ACCESS

ACESS or Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide is a site available to all Alabama public high school students to "provide equal access to high quality instruction to improve student achievement through distance learning opportunities"About ACCESS. In other words, it provides opportunities for high school students who may not have the average learning environment, resources, or capabilities to get access to better education in the specific areas needed. This program was presented to Governor Bob Riley in September of 2006 and has been instated since then. It has online courses that students can take in order to improve their educational benefits and academic achievement. It includes the D2L or Desire 2 Learn courses and AHSGE Alabama High School Graduation Exam Remediation Modules in Moodle. There are different support centers- Madison City Schools, University of Alabama, and Troy University. It also offers professional development opportunities to teachers and in connecting these teachers to D2L staff. This site also provides "ongoing professional learning modules which include training in Wimba Voice Tools, Elluminate, NetTrekker, Curriculum Pathways, and other web tools used in the distance learning environment"ACCESS professional development.
Overall, I think this site can be very useful to teachers and students, especially those who need and want the opportunity to advance in their academic situation. I would assume this program would reach out to those ESOL students or other students who may not have a proper learning facilitator or environment. I believe this program can be used for students who are schooled at home or who may have parents who's jobs re-locate them all over the state. I think this information could be more useful if the site's navigation and overall layout was different.