Districts and Charter Schools,
 
Please forward this E-lert to your school-level stakeholders. We often have enrollment information for counselors, grades for data managers, tips for lab facilitators, announcements for testing coordinators, and strategies for school leaders, all of whom support your district's and school's e-learning efforts.
December 17, 2014 - In This Issue:
Calendar Check
2014

December 12 - Last day of early calendar classes. Students will no longer be able to access their courses after this date.

December 18 - Final grades for early calendar courses posted in the registration system.

December 18 - Progress reports for traditional calendar courses posted in the registration system.

2015

January 2 - Early calendar Spring 2015 Meet the Teacher period begins. Enrolled students have access to their courses.

January 6 - First day of class for early calendar Spring 2015 courses.

January 9 - Last day of Fall 2014 block courses.

January 9 - Day 3 Status Report for early calendar posted in the registration system.

January 15 - Day 7 Status Report for early calendar posted in the registration system.

January 15Traditional calendar Spring 2015 Meet the Teacher period begins. Enrolled students have access to their courses.

January 15 - Final grades for Fall 2014 block courses posted in the registration system.

January 20 - Last day to drop or add to early calendar courses.

January 20 - First day of class for traditional calendar Spring 2015 block courses.

January 23 - Day 3 Status Report for traditional calendar classes posted in the registration system.

January 29Day 7 Status Report for traditional calendar classes posted in the registration system.

February 2 - Last day to add or drop traditional calendar classes.
NCVPS Celebrations
Districts and Schools, tell us about your success stories. Let us hear about individual student successes, increased virtual enrollment, outstanding lab facilitators, or virtual support processes that your school or district has in place. We would love to promote these stories.

Click here to tell us about your successes. 
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Current E-lert News
Final Grade Report Early Calendar

The final grade report for the Early Calendar Fall 2014 semester will be posted in the registration system on Thursday, December 18.  The report will be titled "Fall 2014 Final Grade Rpt Due Dec. 16, 2014."

 

Here's what you will see on the report:

 

Courses WITHOUT EOC or CTE Exam

 

Grade Calculations:

  • Midterm:    37.5%  (First Grade Report)
  • End Term: 37.5%  (Second Grade Report)
  • Final Exam or Project: 25%

Fields on the report:

  • Final Grade: numeric final course grade.
  • Grading Period 1: numeric score
  • Grading Period 2: numeric score
  • Final Exam: numeric score
  • Final Grade:  numeric score
  • EOC Achievement: blank
  • Comment: feedback for every student  
  • CTE Final Assessment: blank 

Special Notes

  • SAT Prep will not have a final exam because of the two-part nature of the course.
  • Credit Recovery only posts pass/fail for grades.
  • OCS grades will be "NULL." Those grades are maintained by the classroom teacher.

 

Courses WITH an EOC or CTE Exam

 

Grade Calculations

  • Midterm:    37.5%  (First Grade Report)
  • End Term: 37.5%  (Second Grade Report)
  • Final Exam: School administers the 25% exam grade and calculates the final exam

Fields on the report:

  • Grading Period 1 Block: numeric score
  • Grading Period 2 Block: numeric score
  • Final Exam: blank
  • Final Grade: numeric score. This grade covers the course work portion of the class, which is 75% of final grade.  Schools must calculate the remaining 25% for the EOC or CTE exams.
  • EOC Achievement: anticipated score here.
  • Comment: feedback for every student.  
  • CTE Final Assessment: anticipated score here.

 

Please see our Grades Quick Reference Guide here.

 

If you have any questions about a student's grade, please directly contact the teacher or open a help ticket at the Virtual Support Center.

Enrollment for Spring 2015

Registration for Spring 2015 is still open!  

 

Please remember that we usually experience high traffic in our registration system in January right before the spring semester begins. If you have students to enroll for spring, it would be greatly best if you enrolled them now to avoid delays in January. 

 

Click here to see how to access your spring enrollment report if you would like to view which students you already have enrolled for spring. Be sure to select "Spring 2015."

 

If your district uses its total allotments for NCVPS, the district coordinator can request access to our reserve funds.  Here's the link for that request. Using our reserve funds will not cost your district or charter school anything this year; although, you will likely see an increase in your allotment totals in next year's budget.  

Early Calendar Course Closings 

We have a number of early calendar courses that we are cancelling for Spring 2015. These courses have less than 10 enrollments. Most have less than 3.  

 

Students enrolled in the cancelled courses will be dropped and added into the traditional calendar courses.  We will notify ELAs of these changes. The students will still be enrolled, but their classes will start January 20, not January 6. They can arrange to complete their courses early with their NCVPS instructors. Early calendar ELAs can drop students from the traditional calendar courses if that does not meet the students' needs.  Our instructors are good about helping early calendar students finish early, though.

 

Click here to see the list of courses that have capacity issues.

Closing Out the Semester

That time is here already. Early calendar courses end on Dec.12, and traditional calendar block courses end on January 9.

 

Visit our End of the Semester: Tips and Reminders page to see all the details on how to close out your semester successfully.  

