Archives: Online courses

LEARN NC has a full slate of online professional development courses scheduled for summer and fall 2010. You can view the full schedule of courses on our Open for Enrollment page.

If you would like a free hard copy of the catalog, please send your name and address to Bill Ferris. You may also download a PDF version of the catalog.

LEARN NC provides relevant, inclusive, research-based online professional development for teachers. According to end-of-course surveys, course participants overwhelmingly felt LEARN NC online courses were relevant to their jobs, and made them feel like they were part of a learning community. Learn how LEARN NC professional development can make a difference in your teaching.

Applications for the Invest in Teachers Award are due Friday, April 30 at 5 p.m. Invest in Teachers is a matching funds award that gives winning schools or school systems up to $50,000 worth of online professional development. Full details of the award can be found on the Invest in Teachers page.

LEARN NC is seeking educators in a variety of subjects who are interested in becoming online professional development instructors.

In conjunction with the national e-Learning for Educators program, LEARN NC will develop a series of online professional development courses for the North Carolina e-Learning for Educators course catalog.  e-Learning for Educators and LEARN NC will then offer these courses online, as well as make them available for local use by schools and school districts.

Courses

LEARN NC will select 10-12 teachers to develop and teach six-week courses on topics such as:

• Response to intervention
• Introduction to blended learning
• Principles of blended learning design
• Synchronous online learning
• Financial literacy across the curriculum
• Designing effective lesson plans
• Teaching effectively with an interactive whiteboard
• Game-based learning
• Global Awareness
• Financial, Economic, Business, and Entrepreneurial Literacy
• Civic Literacy
• Health Literacy
• Environmental Literacy

Benefits

Selected teachers will receive free tuition for LEARN NC’s Carolina Online Teacher program, allowing them to earn certificates of completion in online instructor training. Training will begin in May for all selected participants. Teachers will also receive a stipend of $2,000 toward course development and $200 when they have finished teaching the first section of their online professional development course. 

About the process

In conjunction with the development and instructional design team at LEARN NC, selected teachers will create professional development courses aligned to North Carolina standards.

Selected teachers will learn to develop an online course and become online instructors through a series of online courses in LEARN NC’s Carolina Online Teacher program as well as Education Development Center’s Course Developer training.  The training, which begins in May and extends through the summer, will require 3-5 hours per week.

How to apply

Please send a cover letter, resume, and professional writing sample to Jennifer Betz. In the cover letter, please specify the course(s) you are qualified to teach, highlighting relevant experiences in that area.  Applications must be received by April 23, 2010.

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.

In 2009, in the light of the publication of new North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards, LEARN NC’s Director of Research & Development/Online Curriculum & Instruction Dr. Bobby Hobgood began revising LEARN NC’s in-house standards for its 50+ online professional development courses.

“Because the new state standards included a number of emphases that had not been explicit in the past – for example, regarding leadership,” he explains, “we at LEARN NC realized we needed to ensure that our offerings reflect the ‘New Vision of Teaching’ put forth by the North Carolina Board of Education,” which states specifically that teachers must not only “cover material” but, along with their students, “uncover solutions.”

During the LEARN NC revision process, Dr. Hobgood studied not only the new NC standards but also those published by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). He then brought to bear LEARN NC’s not insignificant “home-grown” experience with online teaching and learning.

“We’ve been in this business for about as long as any other education agency,” he says, noting that LEARN NC offered its first online professional development in 1999.  “And we’ve learned – sometimes the hard way – what works and what doesn’t.”

Completed in March, LEARN NC’s new Quality Standards for Professional Development reflect this wealth of experience, addressing seminal issues including course content, instructional design, participant assessment, and program management  to answer the fundamental but by no means simple question: “What makes quality online professional learning?”

Please review the revised standards at www.learnnc.org and, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact LEARN NC’s Online Learning Specialist Bill Ferris.

Quality Standards for Professional Development

LEARN NC is still accepting applications for the Invest in Teachers Award until Friday, April 30.

Winning schools and school systems will receive between $2,500 and $50,000 worth of online professional development through this matching-funds award. With schools statewide cutting professional development budgets, this award is an opportunity to give teachers the training they need, even in hard economic times. I encourage you to apply, and to pass this information along to other schools and LEAs that may benefit from the award.

Before applying, be sure to check out our frequently asked questions about the award, as well as our list of helpful application tips. If you have any questions about the Invest in Teachers Award, please contact Bill Ferris.

