Archives: August, 2009

Here’s a reminder that our digital textbook for North Carolina history will be ready for classroom use this year! By the first of September, more than five hundred pages of primary sources, background readings, and multimedia will be available on our website — organized by time period and searchable by topic, type of resource, and even by county. If you haven’t seen these resources, check them out today!

• Part 5, Antebellum North Carolina, was published in July.
• North Carolina in the Civil War and North Carolina in the New South will be published in August.
• Part 8, covering the early twentieth century, will be available in early September, and the remaining three modules will be published later this fall.

Note: The deadline to apply has been extended to Friday, September 11.

LEARN NC and the creators of the Powering a Nation website are looking for an innovative high school science teacher to write lesson plans based on the stories on Powering a Nation.

Overview

A team of 12 journalists at UNC-Chapel Hill received a grant from the Carnegie and Knight foundations to investigate energy issues in the United States for 10 weeks this summer. They used innovative multimedia storytelling to explore energy solutions that will sustain a growing population. This web-based news project, entitled Powering a Nation launched July 31. The content includes nine stories about energy use in the U.S. and how it affects — and is affected by — the American population. We are searching for a high school science teacher to write at least five detailed instructional plans that make innovative and meaningful use of the stories on the website to teach science objectives in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

The lesson plans will be published on the LEARN NC website, and the teacher will receive $500 for his or her work.

Job requirements

The curriculum designer will work closely with LEARN NC to determine grade and subject suitability. The lesson plans must meet LEARN NC’s standards for publishing lesson plans.

Timeline

Deadline for proposals: Friday, August 28.
Deadline extended to Friday, September 11.
To start immediately with completion by Friday, November 6.

Expression of interest

After reviewing the content on Powering a Nation, please submit to Emily Jack a one-page proposal detailing your lesson plan ideas. Proposals should include, for each lesson, a brief overview of lesson activities, planned curriculum alignment, and connection to the Powering a Nation material. For more information, contact Laura Ruel.

In tough economic times like these, when schools are sacrificing courses, books, and jobs, professional development for teachers is easy to ignore. Now, though, is precisely when teachers need staff development most.

This fall, LEARN NC is committed to providing cost-effective professional development offerings for North Carolina educators. Several courses are available for less than $75 per participant, and most LEARN NC online courses cost $150 or less.

LEARN NC’s online courses, which are aligned to North Carolina Educator Technology Competencies, NETS, and INTASC standards, eliminate travel expenses and substitute-teacher costs normally associated with staff development. Online professional development allows teachers to participate at a time and place most convenient to them, and collaborate with colleagues via a variety of easy-to-use electronic forums.

For detailed descriptions of course offerings, please visit the Open for Enrollment page, or download the PDF version of our Fall course catalog. As you strive to accomplish more with less this year, LEARN NC professional development can help you make the most of your greatest resources–your teachers.

LEARN NC, in collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and with funding by the North Carolina General Assembly, seeks participants for a free, online program to mentor Chinese language teachers in North Carolina. The program is open to teachers who currently or who will teach Mandarin Chinese, either online or face to face.

This initiative is part of a program to increase Chinese language study in North Carolina. The goal of the Chinese Virtual Mentoring program is to facilitate the teaching of Chinese language across the state of North Carolina. Because Virtual Mentoring happens on the web, teachers can participate in this online learning community at any hour, day or night.

Program Description

Participants in Chinese Virtual Mentoring will be a part of an online cohort of Chinese language teachers from across the state for the Fall semester 2009. The program will begin on Monday, August 31, 2009. All participants will benefit from the following design components of this program:

• One-on-one mentoring: The program will be lead by two teachers who have great experience teaching Chinese to American students. Both are experts in Chinese language instruction and have effectively mentored teachers. The mentors will guide teachers through the curriculum, plus tricky areas for new teachers such as classroom management, working with American teenagers, and communicating with others about what happens in their classroom.
• Professional learning community: Teachers will form a professional learning community of instructors teaching the same subject, each sharing his or her successes, challenges, and unique perspective on how to address instructional issues.
• Full curriculum access: Participants in the Chinese Virtual Mentoring program receive access to a fully developed, online Level 1 Chinese language course to use as a year-long course template or as a reference for individual lessons.
• Free: This experience will be available at no cost to licensed North Carolina teachers.
• Teacher Stipend: Participants will receive a stipend for their participation in this program.

Program Requirements

Applicants must meet the following requirements to participate in this program:

• Licensed to teach Chinese in North Carolina
• Less than five years experience teaching Chinese in North Carolina
• Daily, reliable access to the internet
• Daily, reliable access to a computer
• Willingness to collaborate online with Chinese language teachers around the state
• Time to devote three to five hours weekly, spread across the week
• Desire to improve skills for teaching Chinese to American students
• Commitment to participate for the entire semester: September through December 2009

How to apply

Interested applicants should submit the following information as soon as possible to Dr. Bobby Hobgood.

Name:
School System:
School:
Number of Years teaching Chinese in U.S.:
Please list current teaching assignment(s):
Please list current teaching certifications:
Email address (that you check regularly):
Work Phone:
Home Phone:
Home Mailing Address:

Have you ever taken an online course before? If so, please elaborate.

Please state below why you would like to participate in this program. Include in your statement your intent to teach a world language online in North Carolina.

On July 31, a team of twelve journalists at UNC-Chapel Hill launched a fascinating website, Powering a Nation, which investigates energy issues in the United States. The site uses innovative multimedia storytelling to explore themes of energy use at the grassroots level, where real people interact with the systems that bring us food and electricity.

Through short videos, interactive graphics, written text, and slideshows, Powering a Nation features nine stories:

• “The High-Energy Diet,” which explores the implications of the American food system on global carbon emissions
• “Reclaiming Creation,” which investigates the intersection of faith communities and environmental activism
• “Roping the Wind,” a story about Roscoe, Texas, the site of the biggest wind farm on the planet
• “Debating Coal’s Future,” which profiles a town in Ohio as it struggles over whether to approve three new coal-fired power plants
• “Power in Plants,” a story about the push to adopt biofuels as an alternative to fossil-based fuels
• “Down the Lines,” which examines the dangers posed by our aging electrical infrastructure
• “Mining the Mountains,” a story about the debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia
• “Climate Refugees,” which discusses the plight of coastal Inuit communities forced by erosion and flooding to abandon their homes
• “Energy Portraits,” which reports on the daily energy consumption of three families of different ethnicities, ages, and locations in the U.S.

And coming in September, an interactive game will allow visitors to create and store a detailed profile of their energy usage. Opportunities abound for middle-school and high-school teachers to use Powering a Nation, particularly as a way for students to understand how elements of the curriculum connect with some of the most pressing issues of our time.