Home Base Tools Are Key for 2020-21
Rob Dietrich, Ed.D., Home Base Manager
Welcome to the 2020-2021 school year! I know that you have worked hard this summer preparing for a unique opening to the school year. This year, the opening of schools is far from traditional. COVID-19 has changed education as we know it. Many districts are starting with either a blended learning environment or a completely remote learning environment, while simultaneously implementing virtual learning programs.
Personalized learning has become more important as learning shifts from the traditional classroom to remote learning. Home Base programs are an excellent avenue to use to assist you as you educate NC’s students during these challenging times.
We are pleased to announce Canvas is being used as the LMS in 176 districts and charter schools statewide! A statewide learning management system benefits students, families, caretakers, and teachers to have a familiar system. It also easily allows for shared courses for students and professional development.
Additionally, #GoOpenNC, the state’s open education repository, continues to grow. #GoOpenNC provides high-quality resources, which are shareable, adaptable, and created by North Carolina teachers. Hundreds of new lessons, videos, and activities have been added to #GoOpenNC in the past few months. Schoolnet, the state’s instructional improvement system, supports personalized learning through its resource bank with materials that are appropriately aligned. Schoolnet was upgraded to version 22.0 during the summer and many new features were added with this upgrade.
Another digital resource to support personalized, blended learning is Imagine Math. Imagine Math is a program that allows teachers to assess and monitor student math progress and provides a live on-demand math tutor. This real-time math tutor is available for immediate help during all hours of the day.
Learning.com provides digital literacy that helps students develop 21st-century skills. This school year, they offer new custom NC Remote Instruction Sequences. The sequences include a subset of digital technology skill-specific sequences developed over the summer, bundled and designed to prepare students with the fundamentals to prepare them for blended, classroom and remote learning.
PowerSchool’s Parent Portal is key to ensuring parents can view their student’s academic progress and attendance. Parents can also download the parent portal app.
NCEES provides educators across the state a place to find quality professional development that enhances teacher’s skills in the classroom through online modules. The online modules provide teachers flexibility as they continue to grow professionally. The online evaluation and professional development plans are designed to promote effective leadership, quality teaching and student learning while enhancing professional practice and leading to improved instruction.
In closing, I want you to know that our Home Base team is here for you. In this non-traditional year, you can count on us to help you. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication in providing all students with a quality education no matter what format. May you have good health and an outstanding year.
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Become a Home Base Empowered Educator!
To kickoff the 2020-21 school year, the Home Base Team has created a series of eight 30-minute mini-webinars that are available on demand to help you make the most of Schoolnet, Canvas, and #GoOpenNC!
CEU credit and a digital badge can be earned by watching at least two webinars. For more information, please visit bit.ly/homebaseb2school20
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Home Base Maintenance Weekend Schedule
ATTENTION TEACHERS
Each year, a list of scheduled maintenance windows are published by NCDPI. This is published in advance to help teachers and administrators better prepare for temporary outages and loss of access. Please review the 2020-2021 maintenance schedule and put these dates on your calendar. In most cases, the entire window is not necessary and we can return systems to service earlier than listed. If emergency maintenance is required in addition to these scheduled dates, all users will be notified in advance.
Please note: The next Home Base maintenance weekend is scheduled for August 21-24.
The PowerSchool application will be brought down on Friday evening at 7 p.m. and returned to service on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. The system will be taken down again for the second part of maintenance on Saturday evening at 7 p.m. and returned to service on Sunday morning at 7 a.m. Maintenance will entail adding security patches to PowerSchool.
If you have any questions pertaining to this maintenance, please contact the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.
PowerSchool Notes
Attendance Expectations for Remote Learning
As we kick off the 2020-2021 school year in remote settings, it is important that teachers and administrators maintain and submit accurate attendance records for state reporting and funding purposes.
A new attendance code has been created for tracking students who are participating in remote instruction. In addition, the default present code description has been modified to specify on-site attendance. Please refer to the Attendance Requirements section of this document for more information on the attendance code changes and expectations.
After reviewing the various plans that have been submitted by North Carolina PSUs, the Professional Learning Team thought it might be beneficial to provide teachers with some resources that might assist attendance tracking. We are currently working to create a short video for teachers that will walk you through the various options within PowerTeacher Pro and the attendance screen. In the meantime, we have a few documents that are hot off the press that we’d like to share with you. The following QRDs will help teachers set up seating charts in PTPro to help differentiate between sections that have been split for partial remote and partial face-to-face learning, as well as gain a better understanding of the single and multi-day attendance functions.
PowerTeacher Pro Resources
The DTL Professional Learning Team is currently developing some new resources for teachers. We expect to have those items out in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, please check out our PowerTeacher Pro resources that are available on our website.
PowerSchool Upgrade
NCDPI and PowerSchool are currently developing plans for a SIS upgrade that will possibly take place in December 2020 or January 2021. At this time, it has not been decided which version we will be upgrading to. More information will be shared as plans unfold.
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Canvas Monthly Webinars
Join us starting in September for monthly webinars to learn more about Canvas. Webinars will be an hour and offered at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. to help you attend the session that best fits your schedule.
Educators who attend a live webinar will receive a certificate for 0.1 CEU that is recommended for Digital Learning Competency Credit. All webinars will be recorded and archived on our YouTube channel to rewatch as needed.
To register for our Canvas webinars, please visit: bit.ly/nccanvaswebinars
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Canvas Teacher Spotlight
District: Rockingham County Schools
School: Rockingham County High School
Contributor: Whitney Carter, Drafting & Architecture Teacher
Topic: Beginning Teacher
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Whitney Carter is a lateral entry, beginning teacher in Rockingham County. Not only is she new to teaching, but she is also new to Canvas. So, when we moved to online instruction in the spring, she knew it would be a challenge. However, Whitney says that she found that the ability to communicate with her students through Canvas was much easier than composing and sending information via email.
