ACCESS

ACCESS (Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators, and Students Statewide) is a web site designed to provide new ways for students to have access to high quality education and coursework who may not readily have access to it in Alabama. It does this by giving students the option of taking advanced placement courses and dual enrollment courses online. Some of the web based courses include regular and AP English, regular and AP social studies, science course, foreign languages, electives (computer, technical, psychology, writing, accounting, nutrition...), health, and art. One interesting thing I found about ACCESS is that some courses use IVC (interactive video conference) as a way to teach the course with 21st century-style e-teachers. ACCESS provides typical classroom teachers new innovative way to teach by using this web site with their students as well. This will, as their mission states, "...provide an infrastructure that delivers quality learning opportunities for all citizens."
This may or may not be useful to me as an early childhood special education teacher. For my major, I will instructing special needs children ages 0-4. Typically these children would not be taking the courses such as those provided on ACCESS. However, it is a great site to be aware of, and I will share my knowledge of it with other teachers who may be trying to figure out ways to provide a better education to their students.