Welcome to semester 2, 2019 - Message from the Principal and Tips for student Success
Dear parents and students:
Welcome to semester 2, 2019. Please review these reminders, expectations and deadlines. We want our students to be successful online and to share these tips with you that characterize successful learners.
Getting Online (GO) Orientation - students just starting:
Welcome to your first online course with Palliser Beyond Borders Is your learning on track for successful completion? You need about 2 hours to complete GO. Today alone, 10 student completed the course! Way to go in GO!Students who register with us for the first time are expected to complete our Getting Online course. This course teaches students how to
- learn online
- submit assignments
- use Google Apps for Education in the Moodle learning platform
- communicate with teachers
- and be successful online learners.
If you were registered in the first week of school this semester you will be completing the GO shortly and will move on on to your academic course soon.
What do you do if you need help in GO?
- Get online. Open up the course and continue! On average we know that students will successfully complete after 16 log ins and working through assignments an hour at a time. This could be 16 log ins over two weeks or 16 log ins over a year! We want you to finish GO this week.
- Fix if something is not right? We have a 10 minute rule of thumb at Palliser Beyond Borders. If something is amiss reach out for help. Don’t sit and wait and say I’ll figure it out tomorrow. Let’s get it figured out today so you can move on.
- Use technology for learning.We do not want technology to be the barrier to learning. We need to shift from “learning to use technology” to “using technology for learning” in the first two weeks of school. Ask for help.
Get help
- Refer to the Teacher information block in your Moodle course. This is an example.
- Add your teacher's name to google chat on your email tab - left bottom of the email page.
- Use 20th century technology: Call your teacher.
- Book a meeting – by phone, google hang out, face to face, Blackboard
- Drop into our Blackboard sessions to meet with a teacher on duty
- See the schedule on your newsfeed dashboard in Moodle
- See the schedule on our website under current students
- Ask your Outreach teacher to help even if your subject teacher is someone else. All of our teachers know how to get help for you.
- Stay in regular contact with your teacher
Research tells us the most successful online students are those who know their teacher and know how to reach out for help. Your job now is to build a strong learning and teaching relationship with your teacher.
Finished GO?
As soon as you are successfully completed in Getting Online (GO) orientation we will move you into your next course. If you are not done by the end of the weekend, Feb 10, 2019 you risk not completing your next course on time. You can expect that the orientation will take about two hours.
Please refer to these calendars and calculator tool to plan your successful completion before the June deadline which is the latest you can complete. You will be withdrawn from the course if you are not done by June deadlines and the course will show as incomplete on your detailed academic record, if not done.
Students continuing online in another online courseSuccessful learners online look like this: 
Our goal is to empower all our students in all grades and courses in learning and assessment in a meaningful and effective manner. Your role is to manage your time wisely, identify ways you learn best and reach to demonstrate your understanding. Calculate how many weeks left before you must finish the course and divide up by weeks what you have left to complete in your course. Commit to the schedule.
We have placed a calculator on our website for you to do this.
We believe at Palliser Beyond Borders that the learning and teaching process consists of 6 stages:
- instruction,
- learning,
- feedback and formative assessment,
- opportunity for students to improve and bump up understanding of concepts
- New Learning finished 2 weeks before exams
- Review of course materials and participation in diploma reviews before summative assessments and diploma exams.
For student success: This process must happen before students complete summative assessments so students have every opportunity to enrich understanding before final assessments. For this reason we do not want students to expect that they can submit a whole course the night before an exam or diploma exam and accept that it is ok to “take the bad mark”. We feel bad if students don’t do well on exams and want to support every effort for students to demonstrate their very best understanding in our courses. Students are beginning to understand this process and with parent support we are seeing improved results in course marks and final assessments.
Course Reviews: The discrepancy between our diploma marks and course marks closed quite significantly for those students who wrote diplomas in this last year. The common factor was that students made sure they had the time to participate in diploma course reviews either online or face to face. Part of our course expectations is for students to attend these course reviews. Review dates are posted on our website http://
Finishing your course on time by meeting posted deadlines: If students do not meet the deadline dates for completing courses particularly for diploma courses, students must plan to write the diploma in the next cycle or complete the course in summer school. We want you to have the review time you need after teacher assessment is complete to ensure you are ready for the summative assessment. If you need help or additional support, please contact your teacher.
As always you can look for me online in Google chat or email. Reach out to any of us if you need help. We are a friendly bunch! Wishing you all the very best for a successful term.
Best Regards
Alison Hancox, MET
Principal
