NC SIS Weekly Email Bulletin

Topics in this issue:

1.     Digital Device Survey is NOW LIVE!

2.     Adding Grade Levels in PowerSchool

3.     K-8 Learning.com Usage Intent 23-24

4.     Canvas March Statewide Call

5.     Pre-Registering Students  

6.     Student Accounting and School Business  

7.     Portrait of a Graduate

8.     OCR/CRDC SY2021-2022 - Letter to Superintendents and Next Steps Due April 01, 2023

9.     Adaptive Keyboarding Contest

10.   Home Base Maintenance Window

11.   NCEdCloud Maintenance Window  

12.   Webinars, Recordings and Trainings

          New Self-Paced PD Courses for Canvas

          Schoolnet Self-Paced PD Course

          Home Base Admin Course

13.   Subscribe to Major Events Status Alerts

14.   NCDPI Technology Support Center

15.   Follow Us on Social Media

Digital Device Survey is NOW LIVE!

The Digital Device Survey was put into production this past weekend. The survey has been enabled by default for all.  PSUs can disable the survey under Miscellaneous on the admin side:

Start Page > PSU Setup >  Miscellaneous > Hide Digital Survey

If “Hide Digital Survey” is selected, it disables the survey, both in the Parent Portal and on the Admin/Student screen, for all schools in the PSU.

The QRD for the survey in the parent portal can be found below under Resources. If you choose another method to collect this data, and for those parents/guardians who may not have an internet connection, a copy of the questions in pdf format can also be found below under Resources. 

Reminders:

The Digital Device Survey is optional in PowerSchool as there is no requirement to use it if you are gathering the data through an alternate method. The purpose of this survey is to fulfill session law "§ 115C-102.9 calling for the collection and reporting of data regarding all students access to digital devices and internet access at home. 

If you use this survey, the data will be imported automatically into your SCHOOL DLMI. 

For those parents/guardians who do not have an internet connection and answer the survey on paper, the PSU can answer the questions for the student under the NC Information, Digital Device Survey.

Start Page > Student Selection > Digital Device Survey 

Resources:

QRD for Parents

Copy of Questions

Adding Grade Levels in PowerSchool

Reminder:  PSUs Can Now Add New Grades in PowerSchool SIS

The EDDIE process has been modified to allow PSUs to begin adding new grade levels without the EDDIE feed being disabled. This process temporarily pauses the feed to only the grade level fields located on the Schools/School setup page. 

PSUs who need to add new grade levels for the 2023-24 school year may now do so in PowerSchool. Prior to adding these grade levels to PowerSchool, your EDDIE administrator must first ensure that the EDDIE “Approved” grade levels include the grades being added to the SIS. It is important that you remember to add these new grade levels to EDDIE “Current” grade levels after EOY. EDDIE “Current” grade level changes should not take place until then.

For assistance, please visit the PowerSchool SIS Administrator - School Information.

K-8 Learning.com Usage Intent 23-24 The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) is entering its fifth year with Learning.com as the K-8 Digital Literacy Initiative statewide curriculum and assessment solution. This partnership is designed to encourage student growth in computational thinking, digital citizenship, keyboarding, online safety, visual mapping, databases, and computer fundamentals.     Tier 1 public school units (PSUs) which include districts, charter schools, lab schools and innovative school district (ISD) schools within the most economically distressed counties (as determined by the North Carolina Department of Commerce Tier One designation are eligible to receive funding for the K-8 Digital Literacy Initiative.    If you have not completed the survey to notify us as to your interest in receiving funding and access to the curriculum for the 2023-2024 school year, please complete as soon as possible.  A link to the K-8 Digital Literacy Survey form is attached.  We would like to receive your response by March 17, 2023.

