When Johnny comes to school tired, nobody wins. Fatigue is one of the biggest motivation killers for today’s students. With so many ways to connect with friends late into the night, many are coming to school sleep deprived and unprepared to learn. Read more »
Busy teachers everywhere appreciate streamlined processes. That’s why ODYSSEYWARE created the batching feature. Anytime you wish to allow a student to skip an entire unit, enter the course for that student by selecting the Student tab on the left, locating the student and, moving to the right of the student’s name, click on the Grading link for the desired student.
This opens the course view for the teacher. Read more »
Tags: alternative education, education technology, ODYSSEYWARE, online curriculum
After the implementation of ODYSSEYWARE as a summer school pilot program, educators at Bay Port High School were so impressed with the results that they expanded access to high school students across the board, offering options for credit recovery, at-risk, off-site, special education, alternative, and regular education.
For decision-makers, grades made all the difference. The pass rate of students enrolled in ODYSSEYWARE over a three-semester period was 85 percent. While that number is impressive, the results are more remarkable when you consider that in order to pass at Bay Port, students must achieve at least an 80 percent, while most schools across the country consider a grade of 70 or above passing. Read more »
When it comes to reforming education, everyone, every special interest group, and every politician seems to have an idea and a plan. For the most part, they are built on good intentions, but for one reason for another, they just don’t work out.
Kiran Bir Sethi, founder of Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, had this idea about reform:
If learning is embedded in real world context, that is, if you blur the boundaries between school and life, then children go through a journey of aware, where they can see the change; enable, be changed; and then empowered, lead the change.
In an inspiring TED Talk, she explains that once the children are empowered, it directly increases student well-being. Children became more competent and less helpless. They became infected by the “i can bug.”
In a perfect world, we could leave education reform to the children whose spirits haven’t been broken by a system that says, “You can’t.”
ODYSSEYWARE’s online curriculum is just one step to empowering young learners to take responsibility for not only changing their own educational experience and their own lives, but for changing the world.
According to a recent special report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Children who read on grade level by the end of third grade are more successful in school, work, and in life.”
This KIDS COUNT special report, EARLY WARNING! Why reading by the End of Third Grade Matters, comes at a time when education reform is making headlines every day and offers recommendations for change in policy. Read more »
You’ve seen him. He quietly sits in the back of the classroom, eyes turned down. When he comes to school, he seldom turns in assignments. He stares out the window or sleeps. He is tired or preoccupied. He is hungry, restless, and troubled – afraid to try, afraid to fail.
Public school reform has become a hot topic, and educators everywhere are trying to answer the hard questions. How do we reach disengaged students? Should teachers be held accountable for student and school performance? Do we close schools that are underperforming? Do we fire all the teachers and start over? Are charter schools the answer? Online schools? Magnet schools? Gender-specific schools? Read more »
Famous for its sun-washed beauty and dry heat, southern Arizona is now becoming more widely recognized as a place where people take technology in education seriously.
In the fall of 2009, the New York Times ran a story about the Vail Unified School districts and their initiative to provide a primarily digitized education for their students. The result of thousands of hours of labor by teachers, administrators, and staff is a program called Beyond Textbooks. Read more »
According to a recent article in the Mercury News, a school district in California is considering a proposal that will require families of every student enrolled to “volunteer” at least 30 hours a year at their child’s school.
San Jose’s Alum Rock Union School District is definitely looking beyond student outcomes to the sources that affect achievement. Read more »
On behalf of OdysseyWare, please enjoy a safe and happy Independence Day!
The US Department of Education today released the “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis And Review of Online Learning Studies.” Beyond being a mouthful of a title, the study sets forth some of the most promising data regarding online learning’s efficacy and its potential for raising test scores. Online learning has grown by 65% in the period of 2003 to 2005, raising the implications of its implementation as more students take their courses online. It is for that reason that the Department of Education’s report is so promising, giving evidence that online curriculum is effective.
Chief among the report’s findings are that, whether in blended instruction or purely online, online curriculum students performed, on average, better than their face-to-face counterparts. The report mentions that it is possible that students performed better because online learning was more flexible in the time that student’s could use it, hence giving them greater opportunities for extra instruction, whereas face-to-face instruction students, in the traditional classroom setting, were limited to classroom time for their learning. Although this is true, it is also one of the inherent benefits of online learning: students have the capability to learn on schedules that work better for them.
According to the Washington Examiner:
The findings revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction. In addition, they identified that learners in the online environment spent more time performing a task than student’s offline. The research focused on the K-12 environment, but the findings are interesting for online education as a whole.
Indeed they are. Providing students with opportunities to expand their instruction through either blended or purely online learning is important, especially when studies such as those released by the Department of Education today confirm their efficacy.