Take 5 with Blended Learning
1) Blended Course Enrollments Look Different for 2019/2020
We’ve created a portal for any enrollment information you need in order to submit requests for your brick & mortar blended students.
Course catalogs, course options, bulk import templates and enrollment guidelines
https://www.rvaconnect.org/course-enrollment
Enrollment request spreadsheet portal
https://www.rvaconnect.org/enrollment-portal
A few notes about changes to this process:
We are no longer using Google Forms to submit and process requests. We have replaced this with a Google sheet. There are many benefits to this change that include: easier submission for multiple enrollments, ability to modify enrollments after submitting and before processing, access to course charges once enrollment is processed, and more information available regarding course charges and processing status. We can add multiple collaborators from your district upon request. When you first visit the sheet, you will need to request access. This is quick and easy, once access has been granted you will be notified.
In an effort to expedite enrollments in the fall, we are asking our district partners to submit next year's enrollment requests by June 30, 2019. We will accept enrollment requests after that time but our goal is to have everything ready to import by early August. Receiving information by the end of June will help us process your enrollments more efficiently and ultimately be more available to provide technical support for our consortium teachers and local coaches at the beginning of the school year.
2) Summer School
We are once again extending our summer school course catalog to district partners. With local teacher oversight, your district can access any Odysseyware or WeN courses. We don’t require a specific end date for Odysseyware enrollments but WeN courses MUST be complete by July 17 as our database gets wiped clean the next day! We also offer participation in our RVA-teacher led live classes. Register soon to assure section availability!
Learn more and register for summer school
3) Quick Tips: End of Semester
Final Exam Passwords
At the end of each semester, we get many questions about final exam passwords in WeN/Buzz. Sometimes these questions come from teachers wondering - How can I change/find my course’s exam password? If that doesn’t work, can I just delete the password? The answer is yes! Sometimes these questions come from local coaches who are supporting a student enrolled in a network section wondering - How can I find my student’s exam password? Either way, we are here to help - if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Flagging a Student Ready for Completion
Teachers are often looking for ways to clean up their view in Genius. One way to notify RVA staff that your student has completed a course and is ready to be removed is to Flag for Completion. This lets us know that you have all the information you need logged in your district’s gradebook and you’d like us to remove the enrollment from your view.
Saving to Your Resources Folder
Each summer, course and enrollment data in Genius and Buzz get wiped clean to make way for updated course content. This means any changes or additions a teacher has made to the course will be gone if not saved. The way to prevent losing any changes or original content is to save course activities to your teacher resources folder. Keep in mind, anything you choose to save in your resources folder will be available to you again in the fall but if the course content is updated by the provider over the summer - you will be using the older course version. *If you haven’t made any changes there is no need to save to your resources folder.
4) POWER UP for Next School Year with Blended Learning Professional Development
As we start thinking about next year and how to best support teachers and students through blended learning, we have prepared two workshops for our district partners:
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
9:00 AM 4:30 PM
Hilton Garden Inn, Wausau
Virtual Teachers/Coaches Software Training & Class Setup
Help your students succeed in an online environment! This one-day workshop is designed to develop those who are overseeing students taking courses in a fully virtual self-paced capacity.
Who should attend? Online learning coordinators, guidance counselors, or others who are mentoring students and assigning final grades but not providing direct instruction.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
9:00 AM 4:30 PM
Hilton Garden Inn, Wausau
Full Class Blended Teachers Software Training & Class Setup
Transform your classroom at your own pace! This one day workshop is designed to support and develop those who are looking to use digital content in a brick and mortar classroom setting.
Who should attend? This session is for classroom teachers at all levels of skill in blended learning.
5) Cool Course Feature
We have so many fantastic courses available to our students through the WeN and Odysseyware catalogs. With around 1,000 available courses, it can be overwhelming to search through them all. Because of this, we will be featuring a cool course you might be surprised to learn is available to students in your district. The featured course this time is…Culinary Arts v18! Take a look at this course description and many others as you prepare to support students in registering for next year’s courses.