On Friday I received a request from one of our PlansForUs users. The request was for a lesson plan on Spiders that was appropriate for a pre-k age group. Lucky for our user I was actually sending our monthly newsletter so I included the request in the newsletter. Last night a lesson was posted on spiders:

Math Spiders

While the math portion did not necessarily work for our user, she is using the plan as an art project and is really excited at how this worked. This is the power of the community and we are working on solving the problem of how to simply engage you in this sharing of ideas.

Over at Confused of Calcutta there was a piece that neatly articulates the power of networked communications. Networked communications associate generate an ongoing profile of usage about an individual which established immediate CONTEXT to any piece of information published.
JP expands beyond just the user association in his description of context benefiting IM conversations:

…one of the subjects we touched on for a while was the power of context. Conversations using social software tend to be wrapped in context, a context that is portable across time and space, with a significant reduction in switching costs as a result…You only have to use a decent “true” group IM application once to know what I mean…Who spoke. Who spoke before. What was said before. In what sequence. On what subject. For how long. Who interrupted. Who was there. Where was all this. When. Why. Everything. Those are some of the things I mean by conversation wrapped in context…

Context is what allows information to find its way to its most beneficial usage. Listservs are great at distributing information, however that information must be culled by every individual to determine its relevance for their particular context. Consider the difference in action steps when the context is wrapped around information. Now a user is either automatically directed to a piece of information that matches their proper context or a user does a quick scan to determine its relevance to their situation.

PlansForUs sits on top of a network of teachers that share information about themselves both explicitly and by their use of PlansForUs. By building and constantly adding information to a users profile we create the mechanism for efficiently delivering the information that matters most to our teachers. While exploration is a fun way to find new ideas when you are trying to write a new plan and you have already worked a 10 hour day, the last thing you really want to do is explore. Wrapping ideas and plans in context is the key to improving the lesson plan creation process for our users.

Thanks to JP for his consistently lucid breakdown of the powers of social software.

Sorry for the relatively light posting. I have been absolutely slammed lately and I haven’t had those moments to sit back and reflect on things. I also happen to be a relative newbie to efficient blogging, so that hasn’t helped.

Today I read an interesting piece in Businespundit. It was interesting to me because the article gets to the heart of PlansForUs’ value proposition:

My point is that networks are valuable for what they provide, not for their own sake.

PlansForUs continues to underplay the social networking aspects of our service because we aren’t building a social network. We are building a tool that supports a teacher’s effort to find and deploy engaging lesson plans in her classroom. We use the network to support clustering around individual teaching ideas. We use these clusters to filter the wheat from the chaff for our individual users. The article also makes an important point, particularly given our corporate mantra of Creation through Collaboration.

I think we sometimes decide to network to advance our career or business, and after a while become complacent. We network just to network, just out of habit. That’s unproductive. You don’t build a network just to have one, you build a network to use. And I don’t mean that negatively. You should give back to the network as well.

We haven’t built PlansForUs just to network. MySpace can be used for that. We built PlansForUs to simplify lesson plan sharing. Simplified lesson plan sharing means that teachers can easily collaborate to create new plans. We are seeking to make it easy for you to contribute. Tell us how we can improve that experience.

So Clarence Fisher, one of my favorite writers (I am over calling people bloggers), is always tossing compelling ideas against the wall. After my wife turned me onto the idea of creating PlansForUs, the first educational blogger that I stumbled upon was Clarence.

In his latest post he cites Will Richardson’s, “Trapped Between Stories” which talks about the significant societal changes occurring now. Will discusses the book Presence, which states that we are in a transitional period, in light of the transition happening in education.

The post goes on to describe his time at an Institute for the Future workshop where he heard the following quote that really set him, Clarence and ultimately, me off. Tom Carroll states:

Quality teaching today is a collective effort, not an individual accomplishment.

Clarence takes this statement and smartly applies it to the classroom, replacing teaching with learning. Will continues along the theme of reframing how teachers teach. As is my wont, I take this in the direction of solving this dilemma and particularly could PlansForUs be the platform to solve this problem.

I think one the biggest issues with harnessing collective effort is at the input stage. In order to generate collective effort, the collective need to generate a significant amount of inputs. These inputs are then filtered through the group and parsed out to those individuals who can put them to best affect.

