ACCESS

ACCESS, or Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide, is an online learning initiative implemented by the Alabama Department of Education to give students and teachers a greater opportunity to learn. ACCESS bridges the gap between what individual schools can provide their students, and what students want or need to know. Courses available to Alabama public high school students include Advanced Placement, elective, and other courses that might not otherwise be available. It is an especially valuable tool in rural areas where the opportunity for learning may not be as great. It is an innovative program that provides an example for other online learning tools. 

ACCESS also provides opportunities for the educators who teach the online courses. The program provides qualified E-teachers from ACCESS site schools to deliver to online class to areas that otherwise would not have access to the course or a certified Alabama teacher to direct it.  ACCESS is a wonderful tool for students in Alabama hoping to make the most of their high school educations. However, many students don't know of the opportunities the innovative program has to offer. When I attended high school my classmates and I had no idea what we could be doing with our education. Instead we settled for what the schools in my rural town had to offer. We weren't slighted in any way, but it would have been nice to know what other opportunities were available to us through ACCESS. As a teacher, I would always make sure my students knew about the chance they had to further their education through ACCESS. It is a blessing to teachers to see students with a thirst for knowledge, and ACCESS is a tool to aid students in quenching that thirst beyond what I could give them. 

ALEX

The Alabama Learning Exchange, or ALEX, is an invaluable online tool created by the Alabama Department of Education for students, teachers, and administrators alike. The purpose of the ALEX site is to compile all of the resources and data an educator or student in the state of  Alabama may need and put them in the same place. All of this information is only a mouse click away, and is user-friendly for all who would ever need it. ALEX is equipped with easily identifiable links to each area to help visitors navigate the site.

 ALEX includes pages dedicated to lesson plans. There is not only a database of submitted lesson plans on key subjects that teachers can access and print for their own use at any time, but there is also a template teachers can use to create their own lesson plans. By creating an ALEX account teachers can also submit their lesson plans so that others can  use them as a resource. Another valuable tool ALEX offers is the page dedicated to the Alabama courses of study. This page is easily searchable by subject and grade level. All Alabama teachers are required to meet these standards when educating their students, and having the courses of study readily available online keeps them from having to maintain a paper copy. The ALEX website also offers opportunities for professional development to teachers and administrators, as well as a links to valuable annotated educational websites. There is even a link to the ACCESS distance learning website which will be the topic of my next blog. 

As a teacher I have found that the Alabama Learning Exchange will be a useful tool for me professionally. By simply creating an ALEX account I can have access to all of the many resources it has to offer, and my own personal ALEX workspace where I can store and create my lesson plans and teacher web pages. 

Hey Guys!

I finally got my e-mail and blog set up, and I am looking forward to learning to use all of this. Thanks everyone for visiting my blog, enjoy!