Week 9 Blog : Due March 14, 2010

ALEX

Alex, also known as Alabama Learning Exchange, is a tool used by teachers to share information. On the homepage, there are 8 different sections to choose from including Course of Study, Web Links, Lesson Plans, Search, Personal Workspace, Professional Learning, Podcast Treasury and Help. Each of these sections prove very useful to an educator. There is so much that this website has to offer.
The Course of Study section breaks each section down into Alabama state standards. You can click on a general subject and it will break it down by grade level or a more specific subject. If you click on the subject or grade level of your choice, you can view the standards for the state of Alabama and some ways to complete these standards. The Web Links sections contains websites for teachers, administrators, and students. The links are organized by specific categories. You can choose the one that's most closely fits your needs and there will be a list of helpful websites for you. The lesson plan section allows you to search for lesson plans by subject or grade level. Once you click on a subject or grade level, there are specific lesson plans from which to choose. Each lesson plan includes the activity, which standards it fulfills and so much more. The search section is pretty self-explanatory. It allows you to search the entire ALEX database for whatever it is you may need. ALEX also allows you to create your own personal workspace through the personal workspace section. You can create an account and make personal lesson plans, etc. The professional learning section provides a place to view professional development opportunities, the latest news about the teaching profession, teaching and learning tools, and the best practices used by those in the field. The podcast treasury is similar to iTunesU. It offers podcasts on many different subject areas. Last, but not least, the Help section provides answers to those frequently asked questions.
I find ALEX to be a very useful sight because it has many tools located in the same place. Instead of having to search for everything you need separately, you can just go on ALEX and find it all in one area. This is convenient for the teacher who finds himself or herself without adequate time for researching. Not only does ALEX provide tools for teachers, but there are also tools for administrators and students. It's a very versatile website that I believe many educators will find useful.

ACCESS

ACCESS is short for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators and Students Statewide. This website is for Alabama public high school students. It was built to provide equal learning opportunities for everyone. It allows students to complete online courses during semesters similar to those in college. They aim to improve students' achievements through this method of distance learning.
There are four sections of this website that are of particular interest to educators today. The first section is entitles Courses. Here you will find courses offered, test preparations, exam exemption forms, course catalogs and FAQs. Courses offered are those offered in all high schools throughout the state of Alabama. There are advance placement courses for those who would like a challenge. There are also test prep sections to help high school students prepare for graduation exams and AP exams. The next section of interest is entitled Educators. Here, you will find tools for administrators, teachers and counselors. There is a website to connect teachers so they are able to easily share information. There is also a place to apply for a teaching position with ACCESS. There are policy manuals as well as information for on-site classroom facilitators. The third section of interest in entitled Resources. This section is useful to both educators and students because it offers a menagerie of resources. These resources include, but are not limited to, AP test prep, Alabama Virtual Library, ALEX, Curriculum Pathways, Elluminate, Graphmatica, HippoCampus and MathType. An educator should explore each of these resources to see what they have to offer. The final section of interest is entitled Students. This section obviously focuses on the students and what they need to know about ACCESS. Here, you will find testimonials from students who have used ACCESS, information for parents, and overview of ACCESS and technical support.
I though ACCESS was a great idea. As an educator, I would probably use ALEX more because it offers more in a well-organized manner. I found ACCESS to be more beneficial to students because of the help if offered them in classes and test preparation. I would probably suggest this website to my students if I felt they would benefit from it.

Comments4Kids
This week, I visited Mrs. Yollis's class blog. I commented on a post about Groundhog's Day. The students observed that the groundhog saw his shadow. According to tradition, this means there will be 6 more weeks of winter. This class is located in Southern California so hopefully their winter wasn't too cold!

Comments4Teachers
My comments for teachers post is located a few posts down. It is just before the Week 7 blog post.