ACCESS

The ACCESS program can be accessed through the ALEX portal we looked over in our Week 2 assignment. As we discovered last week on the ALEX site, the section on Long Distance Learning is a means for schools that do not have access to advanced placement (AP) programs locally, to implement advanced study programs in the areas of, for example, Physics, Calculus, and Trigonometry by means of Internet technology. The state of Alabama is dedicated to level the playing field for those rural schools that do not have access to the Advanced Placement courses. This is a great leap for Alabama, because, the state is currently in the lower rankings nationwide for access to these kinds of advanced placement classes.

The State of Alabama is dedicated to giving all students equal access to not only advanced placement courses, but also courses to other types of courses otherwise not available, as well as additional development material. These lists of available ACCESS Objectives are listed below:

• Provide access to advanced diploma courses

• Provide access to additional course offerings

• Provide access to advanced placement or dual enrollment courses

• Provide access to remediation and supplemental resources

• Leverage existing resources and distance learning offerings

• Provide teachers with additional multimedia and technology tools to enhance instruction

The Strategies involved in creating this system will require a serious overhaul of the network between the schools (State Network) to allow faster downloads of course material; more bandwidth for streaming courses in real time; create more storage space online for a larger variety of down loadable material; develop courses that are a combination of real-time video conferencing with down loadable material for a blended approach; and a structured web portal for the coordination between the schools and online courses. The benefits of down loadable material allow:

1. Teachers and students to refer back to the downloaded material (online manuals/books and instructor lead video) as a study reference library.
2. Students can learn at their own pace if certain material is difficult to comprehend at first, additional material can be downloaded to augment their studies to get them up to speed.
3. E-Teachers (Certified Teachers who teach online) have the advantages of :
1. Hold a discussion forum on a topic
2. Hold a review session in real time chat
3. Hold a review session using a real time whiteboard
4. Hold a review session to be accessed any time any place
4. The down loadable resources on this site give class room teachers enormous amounts of additional resources at their fingertips to aid their instruction.

The ACCESS website is an exciting program that gives equal access to advanced placement education (AP College Standards) for all schools that are part of the Alabama Network. This program levels the playing field between rural schools and medium to large city schools which will give more children the opportunity to get an education that will earn their way into the colleges of their choice.

The white rabbit "Ba"

"Back down to size Alice makes her way out of the house to find a small crowd of assorted animals, who in turn make a rush toward Alice when they see her. Quickly retreating into the nearby thick wood she finds herself confronted by an enormous puppy (note that Alice is merely a few inches tall at this time) and plays fetch with the puppy, tiring him into sleep. She rests for a moment herself, looking around and spotting a mushroom growing near her, she examines all angles of the mushroom and decides to have a peek at what might be on top of it. As she stands tiptoe and looks, her eyes meet with the ones of a blue Caterpillar, who is sitting arms folded quietly smoking a hookah"

......Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Using "ALEX" as a Tool For My Class Room

I would start off using the ALEX portal as a major resource gathering tool to see the methods of putting together lessons not for just one day, but for weeks at a time to give me a basic outline and time frame to follow to gage my progress as I teach. Spending time going through the Web Links and visit each site to gather as much information as possible and to possible learn from the mistakes made in the past so I do not repeat them.

I could also implement this ALEX site in the classroom environment to allow my students access to the valuable information provided under the student titles. We would have the ability to spend time in the Student Web Links section going over certain principles discussed in our main lessons to augment what was being taught that day or week. This would be a valuable tool for students to reference not only in class, but at home also to help them with problem areas in their studies to keep them up to speed and also to keep their confidence level up. The Distance learning modules is a fantastic tool that will allow me to plan times to have multimedia lessons from instructors from across the country and possibly all the way around the world. This is an amazing tool that I would love to have had when I was in school.

ALEX Description

The ALEX web site is a resource site designed as a very useful resource for teachers, administrators, and students. Essentially, this site is a gateway of consolidated information that is easily accessed by users from a single web portal. A great benefit for all users of this site is the ability to gain access to a broad source of information from a single web portal saving hours of research time using many individual sources of information. I find this site incredibly useful for having such a vast amount of resources accessible from a single gateway. To gather all of this information on your own would take a vast amount of time to consolidate into a list of good sites such as in your Internet Explorer Favorites or Firefox Bookmarks. Even if you were to build a large list of favorites/bookmarks for yourself, there is no real way of knowing how legit some of your sites will be. The ALEX development team went through great lengths to build this site with the endorsement of the Alabama Department of Education.

The ALEX main page is a gateway to eight separate pathways to information specific to what you are searching for such as: Courses of Study – Portal to all of the major subjects of education; Personal Workspace – Is a personalized workspace to allow you to upload lesson plans and anything relevant to building your lesson. You will need to create your own user login account with a secure password to access this information. Registration is FREE; Professional Learning – Stay on top of your own training as a teaching professional with valuable resources to furthering your own education; Web Links – Essential web links divided up into Teacher, Student, and Administrator relevant website links; Lesson Plans – A portal tool to allow you to search a lesson plan via Author, Title, School, Subject, and Grade Level; Distance Learning – Web based learning that allows access to education over the internet utilizing multimedia video tools; Search – A built in search engine that allows you to enter a term(s) to be searched through out the ALEX database; Help – A Frequently Asked Questions page to answer to most common issues on the ALEX site.

Did you know?

That film should be a wake up call for America. We have become so comfortable in our own world that we have neglected to keep up with the rest of the world. China and India are producing 3 times more English speaking college graduates than the United States. We could soon find ourselves outsourcing all of our technology to foreign countries. What is it going to take for Americans to demand a change in our education system to build a greater foundation of technological education to not only catch up with the world but to once again be the leader.

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