Newly received from OSAPAC:

• Finale 2004
  (Music)

The big news, as posted on the OSAPAC website, is the announcement of the licensing for Microsoft Publisher 2002, Sun's Star Office 7, and Smart Ideas, a graphic organizer. Star Office, a product compatible with Microsoft Office, will come with student takehome rights.

Until the shipment and release, if you are interested in previewing these software titles, consider downloading the latest version of Open Office from http://www.openoffice.org and Smart Ideas from http://www.smarttech.com/products/smartideas/downloads.asp.

Curriculum Expectations

One of the incredibly useful features of the OSAPAC website is the section dealing with links of Ministry licensed software to the Ontario Curriculum. With the massive number of titles, you can imagine that this is a huge job. 242 "courses" have been completed to date. To find the software that's appropriate for your course, grade, or strand, just perform a search. This enormous task has been long in refinement and currently spearheaded by committee members Ivan Strachan with custom programming from John Rutledge.

I'm also particularly pleased to note the Greater Essex County connection. The recent call for music software involved our Arts and Music Consultant, Ann Dresser, as part of the evaluation team. As part of her efforts, Band in a Box and Finale are now both available to students in Ontario schools. Those of you who know her committment to curriculum will not be surprised to read that she was key to making the curriculum connections for these pieces of software.

Priorities for the Upcoming Year

OSAPAC has met recently and identified areas for licensing priorities for the upcoming year. These priorities will appear on the OSAPAC website in the near future.

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