Home Base at CCES Next Week The Home Base Team looks forward to seeing you next week at the CCES Conference, where we'll be hosting dozens of presentations focusing on digital teaching, learning, data management and more. Have you registered?  It’s not too late. However, if your payment has not been mailed, please bring your check with you.  Payments mailed now will not be processed prior to the start of the conference (March 11). Also, remember to bring your mobile devices for session information and communication.  The conference will be paperless.   A detailed sessions guide is available.  Registrants may use this sessions guide to plan out their conference events.  For additional information and registration, visit our CCES Website or follow us on twitter @ncdpiCCES.   See you next week!

Maintenance Weekend Starts Friday Home Base maintenance is scheduled for Friday, March 9 through Sunday, March 11. PowerSchool and Schoolnet are both scheduled for maintenance, as is the UID system. PowerSchool maintenance will involve a North Carolina State Reporting Release for Common Follow-up (CFU) Reporting. In this release, the CFU-3 validation warning will be changed to a fatal error. Schoolnet will be updated at 5 p.m. Friday to version 19.1.4. This update will resolve the following issues: Image size issues on assessments given in the legacy test browser. Access to restricted test items from the student profile. We expect Schoolnet access to be restored by 6 p.m. Friday. The UID system servers will also undergo maintenance and scheduled upgrades during this maintenance weekend.  As a result, the Staff and Student UID systems will be unavailable during this time. Home Base will be brought down Friday at 5 p.m. and returned to service no later than Monday, March 12 at 6 a.m. Once maintenance is completed, a message will be sent to notify users that the system is up and available for use. If there is a delay in bringing up the applications, users will be notified.

Training Set for PowerTeacher Pro Cohort II The Home Base Team is excited to begin the process of training and preparing for migration of PowerTeacher Pro for Cohort II. Everyone who was not a part of Cohort I will have to be a part of Cohort II.  There will not be a Cohort III. Training sessions will begin on April 17 for administrators and teachers. For details and registration, click on the bit.ly link provided: http://bit.ly/2F59veN. Note:  Attendees must be an employee of a North Carolina public school.

Canvas Corner Canvas Conversations Coming to April      Home Base Meet-Ups We're excited to announce that we will be featuring Canvas content and discussions during our upcoming April Home Base Meet-Ups.  Product Manager Pam Batchelor will be offering a split content option for Schoolnet and Canvas LEA and Charter School Leads. Schoolnet content will be offered in the morning and Canvas content in the afternoon of each meeting location. This split format is to accommodate the many leads who serve in dual roles across the state.  We are excited to expand our support and collaboration efforts during Home Base Meet-Ups. Below is a schedule for the April Home Base Meet-Ups: April 10: Bertie County Schools, Administrative Building, 715 US-13, Windsor (Use Bertie STEM High School for GPS April 11: Wayne County Schools, Spring Creek Middle School, 3579 NC-11, Seven Springs April 12: Burke County Schools, Olive Hill Resource Center, 509 West Concord St., Morganton April 13: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, CMS Professional Development Center, 1901 Herbert Spaugh Lane, Charlotte Stay tuned for registration information.

Schools Share Canvas Successes with State Board of Education

As part of Lt. Governor Dan Forest’s Special Committee on Digital Learning, two school groups presented their use of the Canvas Learning Management System to the State Board of Education during last week's meeting.

Andrew Moceri, executive director of Pine Lake Preparatory, and Becky Goddard, the Mooresville charter school's instructional technology specialist, shared with the board how they are using Canvas as a K-12 center for parent and community engagement. They described how all student clubs, activities, and every classroom uses Canvas to engage in learning activities and share information with parents.

From Guilford County Schools, Rashad Slade, director of Blended Learning and Sabrina Jenkins, coordinator of Blended Learning, told the board how their use of Canvas has grown over the past three years in their district. Since starting with a middle school 1:1 program, the district has seen increased success and teacher buy-in with the use of Canvas through district leadership. Jenkins explained how all teachers and administrators in Guilford County use Canvas for ongoing professional learning. This has led to increased teacher confidence in using the application with their students. They are now looking ahead to how Canvas can be used for highly engaging activities such as digital breakouts, mastery paths, and blended-learning options to meet the needs of all learners.

We are very excited to spotlight Canvas for state education leaders and look forward to continued conversations on how Canvas can support our vision for personalized learning in classrooms across the state. Here is a link to the full State Board of Education DLI presentation.

Discover Schoolnet March Webinar: Benchmark Assessment Panel Join other educators from across the state during webinars March 21 at 10 a.m. or 3 p.m. to explore the new benchmark reporting dashboard and discuss best practices and lessons learned from administering and analyzing school/district level benchmark assessments. Visit the Home Base Calendar for more information and registration links.

Partners for Student Success: Using Schoolnet with Canvas at Gravelly Hill Middle School

The 7th and 8th grade science team at Gravelly Hill Middle School in Orange County has found success in using Schoolnet common assessments within Canvas to monitor student achievement and progress. 

During the past three years, 8th grade science achievement has increased from 70 percent to 85 percent proficiency. Professional learning community members Michael Lester, Julie White, and David Hall credit this growth to common assessments via Schoolnet and Mastery Paths in Canvas to personalize instruction.

The team shared this example: “Most recently, we taught relative-age dating. All students started the unit by taking a pre-assessment embedded in Canvas, which assigned them to a Mastery Path. Students had different assignments and formative assessments depending on their pre-assessment performance, and then took their assessment on Friday. More than 80 percent of students grew from pre-assessment to assessment. We knew this due to the super handy export data tool and easy analysis using Google Sheets.”

Lester also explains how using Schoolnet has impacted their PLC time: “Using Schoolnet has fundamentally changed how my PLC does business in several important ways. At the base level we have instant results so time is not being spent grading but responding to the grades that students receive. This has allowed us to regroup students the following school day based on their needs. Giving common assessments across the PLC has allowed us to view all students as ‘our’ students rather than ‘my’ students and ‘your’ students.”

We are so excited to share the success that the Gravelly Hill Middle School Science PLC has found with using Schoolnet with Canvas. Creating a personalized learning experience for every student is one of the core focuses of North Carolina’s Four Pillars of Personalized Learning and we are excited to share more examples of how the Home Base suite of tools is making it possible across our state. If you would like to connect with the Gravelly Hill Middle School Science PLC, please find them on Twitter at: 

@JulieWhite46

@Hall_Sciences

If you would like to nominate an educator in your school or district to be a Schoolnet Storyteller, please complete this brief nomination form to be featured in a future newsletter.

NCEdCloud IAM Target Applications Update

After running pilots with a number of school districts, NCDPI would like to announce the following applications (new or revised) are available for integration with your district or charter school view of the NCEdCloud IAM Service.

• Destiny (Follett) - Version 2 now includes NCEdCloud Single Sign-On
• Ed: Your Friend in Learning (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• G Suite for Education (previously Google Apps for Education) - Version 2, which does not use UID as the account name
• Holt McDougal Online (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Microsoft Office 365
• NC LOR (Learning Object Repository)
• Think Central (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• What's My Browser (support utility that displays the browser type and version you’re using)
• Career Cruising (now Xello)

The applications listed above are all Opt-In and can be requested by your Tech Director (or anyone with the district administrator role in the NCEdCloud IAM Service) through the Target Applications Request Form on the NCEdCloud IAM Service website.  For a complete list of applications currently available through the NCEdCloud IAM Service, visit the target applications webpage at https://ncedcloud.mcnc.org/target-applications.

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