Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       The Resource module of PD Place provides a great respository for documents, videos and web sites that can enhance their professional development. An item added to the resources of PD Place can be restricted to public or private users, but in general your employees will have full access to all of the content. It is also possible to link specific resources to any number of in-services via the in-service detail screen. If you do this, then users who view the ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       You don’t have to take it from me.   A quick google search of the terms, “professional development” and “student achievement” will provide a profusion of scholarly articles that discuss the merits of teacher professional development and the direct correlation between it and student achievement.  We all know that staff excel when they possess the skills and knowledge to fulfill their role as educational thought leaders and students excel when they are ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       PD Place will streamline your professional development programs and save your organization valuable time and money, but that’s not all!  Did you know that you can use PD Place to generate a revenue stream for your organization?  In this blog, I outline a few different ways of how you can utilize PD Place to create a new source of income for your company and establish your organization as an industry leader in professional development.  With PD Place, your ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       Cinema influences us all; from programmers to account managers, to educators and so on, you’d have to be living at the centre of the earth to survive a day without reference to a classic film or quip from a favourite flick.  With the upcoming release of PD Place version 3.8.4 just around the corner, I thought I’d have a little fun with this blog and present you with the top 3 films that provide insight into what PD Place can do for your organization. 300 ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Alberta Technology Leaders in Education (ATLE) has partnered with CoreSolutions Software Inc. to use PD Place professional development software as a registration tool for all ATLE sponsored events. In addition to the registration features of PD Place, ATLE members will also be eligible to receive a discount on the purchase price of PD Place. PD Place will offer superior session and event registration for ATLE sponsored events while facilitating a simpler payment method for ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       The leaves are falling One by one Summer’s over And school’s begun It was just about this time last year that I wrote a blog  on “Back to school once again”.   And here we are a year later.  How time flies!!!!!   Once again, I had my two kids (well teenagers) stand on the front step for pictures on the first day of school.   As in past years they did so to please me (albeit reluctantly).   It was a sad moment for me, as this will be the last ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       PD Place provides a number of search features to aid end users in finding the in-services of interest to them. All of these search methods display their results on what is called the Search Result screen. There are a number of preferences that can be used to customize this screen to your own environment. This blog will look at some of the these preferences in a little more detail. These preferences can be found in the “Class Search & Display – ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Yesterday in Toronto CoreSolutions co-hosted a FileMaker Go briefing with FileMaker, Inc. I would like to say thank you to Keith Robinson, Mia Roop, and in particular Matt O’Dell who had a splendid presentation and gave us a thorough demonstration of many of the features of FileMaker Go. Thank you also to our own Steve Hearn, who developed a FileMaker Go ‘Sales Module’ that we demonstrated at the event. During the session attendees saw how other ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 6 – 9 minutes       I know you’re probably thinking, “There’s nothing Zen about managing professional development.  It’s stressful, time-consuming and when last minute changes arise due to classroom fumigation, it can feel quite maddening!”  What if I were to tell you that there is a way to run professional development programs at your Higher Learning Institution that is efficient, effective and will leave you feeling at ease?  The purpose of this blog is to elucidate ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       There is an optional field in the in-service detail screen which by default, is labeled as  the “Special Event ID” . This field can be used in conjunction with the “Email Attendee List” report as an effective tool in managing some unique situations. One application is where you wish to extract managerial information about the attendance associated with a number of unique in-services.  The special event ID and Email Attendee List ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       I make lists. I like lists. They keep me organized and help me prioritize my work. They also help me track where my time is going. Recently I have found myself focusing a great deal on my lists. Crossing things off my list has become a large priority. Just yesterday I crossed 6 things off my to do list while at work. I really like the sense of accomplishment that comes from taking my highlighter and marking a list item. Yesterday I noticed that as I was working ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       *Note: Please click images to enlarge The Instructor Statistics Report in PD Place is a great tool to show you how many in-services your instructors are teaching and their average satisfaction based on post-in-service evaluations. In order to take advantage of this report you will need to ensure you make use of the evaluation feature for each in-service and direct participants to fill out the evaluation after each in-service they attend. You can even block the printing of ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       A few months back, I wrote a post about FileMaker’s built in PHP Site Assistant. It’s a handy tool for creating simple sites, but I find it a bit limiting when it comes to creating more complex sites; so I usually tend to write websites in PHP from scratch. It’s actually been possible to do this for a while: around the time FileMaker Pro 5.5 was released, Chris Hansen wrote the first version of FX.php, which was the first solution I found that allowed you ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       For several years now, our base development platform has been based on PHP version 5.2.  