July 2009 GATE Editor

Happy 142nd Canada Day!!  With the birthday of Canada we can look upon our own birth of the GATE Village.  With the beginnings of life we go through rapid changes very quickly and with that I'll mention that the Village has gone through some major changes this past month. With all of the vast improvements in functionality and performance we are learning more each day the value of the Village or more of a complete online Virtual office environment. We continue to grow and improve and I don't see that ever ending as we are never too old to learn something new, especially with technology's rate of improvement on a per minute/second rule.

The best way to illustrate this fantastic working environment is to highlight some of the current activities in the Village. You can check out Sue Laking's "Lessons Learned" as she describes her own road to becoming a tattoo artist. You can also see how Rod Sinclair has used the Village to create a next generation Grade 9 math exam review, with video solutions and easy to navigate questions. I understand our own new emplouyee Kareen Kinchlea found this very helpful for her own successful completion of Grade 9 (congrats girlfriend!).

I've included a few other tidbits here and there to give you an inkling of the goings on in the Village. This is now my only platform for virtually all my GATE Village work with the exception of the finances. Online meetings, Dave's calendar, even a lot of my spare time as I try to keep up wtih the content being created by other folks. With the performance problems we had been experiencing now solved (yor can read about that in the link to Dave's blog), it is a very pleasant and productive place to work. I hope this issue of the GATEPost shows that power to you.