Home Base

2024-25 Home Base Opt-In

Opt-In for the 2024-25 School Year is tentatively scheduled to open Friday, May 31st!  Click the button below to learn more about this process and the products available to PSUs.

2024-25 Home Base Opt-In

 

Home Base road and people

Home Base is North Carolina’s suite of digital tools and instructional resources designed to empower teachers, engage students, support administrators, and connect parents to their child’s personalized learning. Since its inception in 2013, Home Base has developed into a comprehensive suite of tools that provide management of student data, educator evaluation, professional development for educators, and access to learning resources aligned with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

Home Base provides, equitable access, personalized learning, professional growth, and collaborative engagement to PSUs. 

Home Base includes seven key components: Canvas, EBSCO & Britannica, GoOpenNC, Learning.com, NCEES, NCSIS, and Schoolnet.  More in-depth information about these resources is located below.

Tab/Accordion Items

Canvas

Canvas is a learning management system that provides a platform to connect different digital tools in one location. This platform has been integrated within the NCEdCloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) Service. It will also integrate with Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Office 365. 

In DPI Canvas, PSU users can:   

  • Access state created professional learning
  • Have collegial discussions with NC educators
  • Search for materials shared by other NC Canvas users

What sets Canvas apart?

  • A clean, user-friendly interface
  • A dashboard page that quickly summarizes assignments, announcements, and other relevant information across course sites
  • Customizable notifications
  • A working calendar that can be added to Google Calendar, iCal, or other popular calendar tools
  • Support for media content
  • The power of the cloud – it just works.

Canvas YouTube Playlist

Canvas includes several primary LMS tools, a user-friendly online environment, and the ability to connect educators across North Carolina easily. Districts can acquire Canvas through a state-negotiated convenience contract. To obtain Canvas, please contact Jenna Lagerman

Browse our recorded webinars and training videos on our YouTube Playlist.

 

EBSCO and Britannica are two leading providers of educational resources, offering a wealth of information and tools for students and educators alike. EBSCO specializes in research databases, journals, and eBooks, covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Britannica, on the other hand, is renowned for its encyclopedias and educational content, providing in-depth articles, videos, and interactive features on various subjects.
 
Together, EBSCO and Britannica offer a powerful combination of resources to support learning and research. By utilizing these platforms, educators can create engaging and comprehensive learning experiences, while students can access reliable and up-to-date information to enhance their understanding of the world.

GoOpenNC is North Carolina's Open Education Resources Platform

Explore standards aligned supplemental instructional resources in collections, hubs, and your own custom folders of saved resources.

Create your own openly licensed instructional materials to share with your school, district, or the entire state.

Collaborate with educators across the state on the standards you teach and network together to improve instruction.

 

#GoOpenNC Preview
 

What is GoOpenNC?

  • What are the goals of GoOpenNC?

    • To develop an OER community of practice, where NC educators can curate, create, and collaborate on openly-licensed instructional resources that are aligned to NC standards.
    • To grow a repository of high-quality, standards-aligned OER, with a focus on instructional improvement.
    • To help NC educators grow professionally as they learn about intellectual property, copyright, open-licensing, deep knowledge of standards, and indicators of effective instructional materials.
    • To empower collaboration and partnerships among educators, schools, districts, and states.


  • What can I do on the platform?
    • Search for resources by content area, standard, grade level/range, keyword, etc.
    • Curate resources using the functionality of the platform that allows users to save resources to folders and into group shared folders.
    • Create resources using the Open Author tool in the platform. Users can co-author resources with other NC educators.
    • Remix authored OER to enhance and/or improve instructional resources. Remixed resources are connected to the original resource, so users can see all iterations.
    • Collaborate and connect with colleagues through groups, hubs, co-authoring, and more!
    • Learn through professional learning OER available on the platform, as well as through collaborative efforts with colleagues. Explore the OER PD hub for self-directed learning

Learning.com

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has partnered with Learning.com to improve digital literacy across the state! This partnership, now in year five (2023-2024) is designed to encourage student growth in computational thinking, digital citizenship and online safety, visual mapping, databases and computer fundamentals. 

Local education agencies (LEAs), charter schools, lab schools and innovative school district (ISD) schools within the most economically distressed counties (as determined by the North Carolina Department of Commerce Tier One designation) were surveyed and will receive funding based on the survey responses and the DIGITAL LEARNING INITIATIVE (DLI):DIGITAL LITERACY SOLUTION policy for implementation and adoption support found in the 2022-2023 Allotment Policy Manual. All funding-eligible LEAs and charter schools within Tier 1 counties must work with Learning.com to complete contracts for the 2023-2024 school year.

