UPP - Date

This is Shelley, coordinator of the UPP children's program and Jas, our UPP children's program facilitator with two wonderful UPP children!

The Call for Proposals for the UPP Pilot Sites has been posted on the KL&S website http://www.kingstonliteracy.com/ and the CEFL (Centre for Expertise in Family Literacy) http://www.familyliteracyexpertise.org/ website. I sent a notice to LBS programs through the CLO's May E-Bulletin and I sent the posting to Literacy Networks who work within a 500 kilometre radius of KL&S. The due date is noon July 16 2010. If you know about a program that might be interested, please let them know about this opportunity.

By the last week in June all UPP students and the very small LBS control group will have completed the "pilot" pre and post PDQ tests and the questionnaires. I am very interested to see the overall results and to think about how it all worked. I'm curious to find out if the PDQ is a good pre and post test, if the the questionniares give good information and if we are missing any other important elements.

A comment from an UPP instructor has got me thinking that it might be good to include a way to evaluate the "soft skills" that UPP participants are learning in their groups. All instructors have commented positively on the growth in self-esteem and confidence that their students have shown during the UPP program. And, these too are essential skills.
Deb

The 3 D's

The past few weeks we've been figuring out the process for the Design, Development and Delivery of the UPP on-line training modules. The 3 D's were new to us. It took a little while to get our heads around them. Design and development sound like the same thing but actually they are completely different. Design involves module content, activities and evaluation ideas. Development is the technical side where the activities are formatted into working items that students can complete on-line. Development includes creating the on-line Moodle activities and surveys, flash animations and so on. The first few times, Delivery to students is usually done by the Designer, just to make sure everything works the way they designed it to work.

Thanks to a KL&S board member, who coordinates ACE on-line at St. Lawrence College, we now have a good understanding of what needs to be done. I'll spend some time deciding on a framework that will be applied to each module. We will hire contract curriculum designers, who will most probably teachers who have already used the UPP curriuculm in a class. And we will get advise on who to hire to do the development part. The delivery will start in October.

A Little Hiccup

The "UPP Curriculum Pilot" call for proposals for Ontario LBS programs who are interesting in piloting the UPP curriculum, will be posted soon.

We had a little hiccup getting the call for proposals ready. Anne, Carynne and I will review "the call" tomorrow and then have it proofed. I'll send it to the Advisory Committee for review early next week. I expect the call to be posted on the KL&S and the Centre for Expertise in Family Literacy websites mid next week. The due date for proposals will be June 25.