ACCESS LAB EXPERIENCE

ACCESS, the acronym for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide, is, yet, another wonderful program offered to Alabama teachers, faculty, students, and their parents. ACCESS reaches out to students by offering the opportunity to take elective, Advanced Placement, and other on-line courses not offered in their school. Students may take a wide variety of classes ranging from chemistry, to psychology, to foreign languages. Students are even offered tools such as an interactive on-line chemistry lab. Through ACCESS, teachers and faculty are given the opportunity to infiltrate the use of technology and help many students across the state of Alabama by inviting their knowledge, expertise, and desire to help. Again, parents are not left out of the equation. They, too, have the ability to view the courses and course descriptions offered to their child/children along with a helpful guide.


I had the pleasure of visiting an up and running ACCESS lab at Mary G. Montgomery High School in Semmes, Alabama. Mr. Roger Rose, an ACCESS and Psychology instructor, walked me through the basics of the lab. Students sit at the tables with laptops in front of them. They stay in the lab for a certain amount of time just as they would in a regular block, or period, for a class. In all, there were 25 available laptops for the students. Mr. Rose showed me his 'special' laptop, the Kodak Hub, which has access to other ACCESS labs; it shows exactly what they are doing at that moment, and the classrooms and the instructors can interact as they can see and hear each other in real time on the flat screen televisions. Through this Kodak Hub, Mr. Rose, and other instructors, can teach other students enrolled in that particular class, such as if Mr. Rose is teaching psychology to his students at MGM, he can simultaneously teach students at Murphy high school and both the students at MGM and Murphy can see and hear each other through the laptop and televisions mounted onto the walls. Mr. Rose also presented an ELMO machine, which eliminates the usual dry erase board and markers or chalkboard and chalk. This ELMO machine/laptop allows the instructors to do work on it, kind of similar to a projector, as it is simultaneously shown on the flat screen television, which is extremely cool! Again, students from other school can also view this.


Mr. Rose also noted the extreme importance of being computer and technologically savvy in today's classrooms. Just as in this class, Mr. Rose, and fellow instructors, are implementing the use of podcasts into their regular classrooms as well as the ACCESS classroom. Mrs. LeGrone, a chemistry instructor, is the forerunner of the podcasts at MGM. She uploads all of her lectures into podcasts and also onto TeacherTube, which is just like youtube for teachers.

My visit to MGM's ACCESS lab was a very interesting and informative one. It is really amazing how students are able to receive a quality lecture without even physically being at the same place as the instructor and other students. They can talk to the instructor and other students, raise their hands, and participate in all class discussions and assignments while hundreds of miles away. ACCESS is wonderful as it offers the students classes they are interested in taking but are unable to at their school. Whoever thought of ACCESS hit the nail right on the head. It is truly wonderful and I will be sure to enlighten my future students and parents of this program.

Mr. Rose's website can be viewed here.
Mrs. LeGrone's website can be viewed here.