PD opportunities.

Dawn Colcott.

Dawn Colcott, the head coordinator of VIT's CRT Network Initiative, will be in Wodonga in May, 2012. She is keenly aware that we don't get a lot of attention from VIT this far from Metro and would love to have an evening session with us.

As many of you might be aware, it became economicly unviable for VIT to run anything for CRT's this far north due to dwindling attendances. This severely increased the cost-per-head of these ventures making them just too expensive for the benefit they were offering. This will be our chance to begin to turn the tables on this decision. We are already having attendances to PD's similar to the numbers they used to get and this is growing all of the time as word of the network and it's PD opportunities spread throughout the CRT community.

With what we have planned next year we see it getting only bigger and better.

While we aren't sure we will ever change this decision it is certainly worth trying to do and all it will take is bums on seats to give them some cause to rethink this decision.

We will announce a firm date and a content outline both on this blog and our Network PD blog as soon as we have all of the information in our hands. We ask all of you to seriously consider attending this session! It will be in all of our own best interests.

Electroboard SmartBoard PD.

We have secured a Smartboard PD for term 2 in 2012.

Due to the format of the PD the maximum participants is to be set at 16. The current plan is for it to be initially open to network members only. It will only be opened to non-network members a couple weeks before bookings must be finalized if any places remain.

This will be a full day PD and it is our current understanding that it will be PDI approved but we are waiting on a few answers to give definitive information.

We are announcing this far earlier than we normally would because of those low maximum numbers. If we recieve sufficient interest there is an opportunity to run this PD again in Term 3 for a further group of 8 or 16 but we need to see some feedback in order to decide whether it's worth planning/funding for a second run. If we run it a second time, positions will be open to all CRTs from the announcement date.

If we run it a second time it will be an "extra" PD over and above the schedule we have already planned on, not replace another planned PD. It is important to us that we maintain variety in topics of our PDs to ensure that everyone can attend something relevant to their teaching needs.

Other PD.

We are also fairly certain that Term 1 will include a full day Mathematics PD. We have secured a presenter and are just waiting on funding approval to make the announcement and open booking. Our Term 3 Full-Day PD is also fairly certain, with a presenter having been obtained and hefty work going into a proposal that will obtain funding approval.

We will announce when the funding is approved in a general way when we have it and then announce Topics, Presenters and dates when bookings open. The current plan is to allow at least a 42 day booking period (6 weeks) for any full-day PD if possible.

Mel.