CompassLearning Odyssey

Internet Site, PowerTouch

Teaches: reading, math, science, social studies

CTR Review

When we originally reviewed this service, it consisted of a web-delivered Pre-K through 6th grade math and science curriculum that allowed children to sign in and work at their own pace while their progress is tracked. The program has now been expanded to include content in reading, language arts, ESL, math, science and social studies for PreK through 8th grade, and some additional content (Odyssey Writer and Odyssey ELL) for grades 9-12. Based on pretests corresponding to state and national benchmarks, each student is assigned a standards-aligned curriculum to strengthen skills. Activities ask students to read, solve problems, answer multiple choice and open-ended questions, and so on. Currently, some 1200 schools are using Odyssey across the nation. We were able to take a closer look at several Odyssey products, including Writer, ELL and Algebra. Each was impressive. The Writer offers guided writing prompts for assignments, and lets students create note cards and graphic organizers that can then be pasted into a draft document. Algebra offers activities based on students' performance on pretests. These activities include animated lessons, quizzes and printable worksheets. The ELL program is divided into elementary and secondary levels, and offers animated lessons and activities to quiz vocabulary. Note that many of the ELL activities, for some reason, would not run on Macintosh computers, only Windows. Detailed records of children's progress are kept for all programs. Weaknesses include little audio, and no video (at least none that we ran into). The absence of multimedia is disappointing, but these are still solid products, and each offers a wealth of instruction and skill practice.