This is the letter to PlansForUs Members…As for my blogging, please head over to www.youmeandmyapi.com where I will change gears and get cranking in April.
–
Dear PlansForUs Members,

We started PlansForUs in November of 2006 with the idea that a platform for sharing knowledge and expediting collaboration between teachers would be the tool for solving the problem of teachers not having enough time to find and develop engaging lessons. We received plenty of great feedback, the most fundamentally correct and challenging being, PlansForUs is only useful if it doesn’t take any more of my precious time to use. This was our fundamental flaw, PlansForUs made an assumption around sharing content and while that assumption has borne out magnificently well for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and others, teachers are uniquely challenged to find the time to contribute. Unfortunately, I did not give my team enough of a runway to iterate our initial design and concept to solve this fundamental flaw in a way that would truly reflect your needs. As a result we did not generate the organic community growth needed to maintain the company.

Everyday I hear the stories of a teacher’s (my wife) triumphs and difficulties. Each time I hear a story I wish that I could capture it as a digital vignette to be shared so that other teachers could use these experiences to contextualize and solve their own challenges. The fact that teachers cannot actively engage and benefit from one another’s experiences is a huge frustration. My hope is that as more entrepreneurs build solutions to the challenges faced by educators, that they maintain a laser focus on business models that leverage and capitalize on a vibrant, participatory community of teachers. It is essential to focus on the teacher, so that we can outflank the traditional bureaucratic monetization routes that have crippled the integration of technology that actually benefits student education and teacher’s lives.

In the 21st century, no group of people is more important than teachers and I thank you for giving me an opportunity to build something to help you in your daily lives. While our team didn’t pull it off this time, please know that we will not forget your needs and we’ll work hard in the intervening years to muster the resources to pull it off on the next go around. As for the present, on March 31st we will shut the site down. I am considering hosting a Ning based social network in its place, but given the social network overload out there, I will only do so if there is sufficient demand from you.

Best Regards,

Tyler Fonda

by Tyler, CEO