NCVPS OCS Blended Learning Courses

Here is a wonderful opportunity for your OCS students. NCVPS offers 5 courses: OCS English 1, OCS English 2, OCS Algebra 1, OCS Biology and OCS Applied Science. The NCVPS teacher works very closely with your face 2 face OCS teacher in these courses. The EC teacher drives the instruction, owns the grade and enters it into NC Wise. The NCVPS teacher supplies the course content which follows the essential standards. The course content was created by classroom teachers from across the state, course content experts, and OCS & EC teachers. The courses focus on engagement and interaction for the visual, auditory etc type of student. The NCVPS teacher differentiates and individualizes the curriculum based on the needs of the students. Each course is created just for the EC teacher and their students in that specific school. Before a school registers students, the school and the OCS teacher should be willing to teach the courses in the Blended Learning environment.

Counties from all over the state are involved in these courses. If you decide to enroll students in these courses, you would need to complete a short online survey in which they ask you the course you want, estimated number of students and the face 2 face teacher that will be involved.
All OCS f2f teachers will need to go through an approximate two hour online training prior to the Fall semester start on August 25, 2011. Teachers will be able to decide when they want to complete the training but all f2f teachers will need to complete this training prior to the start of Fall semester. The training will be available by May 15.
The NCVPS OCS Blending Learning courses require a true co-teaching experience where the f2f teacher is driving the instructional decisions while working daily with the NCVPS content teacher. The NCVPS teacher will help the classroom teacher individualize and differentiate the instruction for each student but the NCVPS teacher does not deliver the instruction real time to the students. The f2f teacher does this but they will have planned using the online content, the teachers own resources, and the NCVPS teacher to determine the best way to teach the content to the students.
This partner teaching is the most critical piece for schools to understand. The NCVPS teacher will not be providing daily direct instruction; this responsibility rests with the classroom OCS teacher. The online content provides archived teaching sessions that can be used, but the daily instructional decisions are driven by the classroom teacher who plans daily, through an asynchronous document, with her partner NCVPS teacher
Distance Learning Advisors may enroll students into the OCS Blended Learning courses starting on April 5th. The DLA's will see the five courses listed in the registrations system, beginning with the OCS prefix. DLA’s will then register students into the course. At this time, the school DLA will not see a specific section for his or her school. DLA's will only see OCSBlendedAlgebraI, OCSBlendedEnglishI, etc. Eventually, in the registration system, NCVPS will break out the school by course so that it will be the course will be identified with your school name in the title such as this: OCSBlendedDistrictSchoolOCSCourseName. DLA's will only see these sections once registration closes and closer to the start of the Fall semester. DLA's will be asked to provide the name of the OCS classroom teacher for each course before August 2011. DLA's will be contacted by email in order to provide this information. The five course sections (OCS English I, OCS English II, OCS Algebra I, OCS Biology, and OCS Applied Science) will remain open until all the available seats are taken.
If you have any questions about the NCVPS OCS Blended Learning program, please contact Michelle Lourcey (michelle.lourcey@ncpublicschools.gov) Curriculum and Instruction Division Director.