The North Carolina Virtual School's E-lert: November 2010

Monday, November 15, 2010

E-lert for Nov. 11, 2010

The NCVPS Community

Be Empowered

Your school and district should help prepare students to be good digital citizens. Check out this slide show for starters.

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E-learning Success Stories

Submit your stories here: http://tiny.cc/d2oby Please tell us about student success stories and district success stories, such as increased virtual enrollment, fulltime DLA positions, teacher facilitators, and other virtual initiatives that have been started in your district. You may also forward to students and principals to complete!

Professional Networking

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Follow the virtual learning consultants on Twitter at Twitter/MyVLC

This Week's E-lert

Read the items below for this week's e-lert. Be sure to check out the reminders at the end for important information from previous e-lerts. Contact your virtual learning consultant if you have any questions!

1) OCS Registration

2) Virtual Advantage Digest

3) Assistive Technologies

4) LOCK Sessions

5) Reminders

OCS Registration for Spring 2011 Starts Nov. 15 [E-lert for Nov. 11]

Overview and Registration Information

Michelle Lourcey, our Director for Credit Recovery and Occupational Course of Study, discusses NCVPS OCS courses for Spring 11. Be sure to follow the link at the end for the survey that is available Monday, Nov. 15th. Schools must complete this survey before they can register for the OCS courses.

Please follow the two links below to view the archives for the Nov. 9 presentation. The third link takes you to our OCS page.

1) OCS Blended Learning Part 1: Michelle gives an overview of the program and gives numerous testimonials from the pilot districts.
http://www.schooltube.com/video/71262ea7f4aecc0552ad/OCS-Part-1

2) OCS Blended Learning Part 2: Michelle explains how to register for OCS courses and what training is involved for the classroom EC teacher.
http://www.schooltube.com/video/3e275d869bea24e5424f/OCS-Part-2

3) Here's the link to our OCS information page. Schools will need to complete the survey before they can register for OCS courses. The survey will be available on Nov. 15.
http://www.ncvps.org/courses/ocs/

Virtual Advantage Disgest for Nov. 12

The Virtual Advantage Digest highlights the NCVPS blogs, tweets, bookmarks, check ins, e-lerts, and social mentions from the past two weeks. Click here to see the latest digest.

Assistive Technologies [E-lert for Nov. 11]

Follow the link below to see a selection of assistive technologies that have been researched and reviewed by NCVPS. These technologies may be beneficial to students with a variety of disabilities. Each technology is organized by category; some technologies appear in more than one category. Links and descriptions are provided for each technology.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Am5iphYrw8o_gwzsWHvO3RhhhPop81tLyhfiB-WK4g8/edit?hl=en&authkey=COv327YI&pli=1#

LOCK Session Webinars - Upcoming Schedule [E-lert for Nov. 11]

NCVPS LOCK session webinars are typically hosted the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month. These sessions are mini-webinars hosted for DLA and DLC knowledge gain and mini-training. The sessions are intended to be an opportunity for statewide DLAs and DLCs to collaborate on various topics that pertain to the responsibilities of the role. The sessions are hosted in the DLA online Wimba Classroom in the Blackboard DLA Spa. The Archive file to this month's session(s) already presented follows the green highlight. The next LOCK scheduled is highlighted in yellow.

TIME: 11:00 AM (unless otherwise specified)

Nov 9 - "OCS" (Occupational Course of Study) - Presenter: Michelle Lourcey, Director of NCVPS Credit Recovery and the NCVPS OCS Program.

Nov 16 - "Modular Learning Program" - Presenter: Jennifer Nobles, NCVPS Credit Recovery and Modular Learning Consultant.

Nov 23 - "Curriculum Guides" - Presenter: Dr. Bryan Setser, NCVPS Executive Director.

Nov 30 - "Curriculum Guide Best Practices" - Presenters: Dr. Tracy Weeks, NCVPS Chief Academic Officer; and Melissa Davis, NCVPS Regional Virtual Learning Consultant.

Dec 7 - "Funding Formula Update" - Presenter: Dr. John Brim, Assistant Director, NCVPS

Dec 14 - "No Zero Policy" - Presenter: Dr. Tracy Weeks, NCVPS Chief Academic Officer

ARCHIVED Sessions, passed two LOCK sessions:

OCT 12 - "Learn & Earn Online (LEO) Update" - Presenter: Deb Pedersen, NCVPS Director for LEO. ARCHIVED FILE: http://ncvpsclassroom.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_ncvps_s__4100_1_883357_2010_1012_1105_53

Nov 2 - "Open Forum" (Topics: briefing of OCS, Modular, 9-wk Health course, SAS, student progress, NC WISE imports/missing students) - Presenters: School Services VLCs, Adam, Connie. ARCHIVED FILE: http://ncvpsclassroom.wimba.com/main/classroom.html?channel=_ncvps_s__4100_1_883357_2010_1102_1110_33&X-Wimba-IntegrationType=classroom&X-Wimba-RoomId=_ncvps_s__4100_1_883357&X-Wimba-PlatformType=blackboard&X-Wimba-CourseId=DLA_Spa&X-Wimba-IntegrationVersion=4.2.0-4&X-Wimba-CoursePkId=_4100_1&X-Wimba-PlatformVersion=8.0.422.0&x=1289068670

Reminders [E-lert for Nov. 11]

COURSE REGISTRATION

> Spring registration is open. Click here for details!

