ALEX

ALEX stands for the Alabama Learning Exchange. It is a wonderful resource for teachers, students, and administrators. It basically lays out the curriculum, standards and guidelines for K-12 education in Alabama. This site has web links available for you providing information and useful tools. For students, they have websites for every subject possible. Students will find this useful for studying or doing a report. This website also provides teachers' lesson plans. This is a nice tool for parents to access to see what their children are doing in school. ALEX also explains in details what the curriculum guidelines are for every subject and every grade. I enjoyed the part of the website that contained tools for Professional Learning. It is important for teachers to continuously develop and better their teaching methods and educational growth. This provides tips and tricks to working with technology ( which is very useful!) It has a Special Education tab, library media tab, as well as a link that lists professional organizations.

A very interesting aspect of ALEX was its podcast library. It is called Gallery 360. You can search for different topics throughout the different subjects. Some of the findings are interviews with a person knowledgeable in the particular subject. Something that is helpful about the library is that it informs you of the standards and grade level that the podcast is aligned with. This way, teachers are able to hand pick what is appropriate for their class.