Blog Assignment #13

Alabama Learning Exchange, also known as ALEX, provides teachers with a great safe place to get information.  When you first type in http://alex.state.al.us/index.php it takes you to their home page. Then you will see all the different helpful icons ALEX provides. These helpful tools consist of Courses of Study, Web Links, Lesson Plans, Search, Personal Workplace, Professional Learning, Pod cast Treasury, and ALEXville. When you select the Courses of Study icon, it takes you to a page with a lot of different subject icons. Then you click on a subject and it shows you different lessons for your students to learn, links you to websites, and lesson plans on that subject. The Web Links page is a page with a lot of different resources such as teacher, administrator, student, search, and recommend a web resources page. ALEX also offers a lesson plan page that has a lot of subjects and grade levels to choose from. You can also use the Search icon to find anything that ALEX offers that isn’t on the other pages. Personal Workplace is my personal favorite. You can create an account on ALEX and have your own workplace. The Professional Learning page is also helpful for teachers. It has tips, tricks, and tutorials on a variety of technology tools. They also have a Pod cast Treasury which is super great. You can find just about any pod cast to go with any subject to show your class. Lastly, there is ALEXville. This is the ALEX community with post about important subjects. This page lets you know what’s going on in the teaching world.

I think ALEX will be very helpful when I begin teaching. I really like that it has lesson plans ready to go on pretty much every subject. I will most assuredly be using the Personal Workplace on ALEX to stay organized and professional. The Pod cast Treasury is another outstanding feature of ALEX I want to use. After being in EDM I want to incorporate pod cast in my lesson plans, and ALEX is a safe website to get pod cast to use in my classroom. This website is so helpful and resourceful!

Another website that is great is ACCESS ( Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and
Students Statewide program). It’s a distant learning website for the classroom, educators, and students. It has many different features of online learning. I think online learning is great. I personally have taken a lot of online classes and have enjoyed them. This website is great and I encourage those of you that have not looked at ACCESS to check it out!