 Summer Brings Improvements
Welcome back Home Base users! We hope you’re as excited as we are to start another fantastic year of preparing our North Carolina public school students for sucess through adaptive environments for personalized, digital-age learning. Many of our Home Base resources were enhanced during the summer to further advance North Carolina’s vision for education by empowering students, teachers and administrators through personalized learning. Here are a few highlights:
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 Truenorthlogic
New and Updated Enhancements to the Evaluation System
My Staff (NEW)
Principals can now assign staff their Evaluation Plan Type (Comprehensive, Abbreviated, or Standard) and set Professional Development Plan Type. This will ensure that teachers are assigned to the correct evaluation plan at the beginning of the school year and that PDPs have correct rubrics for support staff.
Note: Late Hire plan use is determined by the LEA/Charter.
Assign Rights to Principal Plans (NEW)
District Administrators will now assign access rights to Principal Evaluation plans. (Navigation Path: Staff Evaluations > Principal Plan > Access Rights tab) All other assigning rights to staff plan access remains in My Staff > Administration Staff Management.
Assume Identity (NEW)
District Administrators will have Assume Identity rights for troubleshooting local plan completion of their principals and staff.
Help Guides (UPDATED)
All system help guides are earmarked for updating, please review the Help Guides tab often for newly posted guides.
Update to Professional Development System
PD Playlists (NEW)
Administrators can now create a PD playlist of courses in the TNL/NCEES PD Catalog. NCDPI must set up the initial PD Playlist Moderator – please open a Remedy Ticket that includes the name and location of your district designated Moderator. The Moderator can then assign others to either create playlist or manage staff assignments to the playlist.
Example: Create a Beginning Teacher playlist of required courses to assign to all beginning teachers.
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 New Canvas Training Course Available!
Growing with Canvas is a new training course in Canvas Commons that replaces the old Kung Fu Canvas training course. This new course uses interactive training modules as the learning method instead of videos that were used in the previous course.
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 Schoolnet
20.0 Release
Schoolnet Version 20.0 includes many improvements to data analysis, reporting, and online assessments. New reports, Standards Analysis Report and Test Summary are now available. To learn more about these improvements, check out the 20.0 Release Notes.
(https://docs.schoolnet.com/webhelp//200/myschoolnet/Content/WhatsNew/Release_Notes.pdf)
Certica Update of Math and Social Studies Item Banks
The Certica item bank was updated on Aug. 24 to the Navigate 10.2 item bank. This update includes additional items for middle school social studies and realigned items for math in grades 3-5. These items can be viewed by using the advanced search by publisher- “Certica Solutions, Inc.”
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Stay Informed and Keep in Touch ...
As you can see, the Digital Teaching and Learning Home Base staff has been busy making sure your 2018-19 year is a successful one.
Keep up with all Home Base happenings by visiting the Home Base Website and following us on twitter @NCHomeBase.
 Maintenance Weekend Sept. 14-16
The next Home Base maintenance weekend is scheduled for Sept. 14 to 16. Home Base will be taken offline Friday, Sept. 14 at 5 p.m. and returned to service no later than Monday, Sept. 17 at 6 a.m.
Once maintenance is completed, a message will be sent to notify users that the Home Base applications are up and available for use. If there is a delay in bringing up the systems, users will be notified.
Stay apprised of all Home Base planned maintenance periods by visiting our 2018-19 Home Base maintenance Schedule.
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 PowerSchool
Four New PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook Webinars
The DTL staff is excited to announce a series of PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook webinars that began this week. These webinars will be led by Digital Learning Competency Ambassadors and funded by the NC Digital Learning Initiative. Participants will earn .1 CEU for each webinar attended.
All webinars in this series will be offered from 7 to 8 p.m. These hours were chosen to accommodate those who are unable to attend training during regular school business hours.
Content provided in this series is a repeat of the face-to-face Home Base Applications events from July 2018.
Four topics will be offered:
PowerTeacher Pro: Ditch the Pencil
This webinar is designed for beginner level only, allowing participants to familiarize themselves with the many components of PowerTeacher Pro and the navigation of the PowerTeacher Pro platform. Participants will learn how to log in, set up classes, set display and grading preferences, create categories, set term weighting, create assignments and track grades and student progress.
Next date: Sept. 11
Webinar Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/8270489473682380290
Tips & Tricks for Efficient PTP Use
In this webinar, the following topics will be addressed:
- Creating reports (demographics, grades from other classes, etc.)
- Creating student groups within a class
- Using Fill for grades, comments, etc.
- Accessing dropped students
- Entering past grades for new students in past grading periods
- Transferring grades from Schoolnet (How to)
- Setting defaults for assignments
- Extra Credit (Percent & Points)
- Manually overriding grades
Dates: Sept. 4, Sept. 6 and Sept. 13
Webinar Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/8275774826077561602
Report for Duty: Understanding PTP Reports
In this webinar, teachers will become familiar with the reports tab of PTP, the different types of reports offered by PTP and the various uses for these reports. Additionally, teachers will be presented with scenarios in which they must decide which report would be best for various situations.
Dates: Sept. 18 and Sept. 27
Webinar Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/4455296275486672898
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Using PowerTeacher Pro to Impact the Bigger Picture
In this webinar, the following topics will be addressed:
- Creating reports (demographics, grades from other classes, etc.)
- Importance of Attendance
- Impact of changing grades from prior grading quarters (how-to and when not to)
- Referencing dropped students and how to view past grades
- % Grading -vs- Point Grading
Dates: Sept. 20, Sept. 25
Webinar Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/7363555108488791042
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Other Reminders ... |
Do You See the NC Canvas Commons?
Canvas districts are encouraged to check and confirm if they have access to the NC Canvas Commons, a separate area of the Canvas Commons that houses NCDPI resources and courses. If you do not have access, please have your Canvas Admin email Pamela Batchelor (pamela.batchelor@dpi.nc.gov).
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Role Reminders
The beginning of the school year is a great time to review roles and permissions in Schoolnet.
Two key points about roles:
Only One Default
All users in Schoolnet should have one and only one default (system) role selected for Schoolnet (in PowerSchool).
Teachers are set!
Anyone who has the default role of teacher has all the roles and permissions needed to conduct classes (create and administer classroom assessments, use lesson planner, schedule, etc.) for the students assigned to that teacher. Only add permissions if you want a teacher to contribute outside of his or her classes.
For more information on establishing roles and permissions within Schoolnet, link to our Schoolnet Resources by visiting: https://homebase.ncpublicschools.gov/applications/schoolnet/schoolnet-resources
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Online Professional Development
Online Professional Development will continue to offer quality professional development with flexible learning. A complete list of online professional learning opportunities offered by Educator Effectiveness, NCDPI is available at http://rt3nc.org/
Student Survey Discontinued for 2018-19 Year
Due to budget cuts, Student Survey has been discontinued beginning 2018-2019 school year.
Thank you to all districts and teachers that participated with their students in grades K-12 for completing this survey on their learning environment.
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