It's that time of year. GSUSA is updating VTK with new badges and new functionality. I've been poking around and thought I'd write about the things I've found so far.
Preview Meeting Plans
Have a discussion about what people disliked most about VTK and the number one answer was that they hated having to add a badge to a year plan in order to read the plans for it. Well GSUSA must have finally heard the complaints because now you can preview badges before you add them to a year plan. "Preview" means that there is a hovering box asking you to add it to your year plan, but that you can read the plan without adding it. Thank you GSUSA!
Revised and New Meeting Plans
The "big news" this year is that the Brownie Pets badge has been revised. There is a new brochure available for download (for a fee) and evidently the VTK plans are being revised as well, though as of this writing (August 7) there is no Pets badge on VTK. The financial literacy badges have been re-done this year and so have all the Daisy Petals--no more stupid stories. The older girls now have STEM Career Exploration badges as do Daisies.
New Year Plans
In previous years, VTK asked you to select a year plan and, unless you picked the "create your own" option, it would pre-populate your year with what its creators considered to be a well-rounded program. You could pick plans for each Journey and there was a badge-only plan that included a Take Action Project too (because who doesn't want to do another one of those?). The Journey plans included an introductory meeting and a few badges.
Now, if you pick the Journey tracks, they include an introductory meeting or two, plus the six meetings to earn the Journey and finally a bridging meeting. While the "view popular tracks" tab takes you to a page that says that these Journey tracks have up to eleven meetings, the ones I saw were all eight or nine meetings long, depending on how many introductory meetings were listed. Really all those Journey tracks do is add all six meetings to your plan with one click rather than six.
Daisy non-Journey tracks are "Fun and Friendship" (Petals) , "Explore the Outdoors", "Learn New Life Skills", "Explore STEM", "Build STEM Skills" "Becoming Me" and "Paint Your World Purple".
Other Brownie tracks include "Try and Explore", which is a well-rounded badge-only track recommended for girls in the first year of a level, "Explore the Outdoors" "Learn New Life Skills", "Explore More Life Skills" "Explore STEM Skills", "Build STEM Skills", "Becoming Me" and "Paint Your World Purple". Again the number of meetings shown on the tab does not always equal the number of meetings added to our year plan, which is sloppy on the part of GSUSA.
Juniors can pick from "Discover and Lead", "Take on the Outdoors", "Learn New Life Skills", "Explore More Life Skills", "Explore STEM", "Build STEM Skills", "Becoming Me", and "Paint Your World Purple".
There are also similar tracks for Cadettes. Seniors and Ambassadors have the two STEM tracks, "Paint Your World Purple", and "Becoming Me". Senior can also pick "World Changer, the Path to Gold" which is a 13 meeting track that includes two meeting for the Digital Leadership badge, two for Democracy for Seniors, six for Mission Sisterhood, and three meetings for Cookie Boss and the Cookie Pin.