Summer break is the perfect time to earn renewal credits. We’ve scheduled several online professional development courses throughout the summer months when your schedule is (hopefully) less busy. However, if you’ve already booked a beach house, or you’ve resolved to focus on relaxing this summer, we’ve got courses scheduled for the fall as well.

Take a look at the courses we offer and see what best meets your needs. LEARN NC professional development courses are aligned to the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards, and are based on a researched model of effective online instruction.

We’ll be adding even more courses for the fall semester, so be sure to keep checking our site, or sign up for our professional development newsletter or RSS feed.

LEARN NC is seeking educators in a variety of subjects who are interested in becoming online professional development instructors.

In conjunction with the national e-Learning for Educators program, LEARN NC will import a series of online professional development courses into the North Carolina e-Learning for Educators course catalog.  e-Learning for Educators and LEARN NC will then offer these courses online, as well as make them available for local use by schools and school districts.

Courses

LEARN NC will select one or two teachers to import and teach six-week courses in each of the following subjects:

• A Conceptual Introduction to Function: Using Visual Models
• Algebraic Thinking in Elementary School
• Best Practices for Vocabulary Instruction in the Elementary School Classroom
• Best Practices for Vocabulary Instruction in the Middle School Classroom
• Geometric Measurement
• Integrating Literacy and the Life Sciences
• Promoting Reading Comprehension Skills in the Elementary Classroom
• Promoting Reading Comprehension Skills in the Middle School Classroom
• Proportional Reasoning
• Teaching Electricity and Circuits Through Inquiry
• Teaching Writing in the Elementary Classroom
• Teaching Writing in the Middle School Classroom
• The Complexities of Measurement
• Using Models to Understand Fractions
• Using Observable Phenomena to Make Sense of the Earth, Moon and Sun

Benefits

Selected teachers will receive free tuition for LEARN NC’s Carolina Online Teacher program, allowing them to earn certificates of completion in online instructor training. Teachers will also receive a stipend of $200 when they have finished teaching the first section of their online professional development course. 

About the process

In conjunction with the development and instructional design team at LEARN NC, selected teachers will align courses to North Carolina standards.

Selected teachers will learn to become online instructors through a series of online courses in LEARN NC’s Carolina Online Teacher program.  The training, which begins in May and extends through the summer, will require 3-5 hours per week.

How to apply

Please send a cover letter, resume, and professional writing sample to Jennifer Betz. In the cover letter, please specify the course(s) you are qualified to teach, highlighting relevant experiences in that area.  Applications must be received by April 30, 2010.

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.

If your school is planning to submit an application for the LEARN NC Invest in Teachers Award to help stretch your professional development budget, it pays to get advice on what the selection committee will look for. We’ve posted a list of application tips to help you out.

Among other pieces of advice, you’ll learn it pays to be specific about how the award will be implemented. You can also read case studies of two winning LEAs from 2009 and find out their strategies for applying for the award and putting it to use.

Remember, the application deadline for the Invest in Teachers Award is April 30, so you still have plenty of time to apply if you start now. One thing both of the aforementioned case studies had in common was they started the process well in advance of the deadline.

As LEARN NC has grown, we’ve sometimes had trouble keeping up with the demand for customer service. To fix this, you can now call the LEARN NC Help Desk any time, day or night, Monday through Sunday at 919-962-HELP (4357) for all your technical assistance needs. You may also email us at helpdesk@learnnc.org. A real person is always ready to diagnose your problem and provide the appropriate response.

LEARN NC online courses provide the flexibility to work on a course when it’s most convenient to you, whether that’s during school hours or at home in your pajamas. If you run into a technical issue, waiting until business hours isn’t always an option. Whatever day or time you’re reading this, know that help is available to you right now.

March is STEM month at LEARN NC. To celebrate, we’ve lowered the tuition for two of our online courses, Elementary Science Learning and Middle Grades Science Learning, to only $75. These courses are great opportunities to inexpensively earn CEU credit and acquire skills that can make a difference in your classroom. Course details are below.

Elementary Science Learning – begins March 22
Science is fundamentally about the process of making sense of phenomena in the natural and social world. In this course you will think about the scientific process and how it applies to teaching science in the elementary classroom.

Middle Grades Science Learning – begins March 22
This course intends to engage teachers in investigations of Science, the Nature of Science, and Practices that scientists use to make sense of phenomena in the world. Each of these things are at the heart of the Nature of Science and Inquiry Strands of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.