied ac
Page 70 and 71: With respect to Curriculum Services
Page 72 and 73: Evaluation Services continued to pr
Page 74 and 75: XV. 2005 On June 18, 2004, CSC memb
Page 76 and 77: 2005 Trillium and other processes.
Page 78 and 79: The past year has seen the developm
Page 80 and 81: 2005-2006 venture that many partner
Page 82 and 83: 2005-2006 The Ministry liaison note
Page 84 and 85: XVII. October 2006 - June 2007 AGM
Page 86 and 87: secondary school credits to student
Page 88 and 89: 2007-2008 English site of CultureSo
Page 90 and 91: Endnotes 1. After funding all eligi
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