ALEX is a website devoted to providing resources to Alabama administrators, teachers, parents, and students. The homepage is broken into eight categories: courses of study, web links, lesson plans, search, personal workspace, professional learning, podcast treasury, and ALEXville. Courses of study provide all of the Alabama content standards for each subject. When I clicked on mathematics it took me to a page listing the standards for math. Each grade level from K-8 is listed, and then mathematics skills for high school students were listed such as algebra, geometry, precalculus, and statistics. Possible lesson plans are provided as examples for teachers. The link for lesson plans is also very user friendly. You can click on a subject and a grade level and find different lesson plans that were created according to the Alabama learning standards. Another category, podcast treasury, is a showcase for student podcasts based on some of the lessons provided. Professional learning gives information about professional development opportunities for teachers. There are also grant opportunities listed as well.
ALEXville provides a blog called ALEXville News as well as a collection of listservs opportunities and professional learning courses. By clicking on professi0onal organizations, you can see a list of all professional organizations in Alabama. I clicked on the link for National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and it took me to the NCTM website. It provides support for teachers in the field as well as a list of journals and books, and upcoming conferences.
I think ALEX would be extremely helpful to a new teacher because it brings so much information together into one website. New teachers could find the Alabama content standards for the course they are teaching as well as lesson plans, professional development information, and professional organizations they can become a member of. Although I might not access all of it at one time, just knowing about the site and becoming more familiar with it, is an excellent resource.
ACCESS-
ACCESS provides distance learning opportunities for students. This site says that it has more than, “50 different courses including 5 different foreign languages and 10 different AP courses.” More than one hundred teachers provide the instruction. It provides remediation modules for the Alabama High School Graduation Exam. ACCESS would be helpful for students who might not be able to fit a course into their high school schedule. It also provides AP review. The resources site lists some interesting Chemistry software as well as access to Graphmatica which gives students the ability to plot equations. It looks like many Alabama high schools take part in the distance learning site.
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