End-of-Year Process Starts June 30

The annual End-of-Year (EOY) process for all Home Base applications is scheduled to begin Thursday, June 30 at 5 p.m.  PowerSchool, Schoolnet and OpenClass will be brought down June 30 and remain down until 6 a.m., Monday, July 11, unless returned to service earlier.  If the applications are returned to service prior to July 11, users will be notified via email.

EOY processing for Truenorthlogic’s Evaluation component also will begin, as stated above, on June 30 at 5 p.m.  However, the Professional Development and the Analysis of Student Work components will not be brought down, but will remain up and accessible throughout the EOY process.  Unlike the other Home Base applications, the Evaluation component is scheduled to return to service for school year 2016-17 on Tuesday, July 5. 

If you have questions or concerns regarding the EOY process, please contact the Home Base Support Center at homebase.incidents@its.nc.gov.

Transcript Issues Addressed

Based on LEA reports, NCDPI continues to work toward finalizing the solutions concerning endorsements and transcripts.  The following issues were addressed Tuesday, May 24.

World Language requirement not calculating correctly:

• This issue has been resolved by a small change to the UNC graduation requirements naming within the enterprise controller. 
• The calculation should now render correctly as seen in both College/UNC and Academic Scholars endorsements.

Academic Scholars world language calculation not matching the College/UNC world language calculation:

• This was a small programming error that has been corrected by PowerSchool. The calculation should now compute correctly and match the calculation in the College/UNC endorsement.

Endorsements not showing on NC Transcript:

• A file was missed during deployment of the new NC transcript. The file has since been deployed and endorsements should now calculate more accurately. Please continue to use your expertise based on SBE policy to determine if a student has earned an endorsement and report any discrepancies.

PowerSchool, LLC, and NCDPI are also continuing to refine the script that was executed to correct GPA added value for first time 9th grade students.  We have identified a condition that was not included in the original script.  An updated version of the script is currently under evaluation in QA and will be released into production as soon as it can be verified as effective and safe.  Specifically, this correction addresses courses with a fifth digit of 2 where GPA added value is not 0 as expected (e.g. HU102X0).  Correcting these GPA added values remains a top priority.  We will communicate further as this process continues.

We appreciate your patience and feedback as we continue to improve these functionality areas. Continue to report any issues or discrepancies within the endorsement screen or transcript to the HBSC (homebase.incidents@dpi.nc.gov).

Your Opinion Counts: Survey Helps Plan Webinar Series Content

A brief survey has been created to allow you the opportunity to provide feedback and input on the 2015-16 NCDPI Educator Effectiveness Webinar Series.

These webinars are to assist educators with using the Home Base Educator Effectiveness and Professional Development Systems. Survey responses will be used to plan webinar content for the upcoming school year so as to best support your needs. Please click here to participate in the survey no later than June 10, 2016.

Registration Opens for FREE Facilitated Online Courses

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction through the Educator Effectiveness Division will open registration on June 6 for 11 instructor-facilitated online courses. These courses provide high-quality professional development and the opportunity to interact with peers and an instructor.  They combine the flexibility of working from anywhere at any time, and the benefits of working with a cohort of peers.

The courses start Monday, June 20. Course titles are listed below. For a full description of each course, please visit www.rt3nc.org.  If you have specific questions or need additional support, please email our Instructional Design Lead, Dr. Geetanjali Soni, at geetanjali.soni@dpi.nc.gov.

• Building and Sustaining Professional Development - 6 weeks, 0.5 CEU
• Connecting with our 21st Century Learners - 5 weeks, 1.0 CEU
• Digital Literacies in the K-12 Classroom - 7 weeks, 1.5 CEUs
• Introduction to Data Literacy - 5 weeks, 1.0 CEU
• Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects, Part 1 - 5 weeks, 0.5 CEU
• Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects, Part 2 - 7 weeks, 1.0 CEU
• North Carolina Teacher Standards and Evaluation Process - 6 weeks, 2.0 CEUs
• Responsibilities o f the 21st-Century Educator - 7 weeks, 1.0 CEU
• Universal Design for Learning 1: UDL in the Everyday Classroom - 6 weeks, 1.5 CEUs
• Universal Design for Learning 2: UDL and the Whole Classroom - 5 weeks, 1.0 CEU
• Effective Digital Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the K-12 Classroom:  A PD MOOClet - 6 weeks, 2.0 CEUs

New Title added to Online Professional Development Catalog

The Educator Effectiveness division is happy to announce the release of a new professional development module now available in the Home Base PD System:

Building a Strong Foundational Academic Vocabulary in Elementary Classrooms: Action Research from the GTN Project (1CEU-Literacy)

This module focuses on instructional strategies to build a foundation and enhance academic vocabulary. Each self-paced module will take approximately 10 hours to complete and is worth 1 literacy CEU on completion.  For a complete description of this newly added modules, please visit www.rt3nc.org. If you need additional support, please contact our instructional design lead, Geetanjali Soni, at Geetanjali.soni@dpi.nc.gov.