As usual Clarence Fisher is powerfully insightful on matters of teaching and technology. Have a read of this entry his entry, “The Natural Organization of Classroom Knowledge = the Unit?“. In my reading, this piece spoke of removing the artificiality of the unit and letting the lesson form organically based on the needs of the students. What a great thought and one that we will work to support at PlansForUs.
It is at the unit level where we think PlansForUs can provide the most benefit to teachers. These units, the building blocks of classroom success, are easily shared, remixed and reborn in new ways that the original author might not have conceived. It is Creation through Collaboration as teachers modify and assemble these units to create the best classroom experiences.
PlansForUs will commit to building tools that will allow you to filter and find those units that best fit your classrooms and curriculums.

Thanks Clarence.

For those Mac users out there who use the Safari browser…we know we have a compatability issue. Unfortunately, the tool that you use to cut, paste and write lesson plans does not work as it should.
In the meantime, we would suggest that you use Firefox. Click here to download the Firefox browser if you do not have it installed already. We will post on this blog when we have the solution to the Safari browser issue.
Oh, and welcome to our new members! I know we had a small piece in the Delta Region Teach for America email blast this afternoon. We couldn’t be more happy to start our relationship with Teach for America. Thanks Jenn.

So I went to see Arcade Fire with my buddy Brad at Radio City Music Hall tonight.

I realize that this is totally unrelated to education and building a business, except that I was amazed with how Arcade Fire created its sound. It got me thinking about how to manage a team of talented people. Arcade Fire had 10 different players on stage and it was remarkable to see them interchanging instruments and roles on stage. Amidst this creative chaos Win Butler, the lead singer stayed in total control.

As PlansForUs grows I am going to work hard to be like Win Butler (albeit a lot less cool and not Canadian), letting the various PlansForUs players reach their highest use regardless of what instrument/role they choose to play.

Finally, The National was the opening act and they were awesome. It is no wonder that they sold out 5 consecutive nights at the Bowery Ballroom. I think that I am going to have to get a couple tickets for that show.

Thanks to Brad for getting these tickets and inviting me along. It was an amazing show, definitely among the tops that I have seen.

Now back to business.

We are looking for your input. Karen Seddon’s thoughts on summer are a nice segue to our own appeal to you, our future users. We are looking for insights and opinions on the tools we will be releasing on PlansForUs all summer long in anticipation of the 2007-2008 school year.

By the way, you should check Karen’s site out, she is using all sorts of different media to get her views across and we think those views are well worth hearing. Thanks for reading Karen.

Oh and happy National Teachers Day.

So we launched last week. We have spent the past week working out some of the obvious kinks in the system. There is no doubt that there will be more, but for now we are ready to rumble.

Version 0.1 is a simple online word processor, allowing teachers to write a lesson plan directly at PlansForUs and save it. Once saved the plan enters the database and is accessible to other teachers.

We are looking for advocates, people who believe that collaborative lesson planning can be an amazing tool and that the PlansForUs team can build that tool. We are completely open to new ideas. In fact, we have all committed to the philosophy that we are only guides and facilitators for our users. Teachers know what fits their lives best, we will offer you a range of ideas. Choose the best ones for you and if you can think of anyothers let us know.

We are also thinking of starting a PlansForUs Meetup group. Have you used Meetup before? We just thought it would be a cool way to get to know our teachers. If you are into it, let us know and we will go ahead and set one up. Start one anywhere and we will do our best to be there, whether that’s in Mississippi, South Dakota or New York City.

Please sign up and help us create the ultimate collaborative lesson planning tool.

The site is up. If you are a teacher and are willing to provide your valuable insights to the PlansForUs team as we work to build the best possible collaborative lesson planning tool, then please go to PlansForUs and sign up for an account.
Lesson planning will never be the same, but we need your help to get there.

Talk to you soon.