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.
March 26, 2015 - In This Issue:
Calendar Check
2015

March 26  - 1st 9-week grades for traditional calendar posted in the registration system.

March 26 - Progress reports for early calendar and credit recovery courses posted in the registration system.

March 30 - Registration for Summer 2015 and Fall 2015 opens.
Celebrate & Connect
Success Stories

Districts and Schools, tell us about your success stories. Help us celebrate 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 submit your celebration.

Connect with us on Twitter! Find us here. Tweet to us on Twitter at @ncvps or with the hashtag #ncvps.
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Current E-lert News
Registration for the 2015-2016 School Year

Registration for the 2015 - 2016 school year will open on March 30. This will include registration for Summer 2015 and Fall 2015. We anticipate that registration for Spring 2016 will open in the first week of April.

 

DPI has not released the new allotment totals yet for districts and charter schools.  We will start districts and charters with their allotment totals that they had for the 2014 - 2015 school year.  We will then adjust when the new numbers come in after the General Assembly passes the state's new budget bill. You will likely see an increase in your allotment totals after the adjustment.

 

If you have any difficulties, please open a ticket at the Virtual Support Center here: http://www.help.ncvps.org/

NCVPS Catalogue Updates

NCVPS has posted its course listing for the 2015-2016 school year on our catalogue page here

 

Below are some highlights to note. 

 

1. Following the name change by the State Board of Education, Civics and Economics has been renamed to American History:  The Founding Principles, Civics, and Economics. This name change is effective in the fall of 2015.

 

2. The following courses are being revised and will not be offered in the 2015-16 school year:

  • AP Art History
  • AP Biology
  • AP European
  • AP Latin
  • AP Statistics
  • Latin 3 (will return in the spring of 2016)

3. Calculus Honors is being removed from the catalog due to low enrollment. 

 

4. NCVPS is unable to offer German through Oklahoma State University at this time.   In order to be compliant with North Carolina's Information Technology System's procedures, NCVPS is required to complete an RFP process in order to offer German and will be completing this process during the 2015-2016 school year.  If it is possible to offer German courses at any time during the 2015-2016 school year, the course catalog will be updated and information sent out to all stakeholders.

 

To enroll in German courses directly with Oklahoma State University, please visit the website:  http://germanonline.okstate.edu/

 

5. The following courses are new to the 2015-16 NCVPS course catalogue:

  • Middle School Creative Writing
  • Visual Arts Specialization (6-8): Middle School Art
  • Visual Arts Specialization (6-8): Middle School Discovering Photography
  • AP Physics 2
  • Forensic Science (Previously offered as a STEM course)
Traditional Calendar Grade Report - Posted March 26

See how your students are progressing!


 
This is the first weighted grade report for traditional calendar classes. 

 

Look for the report with this title: "Spring 2015 Third Grading Period Rpt Due March 24, 2015 (includes EC)." This will mark the third grading period for yearlong classes. It is the first grading period report for traditional block classes, though.

 

Here is how we weight our grades:

 

Standard Grading Scale for Block Classes

37.5%     (First Grade Report)

37.5%  (Second Grade Report)

*Final Exam/Project: 25%

 

Standard Grading Scale for Yearlong Classes

18.75%  (First Grade Report)

18.75%  (Second Grade Report)

18.75%  (Third Grade Report)

18.75%  (Fourth Grade Report)

25%       (Final Exam/Project)*

 

*EOC and CTE Courses

 

The Final Exam for EOC and CTE courses will be the EOC and VoCATS score. Schools are responsible for the administration of all EOC and CTE tests. For those courses, the grades NCVPS reports to the school will be 75% of the final grade. Schools will score the EOCs and CTEs and average in the remaining 25% to determine the final grade

 

*SAT Prep will not have a final exam because of the two-part nature of the course.

 

All other courses have their final exams or final projects online in the course.

 
The following fields are on our first weighted grade reports:

 

Grading Period 3  = All traditional calendar and early calendar courses will report a numeric grade here. 

 

Comment = All instructors will leave a comment.   

 

Progress Report Details:

 

1. This report will ALSO show the early calendar weighted grades from the March 12 grade report.

 

2. The grade column is titled "Grading Period 3" because this will be the third grade report for yearlong classes. This is the first grade report for spring block early calendar courses, though. Please keep that in mind.

 

3. Even if a student is supposed to be dropped, we will report a grade until the school withdraws the student.

 

4. Credit recovery students will have a "Null" grade on this report. They do not have weight grades. See their progress on the separate progress report posted on this same date.

 

 

Sample Grade Report 

 

Supporting Links:

 

Follow this link to see how to run a grade report.

 

Follow this link to see our Quick Reference Guide on Grades. 

Progress Reports Posted for Early Calendar and Credit Recovery  - March 26

See how your students are progressing!

 

A progress report was posted in the registration system on Feb. 26. The report is titled "2015 Spring YL, Block, CR Progress Report Due March 10, 2015." This is an unweighted progress report.

 

The following fields are on this report:

 

Progress Grade  = All courses (except credit recovery and OCS) will have a numeric grade reported here.

 

Comment = All instructors will leave a comment. 

 

Number of Modules  = This field is used for CR only. 

