January 2000 Online Newsletter for Greater Essex County Computer Using Professionals

We lived through New Year's Eve and the turnover of the clocks. Great! Buying computers all these years and upgrading has been a good thing. For once, I can convince the family that we didn't really need that old 8088 machine.

Last newsletter, I shared with you our experiences with getting ready for speeches. Well, that's all done now. Hopefully, the results now rely in the delivery of the speech. I don't want to go through THAT again until next year!

I wish the topic chosen had been directly applicable to Social Studies in the new Ontario Curriculum because we had a great resource we could have used.

The Social Studies, History and Geography Internet Resource CD-ROM is done, duplicated and now released.

Last summer, Greater Essex County in partnership with Bluewater and Thames Valley, Windsor Essex Catholic, Lambton Kent, St. Clair Catholic, London District Catholic, Avon Maitland, Bruce-Grey Catholic and Rainy River DSBs, had teachers search the Internet for sites that were appropriate for the implementation of the new Ontario Curriculum.

Similar to the previously released Science and Technology CD-ROM, we managed the sites that we found centrally and contacted the webmasters to ask if we could store their site on the CD-ROM indexed appropriately by grade level and topic. When all was said and done, over 500 websites have been identified and we have permission and included about 200 of them on the CD-ROM. Links to all 500 sites are there should you wish to visit each site live.

It was a great deal of work by a lot of people. Many thanks to the teachers who found the sites. That was hard work but wasn't the end of the task. All of the sites were then indexed in a Filemaker Pro database and email sent and received to all of the webmasters. Many thanks to Debbie Primeau for her work in keeping it all straight and organized. When permission was received, an email would be sent to a student hired by the project for the summer. This student worked at a lab in St. Thomas and he would work and capture the sites that we received permission to use on the CD-ROM. His work was then indexed to the master grid and a gold CD-ROM was mastered and tested. Once finalized, the artwork of Reg Houle was sent along with the gold CD-ROM for duplication and packaging.

Hard work doesn't pay off unless you have the support of your Superintendent of Program. Locally, Rod Peturson supported the project at all stages. Similar support was received at all participating districts.

So, you got a bunch of sites. What's the value? There's lots. Accessing the sites on the CD-ROM doesn't require an Internet connection. You can get them anywhere you have a computer with a CD-ROM drive. The information appears at CD-ROM speeds as opposed to Internet speeds. Also, they are there forever, indexed to the curriculum. No more frustrations on the Internet looking for age appropriate sites that are still up. Further, a link to the actual site is included so that you can still get the latest and greatest if you are connected to the Internet.

In addition to the Internet site content, webquests have been included for every grade. Using these, students can get the best of the Internet in a directed, project oriented manner.

The distribution? Every elementary school teacher will receive their own copy for lesson preparation and you may also use it with your students.

Look to your CAIT for your copy.