"Tools4Teachers is a secure Alberta Education website developed by the Distributed Learning Resources Branch, for use by Alberta Educators." (Taken from the website's homepage) The Tools4Teachers motto is "Working with Alberta's educators to provide custom learning resources". A user name and password is required to view the site, so the audience is clearly directed towards educators. The "about" section of the page does recommend that parents check out learnalberta.ca as a resource center. The site was designed to aid teachers with distance learning classes by providing authorized lessons and resources for them to use, or to suppliment or base there own upon. Because this website was created by Distributed Learning Resources, a branch of Alberta Education, which provides "leadership in advancing the use of technology in learning and is responsible for the development and delivery of provincially authorized distributed learning resources", I would consider them authentic learning resources.
I would not recommend students directly to the website, as with learnalberta.ca, but I would compile a document with links that would provide them direct paths to resources that would be useful to them. In compiling an online course for distance education, this website would be a great resource, especially for beginning teachers, or teachers new to the distance learning platform. Resources available on the website include HTML files, PDF files, multi-media objects, videos, audio clips, and much much more. The site recommends that these be used to add to your own materials for your lesson plans. They encourage teachers who are unsure to contact them for advice and/or assistance.
The website contains, listed by grade and subject, a variety of lesson plans, matching activities, assignments and keys. Most of the tools/resources I was able to find were PDF documents, especially at the lower grade levels, not a whole lot of interactive learning resources. There were home instruction guides, which I assume are either to help guide parents who choose to home school their children, or to suppliment what they may recieve from a distance learning teacher.
Navigation of this website is fairly straight forward and simple. There are links which lead to other links, each becoming more specific as you follow down the line. Not once did I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information being presented to me, as it was always in small chunks and well broken down. This website seems to be the closest out of the four to an actual website designed for learning purposes. It has laid out actual lessons to follow and curriculum instruction guides for the distance learner. For eye appeal, like most of the websites previously viewed, it could use some help. It looks very similar to a basic web site design from the late 90's, when high school classes everywhere were fooling around with making websites.
From an art teacher's perspective, this website has no resources available for immediate use. It does have a small section where it appears that one can purchase a course pack that would be mailed to them, but as far as online learning goes, I was unable to find anything. Again, I find this very disappointing, as the arts are a great way to help enrich other subject areas in the curriculum. No resources available for art was surprising to me also because there is a variety of CTS courses available on this page, including Prenatal and Postnatal Care, Parenting ect. There are a few art linked CTS courses, such as Animation and Design Studies, but no supporting fundamental classes.
All things considered, this website is a great resource for distance learning classes and their teachers. Lesson plans, assignments and assessments are all provided for you on the website, and the website encourages you to use them to suppliment your own plans. This website is also very inviting in that they encourage communication between themselves and teachers whenever the teacher feels that they need help or clarification. I will keep this website in mind in the future if I ever need to teach a distance learning class, or even to suppliment a traditional classroom course and make sure I am on the right track.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment