Blog Post 13

The Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) is a project by the Alabama Department of Education and provides one-stop resources to meet the needs of teachers, administrators, parents, and students. ALEX is a work in progress. Things you can find on this site include:

1. Course of Studies - Here, you can click on a subject, then click on a grade level to view the course of study standards for that grade.
2. Web Links - Teacher resources, administrator resources, and student resources can all be found here. You can also search for a web resource, recommend a web resource, or report a broken link as well.
3. Lesson Plans - This part of the site is pretty cool and would be extremely useful to new teachers who need lesson plans. Here, you can create a "Workspace" and log in to create a lesson plan. You can search ALEX lesson plans by author, title, and school. You can search by subject, area of interest, or by grade levels as well.
4. Search the ALEX database - You can search the ALEX database and can narrow the search by choosing a search category such as, lesson plans and resources.
5. Personal Workspace - As I mentioned in #3, this is where you create an account to log into and create lesson plans and allows a place to store them.
6. Professional Learning - Here you can learn more about ALEX and training opportunities, view presentations, and search for grants. Visit the Alabama Department of Education Program Websites  to find professional development opportunities, teaching and learning tools, see the latest news, and much more! There is also links to other pages to help us find "tips, tricks, and tutorials on a variety of technology tools."
7. Alabama Podcast Treasury - Search for podcasts here by content. View top downloads, featured content, and the Alabama showcase. You can also find ALEX on iTunes U.
8. ALEXville - Here you can visit the ALEX communities and communicate with colleagues, keep up with the latest ALEX news, and follow various ALEX Professional Learning Communities by subscribing.

I think ALEX is a very helpful website. When I accept my first job, I believe it would be important to look up the course of study standards for that grade level. This will help me in the development of my lesson plans. The lesson plan link is amazing. I have already found several I like. As I said above, we new teachers will need lesson plans and this is a good resource. I love that this site offers information and help for technology tools. Technology is something I definitely plan to use in my classroom and I'm sure as more tools are developed, the site will be updated as well. I found the ALEXville link useful as well. This part of the site allows to to stay up-to-date with the latest news.

ACCESS Distance Learning was designed to create equity through additional educational offerings for all Alabama public high school students. It provides classroom courses and Alabama-certified teachers via technology. The Courses link includes: remediation modules for the Alabama High School Graduation Exam, 14 advanced placement courses, 10 AP exam reviews, and look up the courses offered. The Educators link includes: information for administrators wanting to expand their course offerings, brochures for information about ACCESS, information for those interested in teaching for ACCESS, professional development, information for counselors to help a student find a course, ...etc. The Resources link is very helpful. It contains links to the Alabama Virtual Library, ALEX, ChemLab, MathType, Graphmatica...and many more. There are also links for students and parents.