Hello everyone,
It's been a very big week with a lot of positive things happening.
Officeworks Sponsorship.
We have been using Officeworks since we started the network for various things including printing PD certificates, the plastic pockets and note taking supplies for our PDs and other bits and bobs that we use to keep the network ticking over.
While on their website not long ago we noticed they have "corporate responsibility" program which offers services and donations of goods to not-for-profit community organizations. Shortly after we submitted an application for a Store Sponsorship through this program and they have agreed to support our network! They are donating goods which will help us publicize ourselves and run PD more efficiently, note-taking supplies to help us in running our Monthly Meetings and other things that will improve our PD experience and the smooth running of the Wodonga CRT Support Network!
We will be receiving the donated goods early next month and will give a greater description of the contents of the donation and the uses we are putting them to as we use them.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Officeworks Wodonga for their support in making us into better teachers!
We ask you all to help us show our gratitude and to shop there occasionally ;)
Network Coordinator Meeting.
Friday was the first network coordinator meeting held by VIT for the year and was hosted by Dawn Colcott. A lot of positive things came out of this meeting for both us and other Networks across Victoria!
One of the major things to come out of this meeting is that through negotiations between VIT and Pdi, Victorian CRT Networks are now Pdi approved Professional development providers. This comes with the major benefits of access to Pdi tools and advertising of Workshops and other PD opportunities which are in line with Pdi approval criteria.
Another big theme of the meeting was encouraging Coordinators to communicate ideas and give moral and technical support to each other to make the running of networks smoother and easier. Through this communication we should receive more frequent news of PD opportunities being offered throughout Victoria giving us a much wider and up-to-date list to select our Workshop Presenters from.
A big one is relevant right now! We are able to offer more than the 5 hours we have been offering for our Pdi approved PD workshops. The hours you receive as "Verified PD hours" will increase to the duration of the PD itself starting with Michael Ymer's "Hands on Maths" next month! It will increase from 5 hours (face time with presenter) to 6.5 hours being the time from the commencement to closing of the Workshop (9.00am-3.30pm).
Monthly Meeting Formats.
We have some people in our network experienced in running PD workshops or perfectly capable of doing so if given half a chance. Over the last couple of months we have been having offers come out of the woodwork for them to do something for us at one of our monthly meetings. My presentation in December was a "trial run" to see how it would go.
Since it was well received we are going ahead with it this year and we will see some of our Meetings replaced with "workshops" that will run for part or all of the Meeting. These will remain "network only" with the only cost being gold-coin donations at the door. Nothing will change except the content style of the meeting.
We have been building partnerships within our community and our own funds that we can access as we need to for the running of the Network and we plan on making use of these things for these Meetings. Using the above as an example, Officeworks has donated note-taking supplies which we will be using for these workshops and the Wodonga South Primary School will continue to offer us a free venue. If we need handouts for these workshops we have avenues to get them so we can keep to our usual standards!
Following yesterday's Coordinator meetings, it has been made clear that we can seek Pdi approval for these workshops too. If approved you will get access to a Pdi number making these meetings "verified PD hours" for the new MyVIT!
We also have an interesting line-up of new ideas both from ourselves and picked up from other coordinators at the VIT Coordinator meeting. We'll have a larger variety of fun, engaging and informative formats for our meetings this year!
Weekday PD.
We have been aware for some time that some of you have difficulty coming to our PD because they are on a Saturday. The problem with that is that this always involves a higher cost as we cannot use the Wodonga South Primary School as a Venue. The DEECD only offers us a limited amount of funds and being a regional network travel and accommodation costs eat through these and a Venue on top would see us losing a PD a year. The Wodonga South Primary School came to the rescue offering us a venue that allowed us to keep that extra PD.
We have found an affordable venue outside of the school and we are considering trialling weekday PD. The issue is that these PDs MUST remain cost-effective to have continuing support and funding approval from the DEECD. This means that we have to be careful at which time of the year we run them to ensure our CRT's aren't giving up work to attend. This gives us a limited window during the "traditionally quiet times" for CRTs in our area.
This may be a while in coming unfortunately but we did want to point out that we aren't ignoring those of you who need PD workshops to be on weekdays. It has been a monster task to make sure it all fits in with our limited funding and other guidelines that we have to adhere to.
This was part of the reason we were seeking ways to "upgrade" some meetings into a Workshop format and we hope the new inclusion of a Pdi number for some of these will start to help you out very soon.
February Meeting.
Because of these developments February's meeting has become crucial for us to gather the information we need to build a plan to do this right. We urge you all to attend or at least have input as we have suggested on our February Meeting Page.
We cannot tailor the network to suit you unless you tell us what you need!
Even if you are happy with everything we are doing, sometimes we need help. We are getting to the point where we have an awful lot of things to choose from and your input will make our lives a lot easier simply by helping to provide us with direction on what to choose.
If you are unable to attend the meeting we would like your email input a few days early so we can sort through it and take it into the meeting with us for open discussion. We don't want a great idea going by the wayside because you are the only one who thought of it!
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