ACCESS

Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide, or ACCESS, is a great tool for both students and teachers. Most of it deals with distance learning either by video or online courses. This tool is great for students who are not able to take AP courses at their school. I grew up in Atlanta where AP courses were popular and many students took more than one AP at a time. But the power point explains that Alabama ranks 14 out of 16 in AP courses. ACCESS could improve that. With distance learning students would be exposed to courses that are not available at their own school. I have personally taken an online class and that was a while ago. With today's technology, I am sure it has improved greatly. Having students take these online classes during their school day is a great idea because not only are you exposed to the class itself but the students could lean on each other for support, something I was not so lucky to experience. As with the videoconferencing, students would be able to help each other as the class went on. The technology has improved tremendously and ACCESS would be a great tool for all students.
ACCESS could also be a great help to teachers. One tool was the blended learning which combined video and online into one class. I think this would be great for both students and teachers. It allows for assignments and such to be posted online for easy access and it allows the professor to quickly contact the students. But with the video it allows for both to see each other and ask question and get answers with a full explanation. No matter what the subject might be, I think that this blended learning should be explored further because our society is so technology based that this way of learning could become very popular. The online learning allows for students to work with their schedule and the video still allows that classroom learning environment, which is important to how some students learn. ACCESS is reaching students and helping them further themselves in education that many thought would never be possible. Getting students ready for college and further on is something that schools have a hard time with the resources. ACCESS is allowing schools to gain the resources to help these students, which is a great process.