LEARN NC has published Mandarin Chinese II — the second in a series of digital textbooks for Mandarin Chinese courses. Like the textbook for Mandarin Chinese I, which was published in December 2008, it incorporates audio and video with instruction in grammar, language, and culture.

Mandarin Chinese II helps learners build on the skills they learned in Mandarin I. In addition to learning more complex grammar rules and sentence patterns — including how to use past and future tenses — the textbook focuses on differences in formal and informal language. It also includes lessons about Chinese New Year and visiting China in order to further students’ knowledge of Chinese culture.

The Mandarin textbooks are designed to accompany online language courses in Mandarin sponsored by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, developed by LEARN NC, and hosted by the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). The courses are funded by a Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant, an A.P. incentive grant, and a grant from the North Carolina General Assembly, and are offered alongside other online courses in critical languages like Arabic and Japanese. The availability of the digital textbooks on LEARN NC makes it easy for students to review what they have learned, or perhaps engage in self-study. Classroom teachers also benefit from the published materials, using them as supplements to existing curriculum and differentiating instruction with downloadable audio and video.

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.

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.

LEARN NC’s Ross White and Nick Yingling will present “Moodle at LEARN NC: Who, What, How, When, Why?” at the Career and Technical Education 2009 Summer Conference held July 21-24 in Greensboro:

Do you want to supplement your classroom with Web 2.0 tools like discussion forums and wikis? Do you teach e-Commerce I or II? Do you want to teach your course online? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to check out Moodle! LEARN NC offers a variety of opportunities for teachers to use Moodle — for professional development, for receiving curriculum from DPI, and for creating and delivering new learning opportunities to students. Come explore the new educational and collaborative possibilities Moodle has to offer.

The Carolina Teachers’ Connection and LEARN NC of the School of Education will sponsor a workshop for alumni classroom teachers and their colleagues. This workshop will enrich their understanding of English as a Second Language (ESL) students and strengthen their teaching of these students. The intent is to provide a forum to gather resources and ideas so that teachers will be better equipped to help ESL students succeed in North Carolina schools.

Speakers

• Keynote speaker Dr. Darla Deardoff of Duke University, who will address the question, “How do I approach my role in teaching kids with very different cultural backgrounds?”
• Dr. Bobby Hobgood of LEARN NC, who will present “Teaching the N.C. Curriculum with Engaging Web-Based Resources.”
• Joanne Marino, ESL Consultant/Title III Director and Ivanna Thrower, ESL/Title III Consultant of NC Department of Public Instruction will present “Success for ELLs: Success for All” using the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) providing techniques participants can use in their own classrooms.
• A panel discussion will provide additional interaction and questioning opportunities.

The workshop will include a list of helpful community resources and opportunities for sharing and questioning. The importance of cultural sensitivity will be emphasized.

CEU credit

0.4 CEUs available

Event details

Date: Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2009
Time: 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Place: Carolina Center for Educational Excellence, 9201 Seawell School Rd., Chapel Hill
Cost: $10 to cover lunch

Register

To register, please contact Lucy Williams.

With a grant from the State Library of North Carolina and the Department of Cultural Resources, NC LIVE, LEARN NC, and NC WiseOwl, a service of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, partnered to extend the reach of the PBS video collection to local schools. Through NC WiseOwl, students and teachers at public schools now have unlimited online access to PBS’ library of award-winning programming, including Ken Burns’ “The Civil War,” as well as the Emmy award-winning series “American Experience” and “Frontline.” The videos are available online in an on-demand streaming format, making them extremely accessible.

In addition, these PBS videos are freely available for home viewing by all North Carolina citizens through NC LIVE based on their affiliation with a local public library or any of the 188 public and academic libraries across the state. Faculty and students of North Carolina colleges and universities may also access this content at no charge.

The statewide video-streaming service became available to all public schools March 30, 2009.