Reach of Online Learning to Special Education Students

When looking to drastically improve the education experience for students, partnerships are key. What happens when blended learning experts, Fuel Education (FuelEd™) and PresenceLearning, the nation’s leading provider of online speech and occupational therapy, put their heads together? You get an excellent user experience for students with special needs across the country. You get an integrated, digital, solution that supports schools in providing high quality services. You gain access to leading therapists and curriculum, even in the most rural areas. You get progress and change.

BUT, most importantly you expand the reach of online learning to special education students, increasing their progress. In early February, Getting Smart Advocacy Partners, PresenceLearning and Fuel Education (FuelEd™) announced their work together, a great example of how two companies, both dedicated to igniting change in education through technology, can come together to provide a unique and powerful solution.

It has traditionally cost nearly twice as much to educate a student with special needs as a general education student, however PresenceLearning believes that

These high costs are both unnecessary and unacceptable in today’s work of technology-enabled individualized learning; schools can provide kids with practical, affordable access to the live services of scarce experts via the web.

And, for the last six years, they have built a network of 700 highly qualified speech language pathologists (SLPs), occupational therapists (OTs), school psychologists, social workers, special education teachers and other in-demand professionals that can deliver “anytime anywhere” services using current, evidence-based practices via live video conferencing.

Presence Learning is the only online special education services provider fully aligned with privacy regulations that can operate at a large scale, delivering thousands of sessions every day. This next generation of special needs services combines powerful progress reporting with exceptional therapists to support schools who are challenged to provide access to high quality services for their students or who are looking for a more effective and efficient method of doing so. Dozens of peer-reviewed research studies support the effectiveness of online speech therapy, occupational therapy, and behavioral and mental health services.

“Presence Learning and Fuel Education both focus on using technology-enabled education to better serve students on an individual, personalized level,” notes Gregg Levine, general manager for Fuel Education. Fuel Ed partners with school districts to create customized online and blended learning programs. They lead the industry in digital curriculum, certified instruction, professional development, and educational services. Their Personalized Learning Platform, PEAK™, allows educators to combine personal content, Fuel Ed courses, third-party content, and open educational resources (OER) to customize the learning experience for their students. This partnership will provide access to Presence Learning services directly through this personalized learning platform. For more on how PEAK works, check out the website and video here.

As diagnoses continue to rise for disorders such as autism and ADHARA, there is a growing need for more highly individualized and effective services for these students. By partnering with Fuel Education, Presence Learning expands schools’ access to high quality live services for all children.

Online and blended learning is not just for the general education population. Together, these companies will deliver an integrated, online solution in which schools and districts can enroll special education students through PEAK, Fuel Education’s Personalized Learning Platform. Students also gain access to their live therapy sessions through PEAK. As Levin states, “Now, through this partnership, we can extend the power of online learning to provide our school and district partners a new, innovative way to meet the needs of special education students.”