On Friday, May 15, the Virtual Lab School released an update for activities in the Family Child Care track. The Family Child Care track is the third track to be converted to HTML fillable activities and, like the previous updates, all activities intended to be completed and turned in to Training and Curriculum Specialists (TCS) or Family Child Care Administrators for review can now be filled out in your browser.
The fillable HTML activity format allows users to fill out the activity response fields online. The responses that 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.
This upgrade allows VLS users in the Family Child Care track to complete required and optional activities without having to download and print a physical copy of the file. Instead, these Direct Care users can fill out the activity online, then save a copy locally that can be emailed to their TCS or Family Child Care Administrator as needed. As a reminder, we will NOT store a copy of any filled in activity at this time, so users must 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.
Based on the feedback we received after the previous activity updates, we anticipate that VLS site users will have few, if any, problems with the new format. We will closely monitor the VLS support account at support@virtuallabschool.org in case any users do have difficulties or issues with the new activities. If you have any questions regarding the new activity format or have any problems using the new activities, please reach out to us at support@virtuallabschool.org. You can also click the help icon at the top of each activity to view a support page that covers how to best use the fillable format.
The Virtual Lab School is committed to continually improving our materials to better support the needs of the Services and to provide our users with the best experience possible. We feel that each track of activities that are updated to the new format represent an important step forward in our efforts to better serve our Direct Care users, including family child care providers, and their Training & Curriculum Specialists, Administrators, and Program Managers in the critical work they do every day.
Thanks for your patience as we work on updating all direct care tracks to this more flexible format and thanks for all you do for children and families!
Check out more info about these activities in the Fillable Activities support article