All other North Carolina LEAs and schools may choose to leverage the cooperative purchasing agreement via convenience contract with statewide negotiated terms and pricing ($7.96 per student or $3,395 per site license). Please see the table below for projected allotments and visit the FAQs for answers to general questions. Note: All LEAs and charter schools will work directly with Learning.com to execute local contracts (whether they are eligible to receive funding or not) by contacting Kim von Paternos at kvonpaternos@learning.com.

Tier 1 Subsidy and Convenience Contract Overview

Tier 1 Subsidy - Year 5 AllotmentNon-Tier 1 Convenience Contract
Projected DateSummer/Fall 2023School Year 2023-2024
Projected Amount

At Least $7.96* per estimated K-8 student licenses requested

(*based on proportional distribution of available funds – may be larger depending on # of districts signing local contracts)

Convenience Contract Pricing of  $7.96 per student or $3,395 per building/site license.
Contract PeriodContact State Vendor Summer/Fall 2023 -contract to use funds allocated for student licenses for the 2023-24 school year.2023-24 school year - Contact State Vendor
EligibilityLEAs, charter schools, and ISD schools, within economically distressed counties (Tier 1), that have executed local convenience contracts based on the K-8 digital literacy solution statewide Cooperative Purchasing Agreement.LEAs, charter schools, and ISD schools, within non-Tier 1 districts, that have executed local convenience contracts based on the K-8 digital literacy solution statewide Cooperative Purchasing Agreement.
Allowable Use of FundsSPECIAL PROVISION: 
1) Funds shall only be used for software licenses from the vendor selected via the competitive procurement process. 
2) Use of funds is subject to audit to ensure that purchased licenses are utilized by the public school unit. Unutilized purchased licenses are subject to a refund to the State. 
3) Allocations that are not expended for licenses by November 30 of the fiscal year shall revert to DPI and utilized for implementation of the State’s Digital Learning Plan. 
4) Funds for charter schools shall be allotted in PRC 036 and for ISD in PRC 044. 
5) Funds for the Renewal School System, if eligible, shall be allotted in PRC 037. Funds are not eligible for carryover.
 

NC Educator Effectiveness System (NCEES)

NCEES is the official Home Base application used by public and charter schools of North Carolina for storing and managing educator effectiveness. NCEES offers components designed to support the ongoing professional growth of K-12 educational leaders and teachers. This tool includes and educator evaluation component and a professional development component.   

professional development

  • NCEES PowerSchool's Perform Enterprise and Professional Learning (part of Unified Talent) 
    • Effective educator evaluation instruments and professional development plans in the Perform Enterprise component of NCEES available to PSUs include:
    • Rubrics based on NC teacher and administrator standards;
    • Observations that inform teacher/staff growth;
    • End of year evaluation ratings;
    • Free access to NCDPI self-paced Canvas and Moodle modules aligned to staff standards & elements, and focus areas;
    • Staff dashboards to track CEUs earned through DPI and local PD course modules, and varied PD learning opportunities; .
    • The PD office provides the ability to:
      • Create and manage local professional learning opportunities and track CEUs;
      • Share local PD/CEU opportunities with other PSUs for regional or shared events.
      • Transfer Credit Manager – manages approvals for CEUs earned outside of the district to show on staff transcripts
      • PSUs are given access to NCEES Professional Learning PD office component for $1/ADM (this fee also includes access to Schoolnet)

This associated site encompasses training resources, system updates, and events for the user-base audience. To learn more about this application, visit to the NCEES Information and Resources below.  

LEAs and charter schools are given access to the local control of professional development components by opting into Home Base for the low price of $1/ADM (this fee also includes access to Schoolnet). For more information on how to opt into Home Base, visit the Opt-in to Home Base page.

NCEES Information and Resources

NCEES Help Guides

Administrator

  • The documents below were created by NCDPI for NCEES system users. All of these documents are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, so Public School Units are free to adapt and re-use these documents at their discretion.
  • View the list of NCEES Administrator Help Guides full screen.

Evaluator/Observer Guides

  • The documents below were created by NCDPI for NCEES system users. All of these documents are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, so Public School Units are free to adapt and re-use these documents at their discretion.
  • View the list of NCEES Evaluator/Observer Help Guides full screen.

Reporting

Professional Learning

  • The documents below were created by NCDPI for NCEES system users. All of these documents are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, so Public School Units are free to adapt and re-use these documents at their discretion.
  • View the list of NCEES Professional Learning Help Guides full screen.