As part of our efforts to continually improve the Virtual Lab School site based on user feedback and the needs of the Services, we are excited to announce the upgrade of activities in the Infants & Toddlers track.

This upgrade will take place during the weekend of Aug 10, and will replace any PDF activity file in the IT track that is meant to be filled in and/or turned in to a Training and Curriculum Specialist with an HTML version of that activity.

All the affected activities have been reviewed and changes to both content and formatting have been made by our content team to ensure that the activities are up to date and work with the new system.

The new activity format allows users to fill out the activity response fields online, right in a web browser.  The responses users provide are not sent to the VLS servers, but remain client-side in the browser and can be printed, saved to a non-editable PDF file locally, or discarded as needed.

We have also changed the way that suggested answers are provided and viewed for those activities that have them. Additionally, there is a new help article with directions for using the new activities across a variety of browsers that will be linked at the top of each activity.

Our intent with this upgrade is to allow Direct Care users to completed required and optional activities without having to download and print a physical copy of the file.  Instead, Direct Care users can fill out the activity online, then save a copy locally that can be emailed to their TCS or Program Manager as needed.  Just remember that we will NOT store a copy of any filled in activity at this time, so users need to ensure that they are saving completed activities to a local machine as they will not be accessible on the site once the user leaves the activity page.

After the release of the IT track activities, we will be closely monitoring the technical support account at support@virtuallabschool.org to make sure that there are as few technical problems as possible across Service Branches, Installations, and Programs.  If you have questions regarding the new activity format or have any problems using the new activities, please drop us a line at support@virtuallabschool.org.  

Over the next calendar year, we plan to roll out this activity format for rest of the Direct Care tracks, including Family Child Care.  Each time we replace the activities for a track, we will place a banner at the top of VLS pages for users that are logged in notifying them of the upcoming change.

Thanks for your patience as we complete this major upgrade to the VLS materials and thanks for all the work you do for children and families!