Archives: Program updates

Cheryl Mason Bolick, the Director of Research & Professional Development for Outreach at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, sent the following update to our email list:

Greetings!

It is a great honor to write my inaugural LEARN NC monthly email update! I
have been a consumer of LEARN NC’s resources for 15 years, and the
instructional materials and learning opportunities have significantly
shaped my teaching and research. It’s amazing for me to consider how many
of you access LEARN NC for online resources and professional development.I
am excited to be a new member of the LEARN NC team!

As many of you are counting down the final days of the 2010-2011 school
year, those of us here at LEARN NC are hard at work continuing to provide
online professional development and online resources for educators.
For many of you summer is somewhat of a sabbatical from the classroom.
Sabbatical is a time to pause and to revitalize.

I seem to start every summer with a list of tasks I hope to accomplish
during my vacation. At the top of my list this year are: piloting new iPad
apps, editing family videos, reading a long list of books, and taking long
walks on the beach. As you make your summer “to-do” list, we hope you will
add LEARN NC to your list. We aim to be your “go-to” place to tap into
instructional resources and professional development.

Our online collections are bursting with resources that can help you
refresh your instruction for the 2011-2012 school year. We also still have
available spaces on summer online professional development courses. A list
of these courses is at the bottom of this email.

As you write your summer postcards, you may enjoy browsing UNC’s
collection of historical postcards. Check out the site to view postcards
from your hometown or favorite vacation spot.

We are delighted to present the online publishing of digital textbooks for
instruction in Mandarin Chinese and Arabic. The online textbooks are free
and offer a myriad of resources to understand the language. The textbooks
include video of native speakers with transcripts, guidance in reading and
writing the language, and cultural notes on each lesson. These textbooks
are a great to explore the languages. You can find it on the LEARN NC
site here.

We’ve wrapped up our year-long series on differentiated instruction, which
included eight research-based articles by experts, classroom videos,
slideshows of student work, interactive web conferences, and an online
professional learning community. The article series, along with the
associated videos and slideshows, can be accessed on the LEARN NC website. Archived recordings of the web conferences are also available.

As you all know, the NCSCOS is in the middle of a major transformation. We
know that this will require teachers to rework their curriculum alignment.
LEARN NC is making some key investments of time and effort to help. We’re
launching an initiative to align all future instructional resources with
the new standards. We are beginning work to align our existing collection
to the new Common Core and Essential Standards. For now, you can view the
text of the new Common Core and Essential Standards on our curriculum
standards page.

I know how precious time is to each of you. I hope that when you see LEARN
NC Monthly Update in your inbox, you will pause and take the time to learn
what’s percolating from LEARN NC. Our staff is hard at work to continue to
provide online professional development and online instructional resources
to assist you and your students.

You can plan on receiving our monthly emails to update you on our most
recent work and professional development opportunities. If you know of a
colleague who would like to receive our monthly emails, please encourage
her or him to sign up for monthly emails.

We have another way to stay in touch with you — LEARN NC’s blog. Here
you’ll have access to LEARN NC’s news, information, and updates. It’s our
way of more immediately sharing professional resources with you. It’s also
a place where you can share with us. We encourage you to let us hear from you!

Speaking of blogs, check out the University Library’s Civil War day by day
blog. Check it out to see what was happening 150 years ago today!

In closing, we are excited to announce that we will be relocating our
offices to UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education. We plan to move into
Peabody Hall next month. We look forward to moving in-house with our
School of Education colleagues and look forward to increasing our collaboration
with faculty from across the UNC campus. Our physical office will be
closed June 9- June 15 to allow for the move. Our website and online
courses will continue to function as normal.

All the best in these final days of the school year,

Cheryl

Cheryl Mason Bolick
Associate Professor
Director of Research and Professional Development for Outreach
School of Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you’d like to receive LEARN NC’s monthly email updates, please submit your contact information via this page.

January 2010 director’s message:

As promised, we’ve added the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards search to the LEARN NC website. You can find it on the left-hand menu of the LEARN NC website under the “Standards” heading.

I’ve picked up on a lot of anxiety from teachers about how their performance will be evaluated from now on as a result of these standards. With this addition to the website, they can find professional development and classroom resources that will help them address each of these new criteria.

Right now, searching according to the standards returns only our online professional development courses. We’re working on making our Best Practices and instructional models searchable too, and we expect this work to be completed by the start of the 2010-2011 school year.

We tried to make this new feature as simple as possible, borrowing the format of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study search tool you’re already used to. If you want to find a resource aligned to, say, Standard 4: Teachers facilitate learning for their students, just click on the Standard 4 link. The standard is now broken down by each sub-point. When you find the area you’re looking for, click the “Find related resources” link. You’ll see a list of everything we have that addresses that standard. It’s easy enough that it will probably take you longer to read this paragraph than to learn how to use it.

Teachers are busy, overworked and stressed-out. We made our courses searchable according to the Professional Teacher Standards as a way to make teachers’ lives a little easier. Of course, we rely on you to tell us whether we’re succeeding. If you know of a way we can make this feature even more useful to you, please say so in the comments, or feel free to contact me personally.

Sincerely,
Melissa Thibault
Executive Director

The LEARN NC Progress Report for 2009 is now available for download. We invite all educators in North Carolina and beyond to review the report and learn more about LEARN NC’s many services and accomplishments, the variety of clients we serve, and the public and private partners who help us create and disseminate timely, sharable, and useful digital educational materials.

