DURING THE PAST NINE MONTHS, nearly 1 million visitors to the Los Angeles Learning Exchange have read several perspectives regarding the recent appointment of Ruben Zacarias as the Los Angeles Unified School District's new superintendent. They viewed an in-depth study as to why California schools may be flunking science, and got to see some of what their children are learning through the aid of some innovative classroom projects. Visitors took a "Mission to Mars" via LAUSD activities planned to coincide with last summer's Mars landing and contributed their opinions through the Learning Exchanges Feedback page on topics such as the current textbook shortage and Latino dropout rate plaguing public schools.

The Los Angeles Learning Exchange, the Los Angeles Educational Partnership's interactive Web site, is a diverse, dynamic, interactive resource for educators and others interested in improving public education in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California. Its mission is to provide service, insight, expertise, training, encouragement and resources to assist those in the learning community.

The LA Learning Exchange's innovative web design also enables it to present timely, topical and innovative issues and resources to educators in Southern California. With the site being visited more than 150,000 times a month, the readership for interesting and diverse articles is quite large.

Teachers routinely tap into the LA Learning exchange to examine interactive lessons, share information with their peers, or explore new avenues for professional development and grants. Parents find resources to help their children with reading or check out effective strategies for improving their school. Business and other community members use the Learning Exchange as a resource to become more involved with public education from home or the office.

Those interested in learning more about a particular subject link to databases, have access to resource material or visit Web sites specifically tailored to their needs.

The LA Learning Exchange also offers a rich mix of hands-on instructional materials developed by Southland teachers for immediate use in the classroom. Teachers can download sample lesson plans already found successful by their peers. They will also find links to LAEP's teacher networks including the Learning Community Program, Target Science and +PLUS+ as well as to professional organizations such as United Teachers Los Angeles.

Those interested in professional development and career training opportunities have access to LAEP's SMART Catalog, a compendium of professional development programs and resources for teachers of math, science and technology in Los Angeles County; the Los Angeles County Teacher Technology Center; or LAEP's Grant Site for Educators, where they can find what grants are currently available.

Teachers share techniques with colleagues and get help from experts via news groups dedicated to math, science, humanities and most other subjects like those in the online SMART catalog, or use the searchable Professional Development Collaborative database to locate experienced teacher consultants to help with a particular problem or subject.

For those interested in keeping up on the latest news and current events, LA Learning Exchange provides links to the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and LALCNet News in addition to many online magazines and databases.

Anyone wishing to venture beyond the LA Learning Exchange can do so via easily accessible links to search engines such as Lycos, Infoseek, Yahoo, and WebCrawler.