PHP 5.2 will run under Windows NT/2000/2003 with very few problems.  Of course, during this same time period, the environment has changed. The recommended version of PHP for production use is now 5.3.  5.4alpha1 was released on Jun 28, 2011 and promises to have improved memory usage and performance.  PHP 5.2, the version that we are currently using is no longer supported ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Every time I attend a conference or trade show I always learn something new. In most cases people will come away with lots of ideas and useful information that will help them improve themselves both professionally and as an individual. Sometimes what you see and hear at a conference reaffirms what you are currently doing or gives you that extra push to implement something new. At a recent education conference, the presenter was showing a new system that his IT ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       CoreSolutions is pleased to offer our own in-house developed FileMaker Training Courses as well as the FileMaker Training Series (FTS)modules developed by FileMaker Inc. The courses we offer range from the absolute novice with FileMaker such as how to use the basic features of a FileMaker database to building eye catching charts and reports. The FTS modules are designed to cover all aspects and best practices when developing in FileMaker Pro and are highly ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       I realize this post is a bit late (sorry Mr. Marketing Coordinator Kyle!) but I wanted to take a few moments and let you know about our recent visit to the ECNO conference at the end of May. Our CEO Barney Lawn and I attended and I think he won’t mind me saying that it was very worthwhile. ECNO is the Educational Computing Network of Ontario and they are a fine group of people – even if I do say so myself.  A non-profit co-operative that can boast 66 ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       Now that the school year is almost over, I’m sure many of you PD Place users have time to think finish up those unfinished projects from earlier in the year.  I’m hoping I may interject an idea into that list of unfinished projects.  Tell us what would you like to see in PD Place.  Over the years, we have seen a wide variety of ideas ranging from adding a new filter all the way up to integrating with other management systems.  When it seems all the ideas ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       The benefits of business blogs are numerous. They are a great tool for communicating with customers and for employees to share their expertise on a subject. They work well to build additional web traffic with little direct costs associated. They create a community and grab attention. For these reasons it is no wonder that business blogs are sweeping across the internet. My topic today is a little bit of an aside for myself – as well as offering some (hopefully) ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Registration restrictions can help you manage in-service attendance to ensure the right employees are able to register for events and in-services. First you need to find the in-service you would like to add registration restrictions to and click on the pencil icon under the admin column to enter the in-service admin portal Once you are in the admin portal you will need to click on the “Edit Registration Restrictions” link.   Now you can start to create ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       In version 3.8 of PD Place, new functionality was added to the Qualification modules called “Qualification Clock Hour Rules”. If you do not currently track clock hours, I suggest you continue to read this document since there are preferences which allow you to change the clock hour labeling so that you could transform the tracking from clock hours to points, credits or any other category that is applicable to your organization. This new feature ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Situations can arise where you need to have a “tough conversation”. It’s a conversation you don’t want to have but may be necessary.  It could be in your personal or work life, but one thing is certain, it’s not an easy task.  Weather you need to tell that client their project won’t be finished on time or you need to tell your roommate you accidentally dropped that special vase her grandma gave her while dusting, it’s difficult to bring yourself ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       “Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.” Mme. Du Deffand Wise words indeed from a lady who died over 230 years ago.  Some things never change. To get better or even to stay the best means continually improving oneself.  This is the same in life as it is in work. Speaking of work… We have a team of FileMaker developers – all ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       With each new version of PD-Place, many new and exciting features are added. These features range from minor adjustments to large scale changes. How does the PD-Place team determine what new features are added? When the PD-Place team receives a new feature request, the request is recorded in a list of changes. This list of changes is reviewed by the PD-Place team between releases. If the request is a feature that many clients will find useful, the feature is ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Have you ever been in that most undesirable situation where you want to do something, know it’s possible, but have no idea on how to proceed? Fear not, both ContinuED and PDPlace have an extensive help system that will show you the path you need to take to accomplish your goal.   In PDPlace, the help system can be accessed by using the rightmost tab in the upper left navigation bar.   In ContinuED, it is the second last tab, again in the upper left navigation ... Read More