Canvas March Statewide Call Thank you to those of you that were able to join us for our March Canvas Admin call. Though it was a short one, we hope you learned something new. Please feel free to review the recording and slide deck below, alongside our April registration link.   Call recording can be found HERE Passcode is: s3%Qn?Pw Slide deck can be found HERE April registration link can be found HERE

Pre-Registering Students Reminder: Students should only be pre-registered if they are not currently active in any other NC PSU. Typically, only a subset of Kindergarten students will meet this definition — many Kindergarteners already have active NC PSU records due to public preschool services. Pre-registering students for the next school year who are active NC students during the current school year has negative impacts on the NCEdCloud IAM service, accountability, and ECATS.   Pre-registered students must have the scheduling setup page appropriately populated with the student’s next year grade and next school indicator. For pre-registered students, the next year grade must be the grade level that the student will be enrolled for the upcoming school year. For example, if a Kindergarten student is pre-registered for the next school year before running the End of Year process for the current school year, the next year grade for the student on the Scheduling Setup page should be 0 (Kindergarten).

Student Accounting and School Business Reminder: For questions related to the SASA Manual and student accounting, please contact the Student Accounting team in the School Business division at the following email. StudentAccounting@dpi.nc.gov

OCR/CRDC SY2021-2022: Letter to Superintendents and Next Steps Due April 01, 2023

Dear Coordinators,

Please share with other staff as appropriate.  Read this message carefully.

On February 28, 2023, the Office of Civil Rights messaged the public-school Superintendents and Charter School Directors across the nation regarding the SY 2021-2022 CRDC collection.  For your convenience, the message is attached to this email.  If you are unable to receive attachments, visit the recently updated Civil Rights Data Collection page on the NCDPI website.

The letter states that while there is no due date set at this time and no requirements published, we are encouraged to prepare for the upcoming collection.  Also within the letter are instructions to contact CRDC Partner Support with updated CRDC Coordinator contact information. 

There is no need to contact CRDC Partner Support.  NCDPI will prepare the CRDC Coordinator Contact file and the CRDC Universe files for the collection.

Please ensure the following two tasks are complete by April 1, 2023:

• Verifying or updating the CRDC Coordinator contacts are recorded in EDDIE
• As a reminder, all PSUs must have at least one CRDC Coordinator contact in EDDIE.

• Ensuring Section 504 data for SY 2021-2022 been recorded in the Special Programs section of PowerSchool.
• Use the Enrolling Students in a Special Program guide to add student records. 
• PSUs using third party applications for Section 504 will be required submit Section 504 data to the CRDC on their own if a record is not added to PowerSchool.
• Section 504 Designation guidance is provided at the local level.  Please contact the PSU 504 Coordinator with any questions. 

There is no need to run the PowerSchool CRDC Preview Report for this collection.

There is no need to complete the CRDC setup screens in Power School for this collection.

More information will be provided on the collection as it is made available.   

Want information about the CRDC, but are not the CRDC Coordinator contact?  Add your information here:  2122 CRDC – Info Only Contacts List

Please email nc.ocr.crdc@dpi.nc.gov with any questions you may have. 

Adaptive Keyboarding Contest   Do you want to help your students win special recognition for practicing essential keyboarding skills while having fun? Would you like to run your own competition? Learning.com can show you how!   In every educator's account, the Online Training Center is available. We have added new content in the form of Implementation Kits. One available kit is the Adaptive Keyboarding Contest. Run your own district competition utilizing all of the data and lessons provided from Learning.com.   If you would rather just be part of our statewide competition, please share the attached flier with your teachers who use Learning.com or want to introduce Learning.com’s keyboarding exercises into their curriculum. Keyboarding skills are essential in all learning environments and important for investing in future careers. This contest is a fun way to promote ongoing keyboarding practice with your students to develop fluency and accuracy.   This contest is open to students in grades 3-8 and starts on February 1, 2023. Winners will be announced mid-April. More details are in the attached flyer.   Tips for the contest: Encourage students to practice their keyboarding skills at least 3 times per week for 15-20 minutes per session  Recommended practice: Bell ringer activity, early-completer activity, independent practice, during center time, at home Remind teachers and students that it’s flexible! Learning.com lessons can be accessed anywhere and at any time! Check out this short video for more on Adaptive Keyboarding and Online Test Prep- https://vimeo.com/790894649   Lastly, please share your district’s participation by promoting on Twitter and mention @learningdotcom! Type On!

