• The SkillsUSA WorldTeam trained on Saturday, June 27 in areas such as time management and interpersonal communications skills that take on heightened importance in the WorldSkills Competition. Laurent Thibault of the WorldSkills International Board attended the NLSC and said publicly. “We have always heard about the SkillsUSA Championships. Now that I’ve seen it I can say this is the largest and greatest display of skills anywhere in the world.” The Championships is featured on the home page of WorldSkills International at www.worldskills.org.
• The Skill Connect Assessments booth was a hopping place during conference. Frequently all 20 demonstration computers were in use with teachers test-driving the 34 assessments on display. Reactions were extremely positive. Over 500 teachers stopped by for the demonstrations.
• The Sustainability Solutions contest is off to a good start. Nine student teams displayed their talents and sustainability projects. The projects ranged from green building projects, alternative fuel systems and green blogs and Web sites. We were happy that four companies joined the national technical committee and that the committee chair was former national officer Grayson DeGraff, now a manager with Lowe’s.
• The new Professional Development Program (PDP) curriculum online – Levels 1 and 2 – will be ready for release at the beginning of school. Thanks to Air Products for providing the resources to revise and reprint PDP and to Lowe’s for the resources to move it to an interactive online learning environment.
• Oh, and we do share the news about our students. News releases on our medalists were e-mailed to 1,507 daily newspapers and 2,034 non-daily papers across the country. News releases for the Skill Point recipients were e-mailed to 1,563 daily papers and 3,011 non-daily papers. Word is that reporters are calling and the news stories are coming in at a rapid clip.
• People say: “Now that conference is over it must be nice to get a rest.” There’s no rest. We have a lot coming up very quickly including: national officer training; the state association directors’ meeting and board meeting in Charleston; the WorldSkills Competition and YDF meeting in Calgary; the launch of the Engineering Alliance; and, the Washington Leadership Training Institute. All of that is in the next two months.

Tags: Highlights, PDP, Skill Connect Assessments, WLTI, Work Force Ready System, WorldSkills Competition, WorldTeam

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