Post 9

An Open Letter to Educators, Morgan Bayda's Response

I share Morgan Bayda's experience of sitting in a class and listening to a lecture. Its a shame that so many students have to pay to waste their time in classes like that. However, I'm not going to drop out of school just because I don't agree with the way some teachers go about teaching. Instead, I think its useful to think of class as only one part of your learning. It's up to the student to take his own education in his hands and take it as far as he wants to.

I'm not sure where I've heard this but someone told me that college degrees and becoming less and less relevant to getting a job. Obviously some jobs require college degrees but since more people have them now, you have to go beyond your degree to impress someone enough to get hired. I've said before that I believe a teacher's job is to encourage his or her students to want to learn. Students should want to expand their knowledge and they should be given the tools so that they will be able to do so.

ALEX and ACCESS

I've explored ALEX and ACCESS before. In fact, when I first learned about it, I suggested it to my mom who then used ALEX to help plan several lessons for her class. The ALEX website looks even more user friendly than the last time I visited it. From what I've seen the ALEX website seems so easy to use. I like how you can just check off what you need and for what grade and the site generates lessons for your room.

ALEX has such great tools for teachers. After you choose a lesson you can bookmark it or work on it in your own personal learning space. There are also links to grants, news about education, and links to more tools for the classroom. I also found the courses of study for Alabama. Right there you have easy access to what your students should be learning according to their grade.

ACCESS seems like the greatest idea for students who don't have classes they need or want available at their schools. ACCESS is just one more reason that teachers should be technologically literate. If there aren't teachers that can teach on ACCESS, these students couldn't use distance learning. Also, there should be teachers who can help students at their school.

The website's video on the main page had students talking about how they used ACCESS and how much it benefited them. I read through the FAQs and a lot of my questions about what ACCESS is and how it is used were answered. I wish I had had ACCESS in my high school. There might have been so many things I could have chosen from to take instead of classes like parenting and home design. Neither of which I feel like I use anything from now.