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MADLaT President's Report
Annual General Meeting, May 5, 2006
As we mark our 5th anniversary, MADLaT has much to celebrate. The work of countless volunteer hours continues to be felt within the distance education community in Manitoba.
The MADLaT website continues to expand and evolve. The organization has chosen to continue to archive past conferences and other work of the organization on the website so that our history is documented and available.
Online conference registration is working well providing a registration option for many conference participants. The listserv reaches approximately 550 people and continues to be used to promote events, professional development, and job opportunities and is a venue for sharing information and networking with colleagues.
MADLaT has initiated an international presence. Carol Stroud's volunteer work in Bolivia with Canadian Crossroads International provided opportunity for more international focus. Her blog on the MADLaT website documents much of her day to day work and experiences with DE in a developing country. It also provided more international content within the 2006 MADLaT conference.
The organization faced some challenges during the year. With work relocation of some key Board members - Helene's move to Alberta and Carol's to Bolivia, we were motivated to experiment with some alternate forms of communication. Our usual modes for meetings have been audio conference and email. Due to increased costs of long distance to connect to Bolivia, we decided to supplement MERLIN's audio bridge with nicenet web-conferencing tool and a Voice over IP system as well as tons of emails to allow us to collaborate on both Board and conference planning. It was an excellent learning experience as well as a chance to use the technologies of distance education in a different way. One meeting had Larry in Indiana, Helene in Barrhead, Alberta and Carol in La Paz, Bolivia. Using a combination of systems was quite a challenge but provided successful communication and enabled the Board and committees to employ some technologies with which many of us had previously been unfamiliar.
MADLaT is a unique organization. The diversity of members and conference participants - geographical as well as interests and backgrounds provides energy, ideas and unlimited possibilities.
It is noteworthy that comments from attendees at the annual conference include "how wonderful it is to see and hear the diversity within the sessions and workshops".
The potential that comes from "Co-operation in Learning" - cross-sector job opportunities, information sharing, networking, promotion of events and shared professional development are great. Together we can do so much more than any of us can do individually.
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