Archives: Online courses

LEARN NC is seeking educators to teach science professional development courses in the spring of 2010. We need one elementary teacher and one middle-school science instructor to teach Elementary Science Learning and Middle Grades Science Learning, respectively.

About the courses

Both Elementary Science Learning and Middle Grades Science Learning focus on the scientific process and how it applies to teaching in the classroom. These courses will provide a framework for understanding the nature of science and scientific inquiry, as well as help teachers engage students in authentic scientific inquiry.

Benefits

Selected teachers will receive free tuition for LEARN NC’s  Carolina Online Teacher Program, a certification track for online teachers. Training will begin October 19 to have instructors ready to teach beginning in March. Teachers will also receive a stipend of $200.

How to apply

Please send a resume and a writing sample to Ross White. Applications must be received by October 7.

About LEARN NC professional development

To date, more than 5,000 teachers have earned renewal credits and improved their practice through LEARN NC online professional development courses. In addition, we’ve trained nearly 700 teachers as online instructors, one of the fastest growing areas in schools today.

Supplement your district’s existing mentoring efforts online by offering LEARN NC’s virtual mentoring courses in English I and US History. By offering LEARN NC virtual mentoring experiences locally, schools can increase their mentor teachers’ capacity to help fledgling educators adapt to their new career.

Why virtual mentoring?

Mentoring is a proven way to increase teacher retention. By starting a virtual mentoring program in your LEA, teachers across your district can form a professional learning community of instructors teaching the same subject, each sharing his or her successes, challenges, and unique perspective on how to confront instructional issues. In addition, virtual mentoring participants receive access to a fully developed course curriculum aligned to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study to use as a year-long course template or a reference for individual lessons.

Get started

LEARN NC virtual mentoring courses are available to North Carolina educators who have completed LEARN NC’s Moodle Training. If you have completed Moodle Training, please request a copy online by going to our course copy request page. The registrar will then provide you with information on how to access your virtual mentoring course.

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.

LEARN NC, in collaboration with the Department of Public Instruction and the North Carolina Virtual Public School, is currently seeking a developer/instructor for an online level-1 Japanese language course, as well as conversation coaches for the course.

Japanese Language Online Course: Level 1

The course will emphasize spoken Japanese and cultivate reading and writing skills as necessary. The successful applicant will:

• Employ course guidelines created in association with similar courses in Arabic and Mandarin Chinese
• Complete course design by July 31, 2010
• For additional compensation of $250 per student, begin teaching the following month

This course will be the first in a planned series of semester-long online Japanese language courses for middle school and high school students. For an example of course content developed for the Level 1 Chinese course, see http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mandarin1/.

Course developer/instructor

The course developer will have assistance from a development team, and earn a salary of $6,000 to $8,000. The course developer must:

• Possess a native or near-native proficiency in Japanese
• Be certified as a Japanese teacher
• Have basic knowledge of Microsoft Word and use of Japanese characters in the electronic environment
• Be detail-oriented and able to collaborate regularly with the project manager, the instructional designer, and the development team during the development stage
• Have daily, reliable Internet access
• Have his/her own computer throughout the development phase
• Possess a background in language education and second language acquisition
• Be willing to take three, online instructor preparation courses this fall/winter to develop and improve online teaching skills
• Learn to use Blackboard, the course management system in which the course will be developed (LEARN NC will provide online instruction in the use of this tool)
• Work with a video team to develop scripts for introductory dialogue for each lesson and approve video/audio content produced by the video team
• Communicate effectively in English
• Wish to be a part of a pioneering effort to bring Japanese language and an appreciation of Japanese culture to North Carolina students

In addition to the above requirements, the instructor must:

• Coordinate with conversation coaches (1 per 4-5 students) on a weekly basis
• Keep good records of students’ progress and grades throughout the course
• Communicate with the NC Virtual Public School (NC VPS) about technical issues and issues regarding registration
• Work with NC VPS to communicate with distance learning coordinators at representative high schools where students are enrolled
• Love teaching Japanese to a range of students

Conversation Coaches

LEARN NC also seeks conversation coaches for Japanese I. These coaches will provide two, 45-minute practice sessions with groups of 3-4 students weekly for duration of the 18-week semester.

