Blog Post #13

ALEX

(Alabama Learning Exchange)

ALEX is a project of the Alabama Department of Education. It is designed to share educational materials and information through a one stop resource for parents, teachers, and students. The resources are connected to the Alabama Course of Study by National Board Certified Teachers. On the website, you can communicate with other professionals through Listservs, find lesson plans, and interactive resources connected to the Course of Study standards, benefit from best practices in Professional Learning, and links to help your students. 

There are eight different link options on the homepage that can take you to a variety of places. They are: Courses of Study, Web Links, Lesson Plans, Search, Personal Workspace, Professional Learning, Podcast Treasury, and ALEXville. When going to these links you will learn many things about the Department of Education and many great resources that will help a teacher in their classroom. 

I decided to explore the Lesson Plan link option. You are able to either make your own lesson plan by using your Personal Workspace or you can find lesson plans by Author, Title, or School. You can also find lesson plans by subject. If you decided to make your own, then you need to log in before beginning. When looking for a lesson plan, you can go as far as searching for one by the subject, grade or even by a keyword. This provides a teacher with an effective search engine for lesson plans. I decided to look into Social Studies on a 2nd grade level. The first lesson plan that came up was to use a picture book with Google Earth to highlight ten major landmarks on the world. This would be such an amazing lesson to show students places that are so important on the Earth!

I also decided to check out Podcast Treasury which is actually called gallery 360. They have featured content that you are able to click on and it will begin automatically. The featured content right now is: My Class 2.0, Oil Spill Science, and Cast In Iron. You are also able to click on different subjects and check out the different podcast for the things you are teaching at the moment. This was such a neat website and I loved looking into all the podcast that teachers downloaded of their lessons. It is an amazing way to help other teachers out and really unites teachers around Alabama.

In my opinion, ALEX is a great tool for teachers. You can find lesson plans and a variety of useful resources. This will help teachers be more effective in providing their students with an effective educational experience. It also allows you to see different ways of teaching a certain topic and what has been useful for other teachers. As a future teacher, I will take advantage of this website and use it in its entirety. I also hope to one day be Nationally Board Certified so that I can help other teachers by providing them with what has helped me and what hasn't.