NetSchools Orion

Win, Mac

Teaches: this is a teacher utility for managing classes, assignments, etc.

CTR Review

NetSchools Orion is a web-based, browser-delivered product designed to help bridge school administrators, teachers, students and parents. It is billed as an "online curriculum alignment and integration system". At its core are its many teacher tools, including an online lesson planner. Teachers can enter their own lesson plans or choose lessons from a vast bank of K-12 topics. With a mouse click or two, the lesson objectives are correlated with state standards. The process works in reverse, too, you can pick the standards and skills you want to work on and then access correlated lesson plans and resources. Resources are recommended from some 47,000 approved web sites. (Sites are screened and rated by Netschools' experts.) For an additional fee, schools can also have everything correlated with their textbooks. Other teacher tools include group calendars, gradebooks, email, report generators and online assessments. Everything is correlated to your state standards, even the online assessments, so you can easily see if your students are aquiring the skills they need to pass your local achievement measures. The product will even suggest remediation materials for each student, based on his or her test performance. The state-of-the-art system is very intuitive to use and seems to be highly useful in terms of promoting teacher accountability and organization. Communication is emphasized, too, as parents are given access to grades, assignments, and so on. The downside is the product's cost-- a base subscription runs approximately $150/year/teacher and $15/year/student. On-site teacher training is an additional expense at $1,000 per day. Currently, NetSchools Orion is used in districts and schools all across the U.S., including sites in California, New Jersey and El Paso, TX. Its main competitors are BigChalk and AOL@School, but according to company spokesperson, NetSchools drills down to specific skills, while the competition correlates lesson plans only to the global standard level.