Convention+2011

=Convention 2011=

= Val's note Sept 19 = Here's a copy of the email I sent out Monday morning. Can we "wiki" about some of the questions/decisions the planning exec made? The convention exec had a meeting yesterday afternoon. We assigned rooms, AV needs and costs to each session and recorded the results in the spreadsheet that Peggy set up for survey results. Please go to this website [|www.tinyurl.com/secta2011] to check out the info we have for the speaker(s) you organized. Review the AV needs of the presenters you organized before the end of this week and let me know of any changes that should be made. The time for the three different sessions is as follows: Session 1 (letter A on the chart) is from 12:45 to 3:30 pm; the coffee break can be set by the presenter and session attendees Session 2 (letter B on the chart) is from 11:15 am to 12:15 pm Session 3 (letter C on the chart) 1:00 to 2:00 pm  Lunch is provided to all presenters. Parking is free for the two days. You will notice on the chart that __two sessions__ have been __cancelled__: Brent Toles (K to 5 Social Studies Curriculum) and Leah Fornwald and Rana Kish (EAL classroom). Please inform your staff of these changes. I’ve attached an agenda to this email. You may choose to forward them to your teachers as a reminder. I will also ask Nathan to forward a copy to all teachers closer to the date of convention. Stacey is in the process of updating the SECTA Website – please encourage your teachers to check it out.

As a session coordinator you do not need to worry about this job. Stacey is doing all of the signs for all of the sessions. We are hoping to get into the Centre of the Arts on Sunday and therefore would like to post all the signs on Sunday. A few other tidbits that we talked about and/or decided upon at our meeting yesterday was 1) __Only__ coffee/tea/water will be served at breaks. If attendees wish to drink anything else (ie pop, iced tea,etc), they will need to bring it with them. There are __no__ muffins/cookies/snacks being served. 2) There are buses booked for the Pre K Lumsden Elementary School and the Regina Trades Centre. Please encourage the attendees to use the buses since they have been paid for. The planning exec felt that participants attending the SIAST Day Care tour could drive themselves to SIAST and meet there as a group since it in only 2 km down Wascana Parkway from the Centre of the Arts. This is a $200 expense we can avoid paying. Does anyone have a rebuttal with this decision? I’m not yet sure what time tours will be leaving the Centre of the Arts, I contact Darryl for that. 3) The 2nd and 3rd balconies will be closed during convention. This means that all attendees will be seated on the main floor or in the 1st balcony. The areas outside balconies 2 and 3 will be used for sessions. 4) I’m a little worried about what the length of the SECTA/STF meeting on Tuesday morning could be. I think this will certainly depend on the results of the vote on Tuesday, Sept 20. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see! 5) How do you think programs for convention should be done? I would like to have a printing company do them up on an 8 ½” X 11” sheet as a brochure. The info will be posted and available for printing from the SECTA website but not everyone will want to or remember to bring copies with them. If you have any questions/comments please feel free to email me. I am away with volleyball for the next 3 weekends so will probably not get to answering emails from Friday at noon until Monday morning (which is what happened to Tara, sorry). An option put forth by Peggy last week was to start a wiki using this website http://secta-convention.wikispaces.com/. I think we should all give it a try, I will post everything typed above on the site and we can comment from it.  Thanks and have a good week!

Val - I'll be red font.

Peggy's Note - Sept 13/11
 * Remember Margaret Searle talking about wikis? This is one. I use them often as they are a great way to collaborate. Try it out, play around with it for awhile, see if it might be useful. I use Wikispaces because it is so easy to use, but there are others that are also easy. One really useful feature is the Notify Me tab. Use that to have an email sent to you when new items are posted, so you don't have to keep visiting the site just to see if there is something new. Be sure to read that Notify Me section carefully so you get notified if any page changes, not just the current page.
 * New pages are easily added as needed. I've created a Practice Page - see navigation at left. Play around on that page.
 * For now this site is public; anyone could find it & edit. If it's useful it could be set to private, and only people who get (free) wikispaces accounts & know the URL can edit pages. But of course always use care in what you post.
 * I've never really used the Discussion board feature. Could try that, too.
 * I've developed some of my own best practices - if this is useful I would explain some of those, such as identifying yourself when you add a post.
 * Only 2 really key buttons - EDIT, found in the upper right part of the screen. Then Save when you are done editing.
 * So - anyone who is interested, come & play around for a bit, see if this is something we as a convention group or you as a teacher might find useful in some way.

Hi all!! Nina

This is very cool, thanks for setting it up for us to try out, Peggy!! -Tara

**I think we should have a wiki page that is private for the Committee to share info/ideas i.e. we have had several email topics in the past month or so asking opinions on different topics. We should have on for the SECTA Exec too and maybe a public one that all teachers could access to chat about Convention or SECTA- or maybe we need a blog for that! If we were to make use of this is there a way to get folks checking it as needed? Can the wiki send a note to an email contact list saying- hey topic started.....? Nate**

I think the discussion and notify me pages answer my questions a bit above. Peggy, do you have everyone in there on the committee or do we add it ourselves? I just had a brain wave.....next executive meeting....we should have a wiki tutorial put on by Peggy! We can workshop for half an hour or so at GFK and set up a discussion page and the go for X-mas dinner. Maybe the Convention Comittee would like to join us and have their wrap up supper and workshop together?? Just a thought:)

I'd be in, though I'm not sure I'm tecnically a member of the convention committee. Sure feels like it? And did we have a wrap up supper last year? The only thing I'm wondering about with this Wiki is if it's possible to get notifications of new messages? Or do we check it daily to see? As a tech messaging addict, this could be trouble... -Ta