> OCS Courses for Spring 11. Click here for details on how to register!

> LEO Spring 2011 Registration - click here for details.

> SAS Computer Programming - new pilot course - click here for details.

> October Health Course (1/2 credit) - click here for details.

DLA & SCHOOL MAINTENANCE

> DLA Contact Information - Be sure to update your contact information in the registration system. Follow this link to see how to update your contact information.

> Central Office Distance Learning Coordinator: Follow this link to watch a short video that shows how to check your district's enrollment, check grades, and enroll and drop students at the school level.

> Summer 2010 Final Grade - click here for eSIS directions.

> Follow this link to the DLA Checklist for Fall 2010.

> Fall 2010 VTINs list here.

DISTRICT INFORMATION

> NCVPS is seeking GO LIVE districts. With customized training and support, the GO LIVE initiative helps leaders develop solutions for e-learning and e-leadership. Click here for more details!

> Watch our Curriculum and Instruction presentation to see an over of online offerings and e-learning strategies. Click here to view!

> If your district is enrolling home-schooled students, follow this link to see the new process: http://www.ncvps.org/parentstudent/homeschool/index.html

> For funding formula information, follow this link: http://www.thevlc.org/2010/07/ncvps-funding-formula-why-what-and-how.html

STUDENT SUPPORT

> If your students need tutoring help, be sure to check out our Peer Tutoring Center by following this link.

> Follow this link to the Student Checklist for Fall 2010.

Monday, November 8, 2010

NCVPS Community: E-lert for Nov. 5

Be Empowered

Check out Prezi Meeting in the classroom! A powerful free communication tool for the districts.

E-lert Subscription

E-learning Success Stories

Professional Networking

Are you into networking and social media? Come join over 750 other educators who have fanned us on Facebook. Find our fan page at Facebook/ncvps

Follow the virtual learning consultants on Twitter at Twitter/MyVLC

This Week's E-lert

1) Grade Report Updates
2) School Survey for Curriculum Guides
3) No Video Editing Course for Early Calendar
4) LEO Registration and Textbook
5) SAS Computer Programming Still Open for Spring6
6) LOCK Session Updates and Schedule
7) Reminders

Update on Grade Reports [E-lert for Nov. 5]

Grade reports are now separated into two reports: yearlong and block. If you have students enrolled in both yearlong and block, you will need to download both grade reports in the Reports section of the registration system.

Remember that OSU for German and FLVS for AP Micro/Macro do not report grades to us. Students enrolled in those courses will have a "null" grade in our grade reports. You will get German and AP Micro/Macro grades directly from those providers.

SEEKING INPUT FROM SCHOOLS [E-lert for Nov. 5]

Central Office and Charter Schools:

NCVPS is in the process of helping districts develop and integrate our online courses into district curriculum guides. In an effort to gain feedback into your planning process, NCVPS would like for you to answer a few questions. These questions will help us ascertain how your district is promoting online opportunities for your students.

Here's the survey link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/ncpublicschools.gov/viewform?formkey=dEdhUzY5bUxZeDA4Nzh4bWl4MTE0cHc6MQ

Thank you and have a good weekend.

No Early Calendar Video Editting - Attention All Schools [E-lert for Nov. 5]

Attention all schools. NCVPS is NOT offering Video Editting on an Early Calendar schedule. If you have enrolled students in this section, please move all students to a traditional calendar section. Thank you.

LEO Registration & Textbooks [E-lert for Nov. 5]

Questions about Learn and Earn Online? Deborah Pedersen will be glad to visit with DLAs, high school counselors, the DLC from your system, anyone interested in talking about LEO. Contact information below, let's schedule a day!

iSchool and participating Community Colleges are still registering for spring semester. Only science, technology, and math courses qualify for LEO funding.

Visit here for a list of iSchool courses,

http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/web/ischool/online_courses/course_descriptions.php

Contact your participating Community College to register for courses.

LEO Textbooks belong to the school not the student. LEO college textbooks are very expensive and purchased with state money. Textbooks for LEO courses should be treated just as another textbook in the high school and can be used by students in other semesters.

If you have any questions about the LEO registration process check out the LEO tab in the DLA Spa.

As always, please contact Deborah Pedersen with any questions, deborah.pedersen@ncpublicschools.gov

SAS Slots Still Open [E-lert for Nov. 5]

NCVPS and SAS Institute are partnering to offer high school students a course in SAS Computer Programming. The prerequisites for the course are Algebra I and at least 1 programming course such as Visual Basic, C++, Java or Python.

For more information, please contact Karen Creech at karen.creech@ncpublicschools.gov.

LOCK Sessions [E-lert for Nov. 5]