LEARN NC is here to help schools and LEAs with free resources to improve teaching and learning in North Carolina. If you have ideas on how we can better serve you in 2010, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment.

You can download a PDF version of the LEARN NC Progress Report here, or find it on the About LEARN NC page.

December 2009 director’s message:

As the year end approaches and the New Year looms, it seems a good time to reflect on our accomplishments. It’s been an amazing year here at LEARN NC!

This month we’ll complete our digital textbook for grade-8 social studies, with nine modules published and the final two under review.  North Carolina: A Digital History is the first digital textbook developed specifically to align with North Carolina standards and made freely available on the open Web.  Like the previously published chapters, the recently posted Early 20^th Century module features primary sources in a variety of formats, including letters dating from the 1920s in which citizens lobby the state government to build and maintain a system of roads, and oral histories capturing the experiences of men and women who were part of the early textile industries in North Carolina.  We’ve piloted this material in classrooms across the state, and teachers have responded positively.  In the words of Steven Fall, who teaches in Whiteville, NC, North Carolina: A Digital History “. . . is very specific . . . If we are studying the regulator movement and there is a whole section on the regulator movement. It’s not like someone put in a paragraph on the regulator movement because they had to.”

True to our commitment to free and open content, we continue to provide standards-aligned lesson plans featuring innovative instructional strategies.  In partnership with the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work, for example, we completed the publication of CareerStart lessons for grade 6, grade 7, and grade 8, career-infused middle school lessons for English language arts, science, social studies and math.  We’ve also continued developing and delivering online critical-language courses in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and, soon, Japanese, all offered through North Carolina Virtual Public School.  These courses are accompanied by LEARN NC’s open-source, multimedia-rich textbooks  and allow students to connect with conversation coaches via free Web conferencing tools .

Our newest sharable professional development course is Modern Math Teaching, a three-week course developed and taught by Dan Meyer for teachers in grades 7-12.  This course, which was recently piloted in Currituck County, focuses on transforming everyday digital media into teaching artifacts, creating classrooms with a culture of curiosity, where nothing is off limits to analysis.  In Modern Math Teaching, everything is a potential learning experience, from prices at the grocery store to mile markers on our state’s highways.  School systems may download and teach this course, or register as participants with LEARN NC.

The date “2010″ sounds so sci-fi to me, yet when you look at the work we’re doing, futuristic images really seem to fit! Whether you are presently considering the classroom applications for Google Wave or Tweeting your appreciation for the latest contributions from your virtual Personal Learning Network, you are engaged in a learning environment that teachers 10 years ago could not imagine.   If your New Year’s resolution is to keep up with what’s going on, keep that promise to yourself by connecting with LEARN NC and Instructify every day!

Sincerely,

Melissa Thibault
Executive Director

mthibault at learnnc.org

New teachers often get stuck with the toughest teaching assignments. Even experienced instructors can get thrown for a loop if they’re tasked with teaching an unfamiliar subject. If you’re an inexperienced biology or civics and economics teacher who’s worried about how you’ll fare in the classroom, turn to LEARN NC’s Virtual Mentoring program for guidance. You’ll get expert help. Your time commitment will be minimal. It’s available at any hour, day or night. You progress on your own schedule and at your own pace. And best of all, it’s yours at no cost to you, your school, or your LEA.

Experience and expertise

You’ll work with an expert mentor who has successfully mentored teachers both online and face-to-face. In addition, you’ll join a statewide Professional Learning Community (PLC) of instructors teaching the same subject as you, each sharing his or her successes, challenges, and unique perspective on how to confront instructional issues.

Full curriculum access

Participants in LEARN NC’s Virtual Mentoring program receive access to a fully developed, online curriculum plan aligned to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study to use as a year-long course template or a reference for individual lessons.

Enroll now

Register for Virtual Mentoring: Biology

Register for Virtual Mentoring: Civics

LEARN NC is seeking teachers to write a second round of innovative lesson plans that use multimedia to teach world history, culture, literature, and religion. We’ll provide the multimedia; you provide the teaching ideas, and we’ll pay you for your time.

Over the past two years we have built a collection of photographs and audio recordings from various countries in Asia and Latin America, and we’ve built slideshows around some of these photographs, as well, including a retelling of the Ramayana.

To make these resources more useful to teachers, we want to build instructional resources that integrate them into North Carolina’s curriculum. We’re looking for detailed instructional plans that make innovative and meaningful use of the media to promote students’ understanding of other cultures. The plans can address any curriculum area, not just social studies. (Science, anyone?)

If you’re interested, please contact us and tell us your ideas for using our media resources for global education. If we accept your application, we’ll ask you to complete the lesson plan(s) by August 31, and we’ll pay $500 for each completed lesson plan.

Now you can earn a LEARN NC Certificate in Online Instruction through the Carolina Online Teacher program (COLT). In five core courses and two electives, totaling a minimum of 17 CEUs, you’ll master the component skills of online teaching: effective collaboration and facilitation, creating learning communities, navigating the virtual classroom, and developing student-centered instruction.

Take the courses in this program of study at your convenience and build the knowledge to create a dynamic learning community, one where learners separated by a few feet or many miles can collaborate and share ideas. With the possibilities for using web-based content and multimedia, online courses can be exciting and inspiring for teachers and students alike.

For more information and descriptions of COLT courses, click here.