MCHS Goes Interactive

ACCESS Distance Learning coming to Guin’s high school

Article republished by kind permission of The Journal Record
Staff Report

GUIN - Gov. Bob Riley’s crusade to equip all Alabama schools with online, interactive learning capabilities has resulted in Marion County High School’s equipage with ACCESS (Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators and Students Statewide) Distance Learning
technology.

The ACCESS technology will allow students at MCHS to participate in, and earn credit for, a class taught by another teacher from anywhere in the state that is equipped with ACCESS.
ACCESS is designed to allow for access to advanced diploma courses, additional course offerings, advanced placement and dual enrollment courses and remediation. It also allows teachers to gather multimedia and online tools to enhance the subject matter taught.

ACCESS also allows a classroom access to the Alabama Supercomputer Authority, a state-funded enterprise that was founded in 1989 to operate the Alabama Supercomputer Center and the Alabama Research and Education Network. What it does Bravell Jackson, superintendent of the Marion County School System, gave a small example of the many educational options that ACCESS can
provide. “As hard as it is to find foreign language teachers, a student must have credit for a foreign language class to receive an advanced diploma,” he began. “We currently only offer Spanish; we only have three Spanish teachers for five high schools in the county.

How Does It Work?

“Let’s say that this student wanted to take German or French instead of Spanish. That student could get online with ACCESS, see the material, see and communicate with the teacher and take the
class.”
In order to carry out the functions of ACCESS, MCHS will be receiving about $90,000 in state-funded equipment. Marion County School System Technology Coordinator James Killingsworth explained the list of machinery that would soon be in place. To provide for the virtual classroom that is ACCESS, MCHS will utilize 25 tablet personal computers, 25 headsets with microphones, a smart board, a camera and two monitors.
The tablet personal computers are high-end laptops with interactive touch-screens, allowing students to access information with the point of a finger or the jab of an eraser. The screens are able to rotate
left and right and pivot up and down, allowing the student using the tablet PC to show work, step by step, to the teacher. That teacher will be watching the class via the camera and monitors,
which Killingsworth said will either be 50-inch LCD screens or digital projectors, and listening through the 25 headsets. The teacher will be able to communicate his or her work to the students by using the smart board, which is an interactive chalk board. The smart board is written upon using dry-erase markers, like a traditional white board, but the sensors in the smart board broadcast the marks made upon it via the Internet to its counterpart in the students’ presence. There will also be a DVD player, a VCR and a “document camera”, a fixed camera designed to transmit the image of papers laid beneath
its lense, to facilitate the learning process. This camera will be used to do tasks like checking homework.

The Results
With all of these pieces of equipment in place, the ACCESS classes, which will be included in a student’s daily schedule of seven classes, will function like a normal classroom. The students will use their tablet PCs to access information. They will be able to see the instructor on a large screen, and the instructor, no matter which of the state’s 67 counties that he or she is employed in, will be able to see the students. The instructor can follow the students’ work by watching their rotating tablet PC
screens and by examining their paperwork with the document camera.
The students will be able to follow the teacher’s written instructions and notes as they instantly appear on their own smart board. Any student that has a question need but raise a hand, just like the
old days. The teacher will be able to see the entire class on the monitor, call upon the student and hear that student through the headset and microphone.
Basically, the ACCESS Distance Learning system functions like a normal classroom, but with the teacher appearing live on a large screen instead of standing before the class.

Sign Me Up

In order to participate with the 170 schools in the state currently using ACCESS, the school system sent several educators for ACCESS training in Montgomery over the summer. They returned as either
ACCESS counselors or facilitators. ACCESS counselors review students’ needs and identify those that could benefit by using the program, and steer them toward it. ACCESS facilitators watch over the students and supervise as they take the interactive courses. Jackson said that the school system’s goal was to place two or three facilitators in each high school in the county. Although the
equipment that makes interactivity possible has not yet been installed, the basic course work for distance learning is available for use in all of the Marion County schools, as they all have
Internet access. Currently, a student at Hamilton High School is enrolled in the distance learning course, taking a science class from a teacher in Madison County. Although all of the county high schools can access the distance learning materials, only MCHS will be equipped with the full
interactive capabilities.

“For us to participate in ACCESS, we had to make an application for a high school,” Jackson explained. “The selection for Marion County High School was my decision; I made the call. I chose to
locate the program there because of the possibility that Guin might soon get the new auto plant.”

Jackson said that, if Guin gains the new industry, he, as does everyone, expects the student body at MCHS to swell rapidly as workers relocate to the area. Jackson wanted Guin’s high school to
be equipped and ready to meet the learning needs of the influx of students. Starting Marion County’s ACCESS experience in Guin does not,however, mean that the rest of the county will be left out. In
actuality, every high school in the county will, most likely, eventually be equipped with the ACCESS instruments, as Gov. Riley’s plans unfold.

“It’s an ongoing project,” said Killingsworth. “This year, they added 100 sites. The plan is to keep adding sites until every high school in Alabama has the ability.” Both Killingsworth and Jackson are quite pleased with the ability to host ACCESS equipment in the county school system.

“We’re very excited about this project and happy to have it,” Killingsworth said. “Quite frankly, this is something we couldn’t afford to do locally.”

Additional resources by Guin webAdmin:

ACCESS website

ACCESS FAQ's

Marion County BOE

Journal-Record

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