a history of curriculum services canada

1995-1996
In a meeting on 8 January 1996, the evaluation tool draft was submitted, together with a
three-year business plan, to Ministry personnel—ADMs Mariette Carrier-Fraser and Jill
Hutcheon, as well as Pauline Laing, Director of the Ministry’s Curriculum Branch, and
Gerry McIntryre, Manager, Elementary Education, Curriculum Branch. The business plan
called for a $350,000 investment from MET for 1996-97, rather than $500,000 as in the
current year. Despite this, it was made clear that OCC’s support might well be cut
altogether since that support depended on a fund of money that was itself in jeopardy. Still,
the tone of the meeting was generally positive and MET personnel carefully examined all of
the proposed activities and outcomes for the coming three years.
Among those proposals were several that would not come to pass, at least not within three
years, but which articulated the thinking of the OCC Work Group. They included:
• Development of a plan to become a distribution centre for curriculum
resource materials (MET was especially interested in the potential for this to
save time and money at the board level)
• Co-ordination and alignment of already existing resource agencies for “onestop
shopping”
• Enhancements to the database and all versions of the catalogue, e.g., adding
full text or samples of documents.
•
While these would not be realized, several proposed initiatives– to provide access via the
World Wide Web (www), to expand the catalogue to include senior grades, to list materials
from a broader range of sources, to become self-sustaining 16 —would succeed.
The first of these initiatives was put on the road to completion just four days later. On the
recommendation of the Executive Director, the Work Group contracted with ONTERIS to
produce a graphical user interface (GUI) through which web users could access and view
the catalogue information stored in OCC’s STAR database. This would require a search
mechanism, the selection of appropriate display fields, and the development of a format in
which to present the information. In addition, a new database was commissioned to accept
teachers’ comments and link them to the relevant resources in the main database. Eric Lee of
ONTERIS, who had built the main database, would be responsible for most of the work on
these new projects.
Two other important events occurred in January. The first was the launch of the JK-9
Catalogue. 17 This colourful edition was enhanced with teacher comments on the use of
materials that had appeared in the Transition Years catalogue. At the same time, the
FileMaker Pro for Windows version of the Phase I catalogue was finally completed and
distributed. (Both the Windows and Mac versions of the JK-6 Catalogue were ready for
the end of February and the ONeducation CD-ROM, with CFORP as a new partner, was
completed for 1May. It included the OCC Catalogue in both FileMaker Pro and DOS
©2008 Curriculum Services Canada 30