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.
October 8, 2015 - In This Issue:
Calendar Check
2015

Oct. 1 - Progress reports posted in the registration system.

Oct. 15Progress Report for Traditional/Yearlong Courses Posted in Registration

Oct. 23 - End of First Nine-Weeks for Traditional Calendar Year Long Courses

Oct. 29 - First Nine-Weeks Traditional Calendar Year Long Grades Posted in Registration
Essential Links







Celebrate & Connect

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Current E-lert News
What's New?
what's new picGreetings, North Carolina districts and schools!

Check out this week's important updates:

New This Week




In addition, be sure to check out all of our tips and reminders in this week's e-lert .
StudentVoicesDPI's Student Voices Blog
DPI recently started a new blog series written by students from across the state titled the "Student Voices Blog."

Ben Succop, a senior from Freedom High School in Burke County and an NCVPS student, wrote the inaugural post in the new series.  Ben featured NCVPS in his post, and we are both honored and delighted! Follow this link to see Ben's post.

Thanks, Ben!
GradeReportingGrade Reporting

Currently, we have the progress report for Oct. 1 posted in the registration system.

Our next progress report is scheduled for Oct. 15.
 
See how your students are progressing! We post progress reports every two weeks in the registration system.
 
Follow this link to see the details on this progress report.


Our grade reports are weighted grades similar to school report cards.
 
Follow this link to see the details on the latest grade report. 
 
 
NCVPS posts student status reports after the third and seventh days of class. These reports indicate if students have logged in or not to their NCVPS courses. These reports are early warning indicators for schools.
 
Follow this link to see the details on student status (no-show) reports.
 
 
Follow this link  to see how to run a grade report.

Follow this link to see our Quick Reference Guide on Grades.  
InterventionsStudent Intervention Time
Now that you have seen your students' progress, is there anything that you can do to help struggling students?

The answer is YES!

If you have students who are low-performing, under-performing, or at-risk for any reason, NCVPS has a number of intervention strategies for districts and schools to follow. See if one or more of these interventions will work for your struggling students: 

 

1. Check for progress reports and report cards in the registration system regularly. Updates are made every two weeks.  You may contact teachers directly between updates to check on student progress.

 

2. Have students contact their instructors during their office hours for live help.

 

3. Try to establish a recurring time for student to meet with instructor (in Blackboard Collaborate or phone) for one-on-one tutoring.

 

4. Have student sign up for NCVPS Peer Tutoring, which is available for certain courses. There is a "Peer Tutoring" link in each course. Visit this link for additional details.  Peer Tutoring offers the following services:

  • Peer Tutoring - Peer Tutors provides tutoring in specific content areas.
  • Virtual Buddy - Virtual Buddies are select student volunteers who have agreed to work with NCVPS students who need more than content help in their online classes.
  • Quick Questions - Services are available to all students via Blackboard IM at the start of the semester. For the first four weeks, this is the primary work we provide to ALL NCVPS students. 
     

5. Establish peer tutoring with other successful NCVPS students at your school (if available).

 

6. Have EC students meet with the school's EC specialist.

 

7. See our list of assistive technologies.  Go to this link to learn more: http://goo.gl/eryLQ 

 

8. Have students attend your school's review sessions (if available).

 

9. Have students attend your school's tutoring session (if available).

 

10. If the student is taking the course off campus, consider moving the student to a lab setting, especially if the student is not logging into the course.

 

11. If you have students in EOC courses, be sure that they take part in our EOC Reviews that are in each EOC course.  Have them contact their teachers for more information.  

 

12. Establish weekly or bi-weekly contact with instructors of any at-risk students.

 

13. Have parents log in with the students at home and monitor their work.  Parents can communicate with the instructor, too.

 

14. Be sure students are aware of our basic support structure:

  • Teachers help with course questions and course content.
  • The Virtual Support Center helps with technology issues in the course and login issues.
  • The school ELAs help students with enrolling and withdrawing from a course and with transcript and report card questions about their NCVPS classes.
EnrollDropOptionsEnrollment and Withdrawal Options
Enrollment Options

Credit Recovery : Credit recovery enrollment will remain open until November 25, which is the end of our third marking period. Schools can continue to enroll in credit recovery courses that have open seats. 

OCS: Schools can continue to enroll in existing OCS sections throughout the semester. We cannot open new OCS sections after Sept. 4.  

1/2 Credit Health Courses: Registration for our 2nd 9-week health courses will remain open until October 26. 

Transfer Students: We are now accepting transfer students.Transfer students must already be enrolled in the course at the traditional school and have a grade to transfer in with. Transfers are not for students who are new to a course.  If we have a seat available in the course, we will try to accommodate the transfer request.

Please note that each course transfer request for a student will need to have its own ticket.

We need this information before we can process the request:

Student's Name:
Course Needed:
Is course Year long or Block?
Is student a senior: (yes/no)
Numeric Transfer Grade:
The school's support plan if student does not have a passing transfer grade:
Reason for Transfer:
Student's School:
Student's PowerSchool Number:
Student's Email: (do not use ELA's email address)
Does the student have an IEP?
Does the student have a 504 Plan:

Please submit all of the requested information at one time. We cannot process the request without it.  


Schools can no longer drop students at this point, but they can withdraw students in the registration system throughout the semester. NCVPS will issue a W (withdrawal) grade. The enrollment will still count in your district's or charter school's allotment totals. If you run short on allotment funding, though, you can use NCVPS reserve funds.  
Tech Updates
OpeningTicketOpening a Ticket with the Virtual Support Center
 
When opening a ticket with the virtual support center, please always include the following:
  • Student's first & last name
  • PowerSchool ID number (This will help ensure we have the correct student)
  • School name (full name, i.e. Eastern Mills High School, not EMHS)
  • Course name - including specific section, i.e. CourseSec01Spring15.
If you need a new student account for a student who is new to PowerSchool (not just transferring schools), include the following:
  • Your full school name (i.e. Eastern Mills High School, not EMHS)
  • The student's first and last name
  • The student's PowerSchool ID number
  • The student's email address 
  • The student's phone number (the contact number this will be in PowerSchool) 
  • Does the student have an IEP? Yes/No
  • Does the student have a 504 Plan? Yes/No

Replying to a Support Center Ticket
 
After you submit a ticket to the Virtual Support Center, you will receive a ticket confirmation and resolution via email. To expedite your resolution, please do not reply to the email. The email will have a link in it for your response. Please click on that link (see below). 



This will put the ticket right back in the queue of the person who is working on your ticket. If you reply to the email, then that will have to be manually put into the ticket, and that can delay the process by several hours. 

Password Resets
 
If students have their correct email addresses in the registration system (this is important for a number of reasons), then they can use the password-reset feature on the Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas login pages.

javaflashUpdatesJAVA and Flash Updates

Please update your Java to Version Java 8, Update 60. Go to the link below and follow the instructions there.
 
http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Please go to the following link to update Adobe Flash Player to the latest Version Version 19.0.0.185 http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
 

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 
 
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 Blackboard. Please have students and lab facilitators bookmark the following pages:



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:


Virtual Support Center:  http://www.help.ncvps.org/ 
 
 
For additional information, please see our Tech Requirements:
http://www.ncvps.org/index.php/technology-requirements/  
Course Catalogues
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

VendorApprovedUpdatesVendor 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) 

Courses -  Vendor

English 9 -  Connections Education
English 10 -  Accelerate Ed
English 10 -  Connections Education
English 11 -  Connections Education
English 12 -  Connections Education
Physical Science -  Accelerate Ed
World History -  Accelerate Ed
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  |