Home Base Maintenance Weekend Rescheduled for Oct. 26-28
The maintenance weekend originally set to begin Friday, Oct. 12., and end by Monday, Oct. 15, is now rescheduled for the weekend of Oct. 26-28. The change is being made because there are several items related to Legislative Class Size, In Field / Out-of Field, and SADLS that are not ready to deploy at this time, and no other items were scheduled to be released this weekend. NCDPI and PowerSchool anticipate the new deployments will be ready for release in two weeks.
NCDPI is also rescheduling the PS Coordinators webinar that was scheduled for today, Oct. 11. The purpose of this webinar is to share maintenance release details and provide an overview of those items and others. In order to provide coordinators with the most up-to-date information, this webinar will be moved to Thursday, Oct. 25.
 Canvas Teacher Spotlight
Teachers, Students Gain from Interdisciplinary Approach in Social Studies and ELA
District: Rockingham County Schools
School: Western Rockingham Middle School
Teachers: Johnny Brown, Tiffany Finney, Jane Lemons
Grade Level: 8th Grade
Project: Interdisciplinary Course - ELA and Social Studies
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Johnny Brown, Tiffany Finney, and Jane Lemons, eighth grade teachers from Western Rockingham Middle School in Rockingham County, have adopted an interdisciplinary approach to teaching their ELA and Social Studies courses this school year. While the teachers are collaborating inside the classroom, co-teaching each day, Canvas also allows them to extend that collaboration by sharing the same Canvas course where they collaboratively build activities and assessments and share grading and feedback responsibilities.
 The teachers meet daily to co-plan their lessons and choose reading selections that integrate the Social Studies curriculum content and allow for the application of ELA skills. The students are currently working on a project-based activity, entitled “CSI Investigation: The Lost Colony”. Student groups are reading scenarios, formulating and defending theories by citing text-based evidence, and creating presentations of their findings. Students have been given a choice board to allow them to demonstrate what they learn. Options include written report, video, comic strip, poster, or student-generated presentation ideas.
The teachers have utilized Canvas as a blended learning platform to support this work. Within Canvas, students have access to an online textbook, assignment specifications, rubrics, instructional videos, games, and more. Students report that they like having all of their course resources in one place, enjoy participating in the class discussions, appreciate knowing what activities and assignments are planned for the week, and utilize Canvas outside of class to help them study for upcoming tests and message teachers with questions.
Brown, Finney and Lemons say that additional benefits of using Canvas include serving as a resource for parents and students who have missed classes. They are also excited that by collaborating and building their learning activities in Canvas, they know that next year they will be able to easily reuse and modify the resources they have created and curated this year.
Stephanie Wray, WRMS principal, added that the teachers have surpassed all of her expectations through their collaboration.
Please join us in congratulating these teachers on their outstanding work! Also, if you know a teacher or school that we should spotlight for an awesome use of Canvas, please email cbarham@instructure.com.
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Canvas Parent App Update
The Canvas Parent App enhances the potential for parents to engage in their children's education. Parents can review upcoming or past assignments, check on grades and receive alerts for student activity. Learn more about the app by visiting: What is the Canvas Parent App?
In case you missed the exciting news, we have made some changes to the Canvas Parent App account creation/ login requirements for institutions that allow parents to self-register as observers. Here are some resources related to the new process.
View a summary of changes and more information about the Canvas Parent App.
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Schoolnet News
Join Webinar Oct. 17 on Assessments
Please join us for the second of our two October Schoolnet webinars. The topic this month is about crafting the perfect assessment and utilizing Schoolnet’s technology enhanced items to make your assessment go beyond the traditional multiple choice test. All live webinar participants will earn .1 CEU for their participation. To register, please visit bit.ly/ncschoolnetresources
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Update on Schoolnet Performance Issues
Last month, Schoolnet had a couple of performance issues when students completed assessments online. Pearson has investigated these issues and added additional TestNav resources to ensure more robust performance. Remember this is the first time that all testing has been completed on TestNav, so some growing pains were possible as we made the transition. Please continue to log Home Base Support Center tickets if you experience issues.
Schoolnet Storytellers Needed!
We want to include more Schoolnet Storytellers in our 2018-19 cycle of newsletters to highlight the amazing things you're doing in your schools. Please fill out this brief form to nominate an educator at your school/district to be featured in future newsletters.
Coming Soon to Schoolnet…
- EOC/EOG Scores for 2017-2018 are being imported into the system
- New NCDPI_Benchmark and NCDPI_Classroom K-8 Math Assessment Items
Stay tuned for a communication to Schoolnet Admins on when these updates are available!
 Truenorthlogic Updates
PRINCIPAL PDPs Important Notice!
TNL/NCEES issue
More than 900 principals statewide have been assigned a PDP (professional development plan) in the TNL/NCEES system by a NCEES admin in the district on the “My Staff” page. Principals should not have or start a PDP in NCEES as this is a teacher rubric PDP. These plans will be deactivated on Friday, Oct. 19 at close of business day. This notice is to give districts time to download or print information entered in the TNL NCEES system before the principal PDP plans are deactivated. Principal PDP fillable forms can be found on the NCEES Wiki: http://ncees.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/NCEES+Wiki.
Contact Cami Narron, NCDPI TNL Lead cami.narron@dpi.nc.gov if any questions.
NEW! Observation Steps Guide for Evaluators/Observers and Teachers/Support Staff
Who does what activity in NCEES during an Observation? This guide has all the steps and screenshots to assist admin and staff to earn those green completion check marks in the observation activities! Navigate in NCEES to the Help Guides tab > this, Observation Steps v2 2018, is posted under both Teacher/Support Staff Guides and Principal/AP Guides.
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Click here for a PDF version: Observation Steps v2 2018.
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Navigate in NCEES to Help Guides tab to access all the new guides that have been posted for District Administrators and Teacher/Support Staff. Updated guides have a date on the end of the title.
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Principal/AP guides for Teacher/Support Staff Evaluation process coming soon! Old guides steps can be followed. Omit any step that says “Confirm Evaluation Plan type”, as this activity for the evaluator was removed from NCEES system in 2017-2018.
Upcoming TNL/NCEES webinars
Coaching Forward Using Teacher Led Conferences
Audience: Principals
Webinar Outcomes: Are you ready for a new way to have that post observation conference? This webinar takes a new look at the process and provides you with a framework to begin shifting the feedback conversation to be led by the teacher.
Date: Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018
Time: 4-5 p.m.
Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8045909825198649603
Click here for a full listing of TNL/NCEES webinars: http://bit.ly/18-19NCEES_Webinar_Series. Middle of Year process webinars are scheduled for Dec. 4 and 11.
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