Apply

To apply for the course developer/instructor or conversation coach positions, please submit the following materials in electronic format to Dr. Bobby Hobgood no later than August 31, 2009:

1. Which position you are applying for
2. A current resume or CV
3. A description of your current and past teaching experience in Japanese
4. A statement regarding where you are currently certified to teach Japanese
5. A statement describing your proficiency with technology and any online teaching and learning experience you have
6. A statement indicating your availability to begin working this September
7. Contact information
8. Please submit your application with the Subject Line:  Japanese 1 Developer Applicatio

Deadline

You must submit your application by August 31, 2009.

How long have humans lived in North Carolina? What were these people like, and how do we know? This eight-week online course explores the science of archaeology and 12,000 years of North Carolina’s human past. Participants will be introduced to inquiry-based activities that can be adapted to meet their own teaching objectives. The course is open to educators of all subjects and grade levels.

Archaeology and North Carolina’s First Peoples begins July 7, is worth 6 CEUs and costs only $25. Register or learn more on the course information page.

We’ve made two more online courses available for you to teach in your school this fall. Adolescent Literacy: English Language Arts Comprehension Strategies and Introduction to Online Learning are both available for North Carolina teachers who have completed LEARN NC’s Moodle Training course.

These courses are offered on LEARN NC’s Moodle server. LEARN NC is the statewide provider of the Moodle learning management system. All public schools in North Carolina can offer online courses on LEARN NC’s Moodle platform after their teachers complete our online Moodle Training course. We train your teachers. We host your course on our server. We enroll your students. We provide live technical support. All you have to do is teach.

If you’ve completed Moodle Training, you can request a course copy through our website. If you haven’t yet completed Moodle Training, you can read the course description, which includes a list of training start dates.

Adolescent Literacy: English Language Arts Comprehension Strategies course description

Introduction to Online Learning course description

Moodle Training

As we all know, first-year teaching can be stressful. At LEARN NC, we can help alleviate the stress with our online course Beginning Teacher Success, designed to help new teachers develop their skills. Previously, the course was only offered through a LEARN NC instructor, but now if you’ve completed LEARN NC Moodle Training, you can teach the course at your school free of charge!

The goal of the course is for beginning teachers to explore what current educational research says, learn about best practices, implement effective strategies and tips, and become the best they can be in their new career. Now you can impart this valuable knowledge to new teachers in your school.

Click here for more information, including the course syllabus.

In these uncertain economic times, LEARN NC wants to invest in the safest investment we know: our teachers.

Teachers affect the growth and development of every citizen in the United States. However, North Carolina schools have been asked to return $58 million to the state, and as schools tighten their budgets, teacher professional development is often the first item cut. Thanks to a variety of partnerships, the LEARN NC Invest in Teachers Grant will award several grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, accompanied by an additional 50% match from the winning schools, so teachers will still receive the training and support they need to help their students succeed in the classroom and in life.

For full details and requirements, please click here.

February is Black History Month. You can add valuable content to your lesson plans by enrolling in one of our online courses: African American History to 1950, which begins February 2; or The Civil Rights Movement in Context, which begins February 16. Each online course will allow you to analyze primary sources, including newspapers, photographs, works of art, oral histories, historical pamphlets, and more. You’ll develop your own arguments and ideas, and help your students do the same. You’ll also join other teachers from across North Carolina in lively online discussions throughout the course — all on your own schedule from home or from your school’s computers.

Each course is worth 3 CEUs. For more information or to register, please click on the links below:
African American History to 1950 - February 2

The Civil Rights Movement in Context - February 16