 

Status = This field is used for CR only. 

 

Sample Progress Report 

Progress Report Details:

 

1. All standard classes will report a progress grade, and teachers will leave a comment for each student.

 

2. We do not report grades for OCS classes. Classroom teachers determine OCS grades. 

 

3. We do not report grades for credit recovery classes. See the comments section to determine if the student is on pace or not.

 

4. Even if a student is supposed to be dropped, we will report a grade until the school withdraws the student.

 

Follow this link to see how to run a grade report.

 

Follow this link to see our Quick Reference Guide on Grades. 

Supporting Students - Intervention Time

Be sure to check the latest progress report to see how your students are progressing. If you have students who are low-performing, under-performing, or at-risk for any reason, NCVPS has a number ofintervention strategies for districts and schools to help.  

 

Follow this link to see our intervention strategies. 

NCVPS Peer Tutoring

Check out one of our peer tutoring sessions. We captured this in a time-lapse video. 

The NCVPS Peer Tutoring program uses the Blackboard Instant Messaging (BBIM) system to connect tutors to students. NCVPS has multiple tutors for each course that is supported in the program.

 

There are several features in BBIM that facilitate the tutoring process:

 

The White Board: Tutors use this feature to show students how to work problems in math and science as well as to brainstorm and present material in new and innovative ways.

 

Screen Sharing: This feature allows our tutors to see what the student sees.  This is commonly used to help students turn in assignments correctly, see instructions written by the teacher, and for more advanced hands-on subjects like computer programming where seeing the assignment as it's done by the student and how the program runs is important.  It's also helpful to see what buttons students are clicking while they are doing the assignment in case that's were their error is.

 

Chat Save: The ability to save chats is helpful for evaluating our tutors and quality control measures.

 

Voice Feature: This feature allows the tutor to speak with the students.

 

In short, BBIM allows our peer tutors to give real time instruction as needed to our NCVPS tutors.
AP Test for NCVPS Courses

Please forward this message to your school's AP testing coordinator. 

 

Be sure to input the NCVPS code (045) into the "Online Provider Code" found on page 1, item G of the student's AP answer sheet during administration of the exam.

 

This will allow NCVPS to receive a copy of the student's May 2015 test scores for our records.  

 

These scores are needed as part of the accountability piece for NCVPS 

Chromebook Issues
silver-keyboard2.jpg

NCVPS leadership would like to remind school-based technologists that Chromebooks are not on our list of supported hardware specifications.  Students will struggle to successfully complete NCVPS courses with a Chromebook as their primary technology resource.  The collaborative tools, java content, pull down menus and submission of assessments can all be problematic and/or non-functional in NCVPS courses.


While we realize it can be a challenge for districts to supply technology resources for students, allowing students to attempt their coursework on a Chromebook will have a major impact on student success. This negative impact is seen by NCVPS on a regular basis.

Please take a look at NCVPS technology requirements (see below) to gain further information on system resources students will need to be successful in NCVPS courses.  

Tech Updates

Below are some tips and reminders to help you have a wonderful school year!


Opening a Ticket

 

When opening a ticket with the virtual support center, please always include the following:

  • Students first & last name
  • ID number (This will help to insure we have the correct student)
  • Course name - including specific section ex: CourseSec01Spring15.
Replying to a Support Center Ticket

Reply back to a ticket by clicking on the link provided at the bottom of a help reply email will keep all students information secure and will attach your information directly to the ticket. 


See image: http://screencast.com/t/ZdciZ55coU4
 

Blackboard Instant Messaging (BBIM)

Students will need to click on the BBIM link in their class and create an ID and password that they will remember. NCVPS does not issue BBIM logins nor do we store this information.
 

Student Email Confirmations in Moodle and Blackboard

If a student's e-mail is missing or shows pleaseadd@ncvps - the student will not receive important e-mails from their teachers.
Please have students confirm/update their email information by following these steps:


In Moodle: 

  • Navigate to Administration
  • My Profile settings
  • Edit Profile
  • Verify or update e-mail
  • Scroll to bottom and "Update Profile"

In Blackboard: 

  • Click on students name in the upper right side of your BB course
  • Click on setting
  • Click on Personal Information
  • Click on Edit Personal Information to update e-mail
  • Scroll to bottom and Submit 

Bookmark NCVPS 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/ 

 

In addition, many school administrators visit our homepage to log in to our registration system or Virtual Support Center. Please bookmark both of these pages in your web browser:

 

Registration System: http://registration.ncvps.org/ncvps/user/login/ 

 

Virtual Support Center: http://www.help.ncvps.org/ 

 

Password Reset 

 

If you have had your password reset, the new password will not expire unless you have reset it. If you have forgotten what your password was reset to, you can look up the help desk ticket in your email account to access the new password or click "Forgot Password" on the Moodle or Blackboard login pages.
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) 
  • Math 2 - Fuel Education
  • Psychology - Edmentum
  • English 3 - OdysseyWare
  • Physics - Edgenuity
  • Physical Science - Edgenuity
  • Earth and Environmental Science - Edgenuity
NCVPS Middle School Courses

The NCVPS catalog is growing. We will offer four middle school courses next year. Check out our catalog for details.

 


View our full course catalog here

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  |