A Preview To Encore's New Learning Platform

Encore's teaching team has been incredibly busy this summer. Although school is still another month away (September 14), we are gushing with excitement with our new Learning platform that will roll out this September on the first day of school. The resources and availability to complete coursework in a variety of ways, whether on campus, at home, or at the beach is innovative and exciting. In today's blog, I wanted to give you a sneak peek into the creative minds of Encore's teachers.

Encore already uses a variety of online platforms to make sure that all of our students are supported by their teachers. Most of these platforms were introduced long before the pandemic.

The pandemic pushed Encore's teaching staff and leadership (and the whole world) to take a different, innovative, and fresh approach to teaching. Being "grounded" has given all of us at Encore time to "think about what we did." Now I am being light-hearted when I am comparing our current climate to being put on restriction when we were children, but there is truth to the time that we have had.

Reflection has stemmed creativity and our new platform (with some help from the professional platform people) has helped us develop a place where our students can complete their schoolwork with ease on a variety of devices, even their smartphone. (Encore is still 1 to 1 technology with every student having an assigned Chromebook.) Next month, when the platform goes "live" there will be a variety of classes that parents and the world can see before the school year starts with "Preview" classes. The platform is not quite ready for prime time yet, but we will let you play with the Previews as soon as we have worked out the bugs on the onboarding pages of the site.

The curriculum is still coming from our state adopted resources. Our teaching staff is compiling and creating their lessons, their worksheets, their tests, and their projects in a way that if you can't be in class, you will still be able to guide yourself through and speak with your teacher along the way. There are chat rooms that you can ask questions of other people in the class and you can earn badges and certificates for completing units within each course.

Each year long course will be broken down into two online courses, an A and a B. On the homepage of each course, you can see what the course will count for toward college admissions and see what resources were used to build the curriculum. For the arts courses, it also explains how the course relates to earning cords, CTE Certification, and Master Certification by graduation.

At the beginning of each unit (there are five units in each semester class) there is an overview of what will be covered over the course of that unit and it will also alert you to any supplemental materials, like novels, that will be needed to complete the unit. This will help guidance throughout the unit.

The platform also allows teachers to embed YouTube videos into their courses so students can hear more than one perspective on the subject that is being covered. When you combine all of Encore's digital resources with our amazing teaching staff and their daily lessons, we are so excited to see our students get excited about learning on campus and not on campus.

Students will be asked to answer in the platform and also complete projects that will be uploaded to Google classroom to complete the coursework. Our other online resources will also continue to be used to make sure that we are bringing our students the best classes possible.

As students complete courses and earn badges and certificates, they will show up on their platform profile. They can also download and print certificates that they earn throughout the course.

We hope that this helps everyone get excited about school this fall, no matter what education model you have chosen for fall enrollment (traditional, hybrid, independent study, or Covid). Our team is still confirming enrollment in particular programs and our teachers are still building the platform. I just wanted to take a moment today to share my excitement for the innovation and hard work that Encore's teachers are displaying right now in the summer of 2020. They care about the success of their students and they are building a great platform for education to be released this September. Thank you to all of Encore's amazing teachers.

https://www.encorehighschool.com/blog

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Denise Griffin, CEO is the author of this blog for Encore Education Corporation. Part of Encore Education Corporation is Encore High School, a free public performing arts regional high school in Southern California grades 7 - 12. Encore's program is currently taking applications for the fall 2020 enrollment. Encore offers full time, hybrid time, and independent study programs. Encore offers transporation from the Inland Empire and the high desert. www.encorehighschool.com. Where arts and academics grow together. WASC Accredited. Copyright 2020.