Initially, Whitney was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to make her Canvas course visually appealing for her students. However, in time and with help from others, she was able to design a custom homepage to help with that challenge. She is also thankful that she was able to assign some creative activities for her students through Canvas to help them continue learning at home.
Through all the challenges of teaching remotely, she knows that Canvas helped her manage the workload better than she could have without it and says she is very thankful for that. She says she still has a lot to learn about designing her courses so that students have the best experience possible, but she knows it is worth it! She is also thankful for all of the support and help she received from her co-workers and says they helped her anytime she had a Canvas question!
Join us in congratulating Whitney on her 1st year success and wishing her a fantastic year to come!
Canvas Back to School Resources for Teachers
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What’s New in Schoolnet for 2020-21
Over the summer, Schoolnet was upgraded to version 22.0. New in this version is the ability to compare standards performance on the assessment comparison reports. Also, educators can now restrict students from seeing the correct answers on a test for test corrections or retesting purposes. For complete details on all the new features in 22.0, please check out the release notes.
Schoolnet Monthly Webinars
Join us starting in September for monthly webinars to learn more about Schoolnet. Webinars will be one hour long and offered at 10am, 3pm, and 7pm to help you attend the session that best fits your schedule. Educators who attend a live webinar will receive a CEU certificate for 0.1 CEU that is recommended for Digital Learning Competency Credit. All webinars will be recorded and archived on our YouTube channel to rewatch as needed. To register for our Schoolnet webinars, please visit: bit.ly/ncschoolnetresources
Now Available in Schoolnet - NCDPI Math Sets
The NCDPI Math Sets items are now available in Schoolnet. These items are for grades 3-12 and are intended to be used as a formative assessment on each grade level/course domain. To view the NCDPI Math Sets item bank:
- Login to Schoolnet from the NCEdCloud
- On the left side navigation, click on “Assessments”
- Click on “Item Banks” under Items, Rubrics, and Passages
- Look for the NCDPI Math Sets item bank:
Coming soon ...
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NCDPI Math Sets Assessments
NCDPI is creating formative assessments with the NCDPI Math Sets items by domain and grade level (example - 3rd grade geometry) that educators will be able to quickly schedule and use.
#GoOpenNC Monthly Webinars
Join us starting in September for monthly webinars to learn more about #GoOpenNC.
Webinars will be an hour and offered at 10 a.m., 3 p.m, and 7 p.m. to help you attend the session that best fits your schedule. Educators who attend a live webinar will receive a certificate for 0.1 CEU that is recommended for Digital Learning Competency Credit. All webinars will be recorded and archived on our YouTube channel to rewatch as needed.
Make sure you register today for our upcoming webinars!
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Welcome to School Year 2020-21!
NCDPI Home Base - NCEES team is here to support you
All PSUs have access to the online evaluation component of NCEES, and when PSU’s opt-in to Home Base, you may also utilize a local Professional Development (PD) Office in NCEES.
PSU NCEES administrators please review the information in our Welcome to NCEES letter. Do you have questions about setting up NCEES? Click here to Schedule an Office Hours call with Cami Narron, Home Base Education Product Consultant.
Educators, visit the NCEES Information and Resources site to find teacher and administrative manuals with supporting documents, Beginning of Year Orientation How To - with recording you can view together with administration and staff and much more! Bookmark the NCEES Google site at bit.ly/ncees-support.
NCEES Webinars 2020-21, with registration links (click on titles), descriptions, dates and times are posted on the NCEES Google site at https://sites.google.com/dpi.nc.gov/ncees-information-and-resource/webinars-2020-21. Webinars are scheduled for Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m. unless otherwise designated. New this year - our webinars are in the Cisco Webex platform.
All will be recorded and posted to DPI's YouTube NCEES Playlist and also on the NCEES Google site, which will include presentation links for later viewing.
Please mark your August calendars for these webinars:
(titles are registration links with descriptions)
NCEES held informative summer webinars at #NCLearnsTogether:
Please also review these slides on What’s New In NCEES for 2020-2021.
We hope you have enjoyed your summer break and wish you a wonderful 2020-21 School Year!
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Back to School Resources
NC Remote Instruction Sequences went live Monday, Aug. 10
As the NCDPI NC K-8 Digital Literacy Initiative moves into year two, NCDPI and Learning.com are pleased to provide our Learning.com districts with the resources to enable our PSUs to quickly and easily implement Learning.com in the 2020-21 school year. We are excited about the NC Remote Instruction Sequences, a subset of digital technology skill-specific sequences bundled and designed to prepare students with the fundamentals to prepare them for blended, classroom and remote learning.
Supporting Guide: Remote Instruction Pacing Guide (click here) – is a guide that provides a suggested order of assignments and timing for utilizing the Remote Instruction Sequences in your classroom. Please review the “Read Me First” tab.
For teachers, there is a new NC Educator Digital Literacy Brief (click here) – a one-pager intended to provide immediate “how-to-use” instructions for teachers that will be using Learning.com within their classrooms, as well as links to valuable support resources including Learning.com’s brand new Online Training Center that will provide just-in-time, online training.
And don’t miss the September webinars: bit.ly/lcomvirtualsept2020.
- Using the Digital Literacy Assessment (DLA) to Gauge Your Students’ Understanding of the ISTE Standards for Students
- Tracking Student Growth through Skills Check
We wish you a great start to the 2020-21 School Year!
If you have any questions, please email:
NCDPI: cami.narron@dpi.nc.gov
LCOM: tkinney@learning.com
Sincerely,
NCDPI DTL/Home Base Team and the Learning.com Team
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