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OLDER Bulletin Board Entries

  • Licensing opportunity. The Ministry of Education has an RFP for an anti-virus/malware software product on MERX
  • Licensing opportunity. The Ministry of Education has an RFP for a French Encyclopedia on MERX.
  • The Ministry of Education has licensed NOD 32 to protect Ontario school desktops from viruses and malware. Click here to read about NOD32.  
  • OSAPAC is pleased to announce that we have purchased a subscription to the Encyclopédie Hachette Multimédia (EHM) from January 1, 2006 to January 1, 2008 for all publicly funded elementary and secondary schools and school boards, faculties of education, First Nations schools and OISE. A letter is being mailed to all O.E.S.S. representatives with their unique username and password.
  • OSAPAC is pleased to announce an extension to the Career Cruising online Guidance and Choices into Action web resource. As part of the contract, the French version is now available and a CD-ROM of current resources will be shipped to School Boards and Authorities in the near future.
  • To support the implementation of specific software titles, OSAPAC is pleased to announce that the Ministry of Education has licensed CD-ROM training materials for the Macromedia Studio MX Suite and Adobe Photoshop Elements. OSAPAC has licensed a subscription to Atomic Learning for online tutorials to support teacher and student learning of The Geometer's Sketchpad. Check with your OESS representative for login and password information.
  • Happy New Year! They didn't appear under your tree, but OSAPAC is proud to announce the licensing of the following software titles. They represent a great start to 2005.
        • Student Takehome Rights for The Geometer's Sketchpad
        • Upgrade to Math Trek 4, 5, 6
        • CD-ROM copies of Career Cruising 2005
        • Mathville Middle School
        • and there's more on the way. Stay tuned.
  • On December 10, OSAPAC hosted technology leaders at a hands-on Professional Development session in London, Ontario. Members of the Western Regional Computer Advisory Committee and the Central Ontario Computer Association participated in Macromedia Flash MX, StarOffice, and SMART Ideas workshops.
  • Check out how well the province is using the OESS licensed Career Cruising Guidance service! Since September 2004, Ontario schools have viewed 14,452,359 pages from Career Cruising. This comes from a total of 294,368 unique logins to the service.
  • Another OESS Software Success Story!
    Students in Miss Green's Grade 6 class at Queen Elizabeth Public School in Picton create movie reviews with Microsoft Publisher and publish them to the web. Read the student reviews, plus find out all about the project at http://www.hpedsb.on.ca/qep/movie_reviews/
  • Top 5 downloads from the OSAPAC Learning Materials Repository.
    • Microsoft Publisher 2000 / 2002 Training Manual
    • Abstract Collage Activity for Adobe Photoshop Elements
    • Appleworks Weather Database
    • SMART Ideas Templates to support Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner
    • Links to Fathom Resources

    Please click on the "Learning Materials" link on the left to access these and more Learning Materials

  • OSAPAC sponsors two hands-on training sessions for Northern Ontario educators. Details are here.

  • Put OSAPAC on your site! OSAPAC now offers an RSS feed of information from the Bulletin Board section. You can announce current OESS releases and other news at the same time that the OSAPAC website does. The document http://www.osapac.org/osapac.xml should be parsed and displayed by an RSS viewer. For an interesting article explaining RSS, follow this link.
  • New to the Learning Resources Repository...countability. Each resource now has a running total of the number of times that it has been downloaded. You can see what's popular! The listing routine now also lets you display resources in "most downloadable" order.
  • OSAPAC sponsors a summer hands-on training session for Central Ontario educators. Details are here.

  • There is an upgrade to the Ministry release of StarOffice. Follow this link to download the upgrade.
  • Ontario schools are really cruising. Using the Career Cruising software, the 5,335 registered Ontario schools logged into Career Cruising 4,345,787 times! During these logins, 164,809,713 web pages were displayed to Ontario students and teachers. On average, every school in the province, logged into the service 542 times and viewed 21,093 pages. Click for more details on upgrades to the Ministry licensed Career Cruising service.
  • OSAPAC sponsors a summer hands-on training session for Western Ontario educators. Details are here.

  • OSAPAC doesn't necessarily post links to software upgrades. However, in the case of SMART Ideas, a revision change from version 4.1 to 4.2 coincided with the release of the software. The upgrade is available at the Smarttech Website at this Windows link or this Macintosh link.
  • OSAPAC sponsors a hands-on training session for COCA members. Details are here.

  • This spring, Macromedia Canada and ENOREO sponsored a challenge to Ontario teachers and students to show their skills using the provincially licensed Studio MX software. The challenge is over -- click here to see who won and to check out all of the excellent submissions.
  • OSAPAC announces
    -- the 2004/2005 Teacher Survey is now online. Please have your say as to provincial software needs.
    -- a Learning Repository to support OESS licensed titles is now live. From the software database, search for a provincial licensed title and download resources, lessons, ideas, etc. to support the successful use of the software in your classroom.
  • OSAPAC is pleased to announce its priorities for software acquisition for 2004-2005. Please visit the Process page to see these priorities.
  • Superpack Update -- The OESS release of the Superpack software did not contain Appleworks 6 files for Windows. OSAPAC has converted the Macintosh files to Windows format. If you have access to the OSAPAC First Class system, you may download these files from the OESS Curriculum conference.
  • OSAPAC sponsors a hands-on training session for Western RCAC and COCA group members. Details are here.

  • Have you ever wondered who has served on the OSAPAC committee since its inception? John Hindle has provided a list that you can review by clicking on the Committee Link.
  • Did you know that Appleworks 6 is now licensed? It's on the Official Release CD-ROM of the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner. Contact your OESS representative to get a copy. Don't know who your rep is? Follow the link on the left.
  • A manual for Plumo on the Farm is now available here in PDF format. (French and English) Click here to download the PDF file.
  • Additional datasets for Fathom that were inadvertently left off the English software CD-ROM are posted to our website. Click for the appropriate platform. Macintosh / Windows

 

Career Cruising

  • The Ministry of Education has reached agreement for the extension of the Career Cruising Internet service for the next two years. Current logins and passwords should continue to work so that there is no interruption in the service.

District OESS Representatives

  • You should have received a letter from John Taylor, Ministry of Education Education Officer outlining the steps necessary to log onto the database of OESS representatives to keep your information current. Please take the time to ensure that everything is up to date.

Filemaker Pro Boxed Set Installation File

  • Click here to download the installation instructions for the Filemaker Pro Boxed set

ArcView Training

  • The Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee (OSAPAC) http://www.osapac.org commissioned some web-based training for ArcView GIS.

The training site is: http://www.esricanada.com/k-12/training/. Please contact your District's OESS Representative for login and password.

Upgrades

  • Clarisworks has been upgraded to Appleworks. (Windows and Macintosh) Version 5.0.3 is on the Electronic Curriculum Planner CD-ROM
  • Check out the Elementary School Report Card CD-ROM for an upgrade of Filemaker Pro to version 4.1v3