Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Week 9

Seal of Alabama
Alex logo
ALEX

At first glance, this website seems a little confusing. After a few minutes of trying to navigate my way through this site I think I have figured it out. The home page has 8 links that can lead teachers to lesson plans, websites, podcasts, and other very helpful tools. When you use the Courses of Study link it takes you to a list of courses that you can choose from. Once you choose a course that you would like to look up you choose the grade for which you would like to view it will then take you to a list of lesson plans that also has useful websites that can be used in the classroom. Here is a link to a lesson plan that I found for a math lesson for third graders. Almost all of the links o the home page will take you to a list of lesson plans that you may use in your classroom.

The overall usefulness of Alex for any teacher, in my opinion, is that it is very useful. It provides a way for all teachers in Alabama to share with one another their lesson plans, websites, and podcast that have worked for them in their classrooms. This whole site is very useful. When I become a teacher I will definitely be using this site to help me with my lesson plans. I encourage all teachers of Alabama and also all future teachers of Alabama to visit this website and see all of the great things that it has to offer.

ACCESS

The ACCESS program is an online tool for all Alabama high school teachers and high school students to use as an additional tool in and out of the classroom. Any high school student in Alabama can login and then from what I understand, there are multiple tools to help with just about any and every course offered in any Alabama high school. There are also courses like Mandarin Chinese, German, and Latin that a student can take as an extracurricular class. However, students do not receive class credit and it also does not count as a duel enrollment project, which I think is a downfall. In one of the other links that is listed as "Resources," students can receive additional help on homework and classwork from other approved websites. One of these websites is ALEX.

Overall, this site seems like a great tool for high school teachers and students, but it really does nothing for anyone under that age group. Personally, I like the ALEX program better, this is because it is more user friendly and is designed for a broader range of age groups. The only thing that I question about ACCESS is: "Do students or teachers really use it?" My sister who attends Daphne High School, when I asked her if she had ever used the site for homework or in class, she said she had never heard of it. She is in the IB program, which is the degree plan above AP. Now if these students are not using it or had never even heard of it, is it really serving its purpose? Maybe she has just had a teacher who had used it in his or her classroom or maybe the school chooses not to participate in the ACCESS program. The idea of it seems great, I just hope that it is actually used .

Comments4Kids

This week I read the post for the class by the teacher for the blog English with Rosa. The post was about the Oscars. The class seemed very excited to watch it to see who would win what award. I was also really amazed about the overall class blog, it is very organized and is really a lot of fun! Here is what I commented about the post: "I am so glad that other people get just as excited as I do about the Oscars! I am just wondering if you all enjoyed watching them as much as I did? Also, the class blog as a whole is amazing! Keep up the great job!" This is the link to the website.

3 comments:

  1. I totally agree that the ALEX program is a much better program because it has links for all ages and focuses on the whole rather than bits a pieces. I have not really heard of my sister using the program either when she was in the IB program at Daphne High School.

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  2. Good job Danielle. Glad to see more graphics and links. Keep up the good work. Did you show your sister the Alex program? Maybe she can use on her own to help with her studies.

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  3. I didn't know when I looked at ACCESS that the courses studied don't count for credit. It does seem like an excellent program, but to me, the fact that it doesn't really count for anything is probably one of the reasons it doesn't seem like it's serving it's purpose. I had never heard of ACCESS when I was in high school, and I don't know how many high school kids who want to learn many things that the education system supports without incentive. I agree, ALEX does seem like a better program.

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