Blog Post 13

ABOUT ALEX

ALEX is basically a new teacher's best friend. ALEX is designed to provide teachers with the most up-to-date, best resources for teachers to use in their classroom. This ranges anywhere from sample lesson plans, to interactive activities. I have actually used a template lesson plan from ALEX for an assignment in EDF 315. It is extremely useful because it shows you what other teacher's lesson plans look like and allows you to build off of it rather than starting from the ground up. Not only is it a great resource, but the information comes from the National Board of Cerified Teachers so you can use these resources with confidence because they have reliable sources. ALEX has received the 2007 Honorable Mention as well as the 2008 and 2009 Digital Education Achievement Award.

You can choose from any subject you can think of. You can even create your own personal page of workspace. The possibilites are endless. If you can think it, ALEX has it.

I think that ALEX is extremely beneficial for new teachers because it gives them a template to work from. New teachers don't know the ropes when they first start out and ALEX allows to have a good start and an example to refer to, rather than trying to figure everything out on your own. I think as a teacher I would definitely use the resources as templates or examples and create my own. I love that I have a reference to look at while trying to plan things. But, I don't think teachers should make the mistake of using every lesson plan AS IS. We don't need anymore cookie-cutter teachers. How can we expect students to think for themselves if we as teachers can't even think for ourselves? We can't hold others to expectations or show students how to be creative if we are unable to be creative ourselves.