Home Base Maintenance Window Maintenance window March 17-18 The PowerSchool application will undergo scheduled system maintenance for a state reporting update Friday March 17, 2023. The PowerSchool system will be temporarily unavailable starting at 6 PM Friday March 17, 2023 and will be returned to service no later than Saturday March 18 at 10 AM.   Note:  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 2022-2023 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.

NCEdCloud Maintenance Window The NCEdCloud IAM Service will undergo system maintenance this upcoming Home Base Maintenance Weekend. NCEdCloud will be unavailable for approximately two hours starting on Friday, March 17th, at 5:00pm. Please contact support@identityautomation.com or john.mairs@dpi.nc.gov with any questions or concerns. Thank you!

New Self-Paced PD Courses for Canvas Digital Teaching and Learning is excited to share two new self-paced professional development courses on the LMS, Canvas.   Growing with Canvas - The Growing with Canvas course is a “Level 1” introduction to all things Canvas. Diving Deeper with Canvas - Educators more familiar with the LMS can utilize the Diving Deeper with Canvas course for specific training on personalized learning, feedback, and course design. If you are interested in these PD opportunities, enrollment information can be found in the NCEES Self-Paced PD Guide.

Schoolnet Self-Paced PD Course

The Continuing to Keep It Simple in Schoolnet 24 course is a “Level 1” introduction to all things Schoolnet. If you are interested in this PD opportunity, enrollment information can be found in the NCEES Self-Paced PD Guide. 

Home Base Admin Course  Feedback from PSUs identified a need for resource hubs for the Home Base products. The product managers have created Admin Resource Courses for each area. These resource courses are located in the NCDPI Canvas instance. Please visit these courses.  Below are the steps to enroll:   How to access these resources: Sign in to the Blue Canvas icon within NCEdCloud Using the Global Navigation (on the left), click the Home Base Resources button On the menu that opens, select the course(s) you would like to enroll into After enrolling, the course will appear on your Canvas Dashboard

Access for PSU PowerSchool SIS Admins Any PSU PowerSchool SIS admin who does not have access to the NCDPI “Blue” Canvas located in the NCEdCloud portal and would like to have access or grant access to data managers within their PSU, please complete the form below.  In this form, you can enter up to 5 accounts manually or upload a CSV/Excel file if you have more than 5 account requests.  If you have any questions, please get in touch with Corey McNeill.   Link to Form     Other Information: Feel free to provide feedback on these courses. They all contain a feedback button on their homepage. We will continue to update these courses as more product information becomes available

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Subscribe to Major Events Status Alerts  Click the following link to subscribe to the Major Events Status Alerts and receive notifications of outages, wide-spread performance issues, downtime for maintenance, and high impact application issues that affect all instances. Note:  Notifications will be received for all PSUs in the state and cannot be limited to a single PSU.

NCDPI Technology Support Center

NCDPI's Technology Support Center continues to meet your support needs for:

• Schoolnet 
• NCEES/Unified Talent 
• Staff & Student UID (eScholar)

Support availability:

Web (NEW URL):  https://ncgov.servicenowservices.com/sp_dpi   -  24/7

Phone:  919-716-1840, Monday - Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. (excluding state holidays)

Technical support for SIS needs is handled directly by PowerSchool Support using chat, phone, or by opening a case ticket. 

Follow Us on Social Media! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and begin receiving "Did You Know" tips featuring each Home Base product.    These messages will include upcoming changes, tips, and even hidden treasures within each product to make your job easier.  If you are not following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, click on the links below and begin today!  Make sure you share this information with other staff within your school.   Instagram:  @nchomebase         Facebook:  @nchomebase       Twitter:  @nchomebase

Remember to visit the NC SIS website for additional information including webinars and training documentation.  Follow us on twitter @NCHomeBase. 

 NC SIS

 NC Department of Public Instruction

 Education Building, 7th Floor North

 301 North Wilmington Street

 Raleigh, NC 27601

 Email:  home_base@dpi.nc.gov