September 2005 — Features

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Dissecting a Network-Based Education System

By Tiffany Davis, Seong-Moo Yoo, and Wendi (David) Pan

They can also submit Web resources, which are correlated to content standards, to be included in this list of categorized resources. To submit a Web resource,users must provide the URL, title, targeted audience, and a brief description of the Web site. Users must also align the Web resource by selecting the content standards it addresses. This is done the same way that teacher-created and MarcoPolo lesson plans are aligned to content standards.

Teacher Zone. The Teacher Zone section of ALEX is designed to provide announcements, grant opportunities,and other information that teachers can use to increase their knowledge and improve classroom instruction. A professional development calendar is included in this section which allows users to create and view professional development opportunities across the state of Alabama. To submit an event for inclusion in this calendar, the user must include information such as event title and description, the sponsoring organization, the location, the date, the cost to attend (if any), and seating availability. JavaScript is used to verify that all required information is included before it is submitted. Once submitted, users are allowed to re-use this information to submit events for additional dates; they can modify any of the original information.

Teacher-to-Teacher. The Teacher-to- Teacher section of ALEX offers listservs and forums. Currently, more than 30 listservs have been created for each type of teacher and administrator, including elementary physical education teachers, foreign language teachers, elementary school principals, elementary school counselors, middle school math teachers, high school music teachers, etc. Mailman (www.gnu.org/software/mailman) is the free listserv software that is used to provide several user interfaces, including subscribing/ unsubscribing, and viewing and editing subscription information. An administrative interface is also available for modifying list configuration information. In addition, the site currently has 10 forums that are available for discussion among ALEX users.

Reporting Tools

Users designated as administrators have access to reporting tools. In some cases, additional users are granted access, as well. There are four types of reporting tools: Web site usage, registered user information, teacher-created lesson plan statistics, and MarcoPolo lesson plan information.

Web site usage tools are available courtesy of The Webalizer (www.mrunix.net/webalizer), free software that generates charts and graphs from Web server log files. The Webalizer provides tables and charts that include statistics on the number of hits, files, pages, visits, and kilobytes processed per hour/per day. It also provides IP addresses or DNS names of hosts that visit the Web site, and a list of countries from which visitors access the Web site.

Information on registered users is available to administrators. A PHP script queries the user and school tables to provide last name, first name, user name, school system name, and school name of each user. This tool also incorporates a search feature so administrators can look for users by name or user name.