Odysseyware is a personalized, online learning platform to meet the needs of 21st Century learners. Odysseyware offers more than 200 courses for students, along with an authoring tool to create new courses. The digital lessons include instructional videos, dynamic learning activities, engaging virtual labs and assessment. The key aspect that sets Odysseyware apart is that it personalizes instruction by creating prescriptive learning paths for each student's particular level of content mastery. This creates truly customized instruction tailored to individual student needs.
Odysseyware has provided curriculum and online learning solutions for over a decade, and teachers have witnessed how it can provide the missing link for student learning, no matter how reluctant the learner. One of the most powerful uses of Odysseyware has been for credit recovery purposes. It makes it much easier for students to stay interested and on the right path without being left behind. Barbara Fabyan is an experienced Lawrence County Community Unit School District 20 (Lawrenceville, Illinois) teacher of at risk students who has benefited by using Odysseyware with her students for such purposes:
As a teacher of at risk students at Lawrenceville High School, Odysseyware online courses have helped us improve our graduation rates. Our primary focus is credit recovery for students who are not on track to graduate; however, many of our teachers use Odysseyware coursework to help homebound, special needs, and gifted students. The courses are rigorous, which allows me to maintain high expectations for students, and flexible enough to allow for individual student needs, identification, and remediation of skill deficits. As our district grows with Odysseyware, we're discovering new ways to use courses to improve teaching methods and meet individual student needs. Students feel a real sense of accomplishment once they have completed and passed an Odysseyware course. Their self-esteem improves and they have confidence in their ability to complete classes and earn credit towards graduation.
I know that Barbara is right on track, and wish I'd had something like Odysseyware that one year when I taught a highly mixed group of at risk 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. My students had all had given up on their regular classrooms and teachers - and for the most part their teachers had given up on them. They became mine. A few were older than they should have been for those grade levels, too. Keeping them back wasn't an option anymore. That didn't work anyway. For me, it was the best and most difficult year I had teaching, but I learned more about teaching and personalized learning during that time.
Individually, my at risk students were all likable, caring, and as intelligent as any students I'd ever taught. They all had their individual talents, too. As one clearly stated, "Mr. R. I see no point in memorizing the 13 colonies!" At 13 years of age he could tear down and rebuild a car motor, and read everything that involved doing it, too. Another student raised brine shrimp so large, and in such abundance, that he was invited to talk with a university professor, who was having trouble raising them that winter, at her laboratory. Teachers that didn't like to have him in class nonetheless came to him for a steady supply of aquarium fish food. I can still see his smile. Marine biology was his thing.
There's more, but the point is that I found that each student was capable and had the ability to do far more in his or her own way and time than they demonstrated in a regularly-scheduled 45-minute daily classroom routine. We raced to make up missed class and school time and course knowledge that had been lost. Unfortunately, we didn't have an online, guided method like Odysseyware for doing that! Instead, it was a primitive struggle that many educators and students still face each year. I had to figure out all the missed assignments and demonstrations, quizzes and tests that needed to be retaken, and much more for each of my students. I did my best, but to this day I'm haunted by the thought that it wasn't enough, and that it could have been better. There is no reason to do it that way anymore. Odysseyware provides a better way.
We recognize that students deserve a personalized learning experience and that instructional settings are becoming ever more diverse. It's our mission to provide educators with the most effective and flexible curricula and instructional tools available to address the unique needs of individual students in whatever instructional setting they are learning. We don?' believe in a one-size-fits-all model, which is why we remain committed to continuous improvement, responding to the ever-evolving needs of our partner schools and districts, and offering the most customizable curriculum in the industry.
When I first began following Odysseyware I thought that it was only about credit recovery, but it's not. All students can benefit from its courses, with personalized lessons and appropriate assessments. It's not just for those students still classified as at risk. Reaching the goal of having NO at risk students is possible with products like this.
Please check all the Odysseyware solutions from Blended Learning to Credit Recovery online and discover more about Odysseyware here.