Summer's Here - Kick Back and Explore

Check Out a Wealth of Resources Online

By Yanisha Mann
Instructional Improvement System Consultant 

Summer's here for many teachers, or if you are in a year-round school, a break is coming soon. 

We always think about “summer loss” for students who don't open a book or a school resource during their vacation time, but what about teachers? 

As professionals we should constantly keep our minds open to the best ways to make your students' classroom experience more effective and personalized. These solutions can come from Twitter, Pinterest, or Home Base - just to name a few resources available online.

If you haven't clicked around on the different icons within your Home Base account, why not check them out this summer?

Schoolnet will be upgrading its platform to 19.0 as of July 7, but you can always learn within the training environment, which will upgrade Friday. Within the training environment, you can familiarize yourself with the new navigation changes to the left side, which means fewer clicks to perform the same functions. Your homepage will also use circle graphs to make data more visually appealing. 

Beyond the data displays, you can also visit the item banks and lesson plans to help you think through how you will align standards, curriculum, and assessment in the new year.

Have a great summer and keep learning!

Home Base Opt-In Deadline is Friday

We are in the final stretch of the Home Base opt-in period. As of today, 113 school districts and 66 charter schools have made the decision to opt-in. Check to see if your district or charter school has made a decision yet by looking here or email jamie.woodlief@dpi.nc.gov for more up-to-date information.

Finance Officers or Charter School Directors can indicate their opt-in decision by using the Home Base tool at https://schools.nc.gov/homebaseaccess  by Friday. To ensure access to Schoolnet and local professional development components in Truenorthlogic by the start of the school year, a response must be submitted by tomorrow's deadline.

Contact Jamie Woodlief, Project Coordinator, at jamie.woodlief@dpi.nc.gov or 919-807-3745 if you have any questions.

Truenorthlogic

Evaluation / PDP Plans

Evaluation and Professional Development Plans for the 2016-17 school year will close on Friday, June 30 at 5 p.m. All evaluations should be completed and locked by that time. No further updates can be made once the plans and the included data is archived. 

Register NOW for Online Summer Courses

Educator Effectiveness will offer several instructor–facilitated online courses this summer. 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 offer the benefits of working with a cohort of peers. Summer courses provide a great opportunity to learn and grow your professional skills and earn some CEU credits!

Summer 2017 session courses will start Monday June 19. Registration is limited to 35 participants per section, so register now.

• 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)
• Effective Digital Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the K-12 Classroom: A PD MOOClet (6 weeks, 2.0 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 of 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 in the Everyday Classroom (5 weeks, 1.0 CEU)

Additional PowerTeacher Pro Resources & Training Sessions

The NCDPI HomeBase Training team is excited about the roll out of PowerTeacherPro (PTP) for Cohort I in the 2017-18 school year. We are currently creating materials to assist early adopters in Cohort I. We look forward to providing:

• PowerPoint slides that can be used to deliver PTP-Admin and PTP-Teacher training to your staff by June 16th;
• A training module for PTP-Teacher within Canvas or available via common cartridge for other LMS users (by Friday). If your district does not use a Learning Management System (LMS), we will also create videos that will be available on the NCSIS site (by Friday) for you to use to re-deliver training;
• A training module for PTP-Admin will be forthcoming (ETA: July 1).

For additional face-to-face training in PTP-Admin and PTP-Teacher, sessions will be held at the "Home Base Tools for Teachers" professional learning sessions in the east and west July 10 to 20. We will hold priority spaces open for those moving to PowerTeacher Pro in Cohort I.

Please follow this link for additional information and to register for these sessions.   If you have any questions regarding registration or the training sessions, please contact Jill Darrough at jill.darrough@dpi.nc.gov or 252-671-6405. 

Questions regarding the implementation of PTP, should be directed to Hunter Huffman at hunter.huffman@dpi.nc.gov or 919-807-3633.

Discover Schoolnet

This will be our last update for the 2016-17 school year. With our training site set to be updated to 19.0 on Friday, we hope to give you a sneak peak before the live site update on July 7. When we move to Schoolnet 19.0, you will notice a sleeker interface requiring fewer clicks to begin many functions. 

Feel free to review the past Schoolnet 19.0 webinar for information and to see the new features or register for the upcoming Pearson webinar on Tuesday, June 20, from 1 to 2 p.m. Register now.

We are also looking forward to new items in the item bank for Schoolnet for the 2017-18 school year. Information on these can be retrieved from the Coverage Report.

If you haven’t heard about or registered for the “Home Base Tools for Teachers” professional learning offered this summer, click here for more details. There will be sessions for administrators and teachers on DLCs, Schoolnet, Canvas, and PowerTeacher Pro for Teachers/Admins.

NEW! Item Reporting Tool

Please use this link to report instructional materials and items for review http://bit.ly/hbsnitems

Quick Tips 

Classrooms for Teachers and Classrooms for Leadership:  HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

*If you are a year round school, don't' forget to reference the training plan for materials.

Upcoming Professional Learning

Check with your district level Schoolnet lead (click here). They will determine if they have the staff to provide the professional learning or if they need to request a district training. If the lead can host a district training, please have them contact a DTL Regional Consultant for more details.

Click here to find information from past postings.

Still need help? You may also have your LEA/District Schoolnet Lead contact the Home Base Support Center through the Remedy web portal https://nc-myit.us.onbmc.com or (919) 807-4357.