2010-11 IDLA Letter from the President

Dear Members and Potential Members of IDLA,

I am honored to have the role of president for this coming year. We have a fabulous Board of Directors, filled with innovative ideas and skills, as well as a growing membership that support our mission who will continue to move distance learning forward in Iowa and across the nation. At our IACON 2010 annual conference, our keynote speakers emphasized how very important distance education and online learning and training have become in our current economy and specifically within our state. IDLA is positioned to help aid people with access to resources and ideas for optimizing their online learning strategies and goals.

In the next year, we hope to offer our membership more and more learning opportunities, in addition to our annual conference. We intend to offer our own webinars, as well as sharing information about distance learning opportunities offered by our parent organization, USDLA (United States Distance Learning Association), and other organizations who offer learning opportunities free of charge. We will also continue to extend our hands to our partners in the corporate and government sectors who are using many of the same technologies, as we stand to learn as much from them as they do from us. Additionally, we’d like to open doors to more communication with the K-12 audience, who are becoming more and more aware of the growing prevalence of online education within students’ lives. So, if you are not a member of IDLA yet, please join us!

I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and the many new distance-learning options on the horizon! Our theme for this year is "Driving Education with Technological Innovations," and we are here to make certain those innovations come to light for IDLA and all of our distance education partners!

Feel free to contact me if you have questions or new ideas to bring to our table and make sure you check out all the links on our Web site to find resources pertaining to your needs and interests.

Sincerely,

Jean Cross