It started with a discussion between my wife and I on how to improve communication and collaboration between teachers. My wife asked the question, “How do I get feedback on my lesson plans and find new ideas if I am solely responsible for coming up with lessons?” We continued our discussion and delved deeper into the daily life of a teacher. This led to further discussions with other teachers, young and old, from private and public schools.

All of these discussions pointed to a problem; teachers are not getting enough peer support to create the best classroom environments for their students. Teachers must constantly evaluate the best way to teach their class based on the classroom’s makeup; limiting their access to good ideas and lesson plans, limits their ability to be effective teachers. I thought that collaborative technologies like wikis, social networks and online word processing could fill this gap. With this as a start, I began to research what a solution might look like and to build a team that could execute the solution.

Which leads us to PlansForUs. With PlansForUs, a teacher is not alone. As a member of PlansForUs, a teacher’s ideas are no longer on an island; they are part of an interconnected world. A teacher from Nebraska will share her ideas and plans with a teacher from New York, who might connect to a teacher in Canada who shares an idea with a teacher in India. No longer constrained by geography, PlansForUs can facilitate a community that connects, shares, collaborates and builds a global community of teachers impacting the lives of children both in and beyond their own classrooms. PlansForUs is where ideas and teaching converge to the benefit of teachers and their students.

In our research, we have acutely observed the success of Wikipedia, read what people like JP Rangaswami are saying about the power of collaboration and openness to positively impact the world, and internalized the writings of Clarence Fisher, Jeff Utecht, Sheryl Nussbaum and other educational bloggers who are bringing technology and collaborative learning into the classroom. These influences shape how we have built PlansForUs, and we hope to build deeper connections with these individuals and organizations as we evolve our service.

We are about serving teachers. We are humbled by the collective intelligence of our future users and, therefore, embrace the community of teachers as our guide to building PlansForUs. We accept the challenge that their embrace of PlansForUs will result in a unique relationship that can change the world for the better.

Speak to you soon.

by Tyler, CEO