Course Extensions

As the early calendar semester comes to a close, we know that some students will need a course extension. Please review our course extension guidelines here


It is important to remember that only school principals or their designee may request course extensions. Teachers, students, parents, tutors, etc. may not request an extension.

 

A school principal may request a course extension through the NCVPS Virtual Support Center at www.ncvps.help.org by sending the information below in a support-center ticket. 

  • Student's First and Last Name
  • Student's Powerschool ID#
  • High School/District
  • ELA's First and Last Name
  • ELA's Email Address
  • Principal's First and Last Name
  • Principal's Email Address
  • NCVPS Course Name and Specific Course Section
  • NCVPS Teacher's First and Last Name
  • Identify Specific Criteria for Course Extension Request: (IEP, 504, Medical) Please refer to the course extension link when completing this section.
  • Brief Summary Justifying Course Extension Request 
Once this information is received in full, the instructional director for the course will contact the school administrator about the status of the request. Each course request for a student will need to have its own ticket. If multiple extension requests are needed, each student and course should be in its own ticket.

Also note that if the student only needs a one or two day extension, the e-learning advisor can arrange that directly with the NCVPS teacher.  This usually happens if the student has some sort of computer issue or other technical issue on the last day of class.  

 

We will look at traditional calendar course extensions after the winter break.

Tech Updates

We have some important tips from our tech team. These tips help ensure smooth operations.  

 

Bookmarking Moodle and Blackboard
Login Pages

Many students visit our homepage to log in to their courses. It is a best practice to bookmark the actual login pages for both Moodle and and Blackboard. Please have students and lab facilitators bookmark the following pages:

 

Moodle: http://moodle.ncvps.org/

 

Blackboard:  https://ncvps.blackboard.com/ 

 

 

Recent updates for Java and Flash

Please update to version Java 7, Update 71.


You can find the update at this link: 

http://java.com/en/download/manual_java7.jsp

 

We are testing out Version 8 update 25. For now, please hold off on this update if possible.

Please go to the following link to update Adobe Flash Player to the latest Version 15.0.0.223: 
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ 

 

Chromebooks

NCVPS does not support Chrome's web-based operating system, and we do not recommend the use of Chromebooks for NCVPS courses. Chrome's lack of Java capabilities means students will encounter problems with rich media objects while using Chromebooks.


If a student or school chooses to use Chromebooks, please understand that certain areas of NCVPS content WILL NOT FUNCTION CORRECTLY in the Blackboard and Moodle environments. 


Help Desk Ticketing Tips
To answer your tickets faster and more efficiently we ask for the following when opening a ticket with the Virtual Support Center:
  • Students first & last name
  • PowerSchool ID number
  • Course enrolled (example CourseSec01Fall14)
Please specify if course is:
  • AP
  • Honors
  • Early Calendar
  • CR
  • OCS
This will help to ensure we have the correct student.

Tech Requirements 

For additional information please see our Tech Requirements:
http://www.ncvps.org/index.php/technology-requirements/  

Approved eLearning Courses for NC
NCVPS Courses

NCVPS offers over 150 different courses, including advanced placement, electives, traditional, honors, core, STEM, occupational course of study, and credit recovery courses. 

Check out our 150+ list of courses here.  

Vendor Approved Courses

In addition to NCVPS courses, North Carolina public schools also have a list of approved third-party vendor courses that they may choose from for virtual classes. Please follow this link to see the list of approved vendor courses. More on the vendor approval process can be found here

Here are the newest approved vendor courses: 
(Course Title - Vendor)
  • German 1 - Edmentum
  • German 2 - Edmentum
  • Physics - Fuel Education
  • Pre-Calculus - Florida Virtual
  • Intro to Information - TechnologyOdysseyWare
Ronald Reagan Student Leader Awards

The Ronald Reagan Student Leader Award offers school administrators a way to recognize outstanding student leaders whose successes as leaders, citizens, and scholars exemplify the legacy of our 40th President.  

The NCVPS Peer Tutoring Center has been authorized to recognize four students with this award.  These students were voted on by their fellow tutors and will receive Ronald Reagan Commemorative Coins in recognition and honor.

NCVPS would like to congratulate the following award winners:

 

Future Kortor

Rosalynn Phan

Laura Sanford

Anna Kaplan

NCVPS is pleased to announce that it will offer an arts course specifically designed for middle school students in the Spring 2015 semester. Please check out our Middle School Art Adventures course below!

(click image for larger view)


See more details about the Middle School Art Adventures course here.

 

View our full course catalog here

Course Spotlight - ACT Prep

ACT Prep sections are open for Spring 2015 enrollments! This course offers a great way to prepare for your future! 


If you have questions, please contact Karen Creech at Karen.creech@ncpublicschools.gov. 

North Carolina Virtual Public School
1017 Main Campus Drive, Partners I Bldg., 
SUITE 3900, Raleigh, NC 27606
Phone:  919-513-8550   |  Fax:  919-513-2557  |   
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