Some of the esteemed writers in my blogroll have done amazing jobs contributing. Dan Meyer for one realized that the blog was the most flexible, adaptive medium he had found to share his terrific lesson plans. There are others like him who have contributed great amounts of time and energy to improving the dialogue. There are also many, many lesson plan, curriculum, teaching tactic sites out there that request that individuals submit their lessons to be used by others. What an amazing group of teachers that not only produce great lessons but then go to the trouble of submitting these lessons to a website. A testament to the collaborative nature of teachers.

But, at the end of the day what percentage of teachers does this represent. Could it be 1% of the total k-12 teachers in the US? Maybe, but that doesn’t even come close to matching a typical Pareto Distribution. I want PlansForUs to at least approximate a typical Pareto distribution of those who contribute content and those who utilize the content. A key to shifting this distribution is to MAKE SHARING PLANS/IDEAS EASY.

So how do you do it, well check out how we’re doing it at PlansForUs. We are moving the lesson plan processing experience online, so that a teacher can have a central place to keep all of his documents organized and be able to access those documents anywhere there is Internet access (overtime we will bridge the gap b/t off and online). The key here is that the word processing experience remain the same or equivalent to Word. The beauty being of simulating the Word experience online is that it requires only the click of the share button to share a plan. We have now eliminated a barrier to entry for plans, that being a teacher doesn’t have to go through another step of uploading the plan. This also might encourage teachers to share more of their work, maybe the plan isn’t worth going to the extra step of emailing or uploading it, but it certainly is worth clicking that share button.

The final thought is simplicity. If you read my pseudo-rant yesterday, I really am fed up with the educational software and websites that dominate the digital educational landscape. I mean yes, teachers have a lot of needs and interests and you don’t know which one is going to be the most interesting to them, but come on, edit yourself. Thanks to Steve, I have become a devotee of Agile thinking and have come to realize that editing yourself and focusing on the essentials is the greatest virtue of effective applications. Simplicity is a virtue. I had started writing that older teachers require simplicity, but the reality is, we all require simplicity. I mean the iPod and Google pretty much validate this concept. So PlansForUs aspires in it’s design and it’s focus to be like these icon’s of simplicity.

Join us, critique us, diss us, evangelize us. We are onto something and we are just stubborn and idealistic enough to bring a significant portion of the 65 million teachers worldwide together on a platform for idea sharing. We’ll start with the US and english speaking countries but eventually the world. Tom Carroll is right, however the only way to get there is to break down barriers to participation.

Collaboration is Hard

This is a statement posted by Matt Blumberg of Return Path and dissected in a series (1, 2, 3) of interesting posts on collaboration within the corporate realm. Given PlansForUs’ focus on collaboration within the educational sector I couldn’t help but read these posts thinking about the crossover and issues that are addressed by PlansForUs.

Yes, collaboration is hard, it is messy and difficult to arrange. However, collaboration is the most efficient way forward, particularly for educators seeking ways to engage their students.
To begin, lets start with the Wikipedia defintion of collaboration:

Collaboration is a process defined by the recursive interaction of knowledge and mutual learning between two or more people who are working together, in an intellectual endeavor, toward a common goal which is typically creative in nature. Collaboration does not necessarily require leadership and can even bring better results through de-centralization and egalitarianism.

The most interesting part of this definition is the piece on the effectiveness of collaboration without leadership. This is why collaboration can be messy. Without leadership it is left to the group to self organize and make sense of what is going on. Bees are really good at collaboratively self-organizing because they lack the ego’s that we humans have, consequently they massively collaborate on a regular basis to find the most advantageous site for their hive. Unfortunately for humans massive collaboration does not result in consistently optimal outcomes. Wikipedia is probably our best example of massive collaboration, but even Wikipedia is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to collaboration. However Wikipedia points us to a positive outcome that can arise through collaboration and the methods for achieving that outcome.

Two features of Wikipedia are particularly powerful when it comes to creating a successful collaborative platform, asynchronous data entry and the long tail. Let’s start with the long tail. Start with unique ideas/plans, then form community around these and finally attract the participants that are engaged in solving these unique problems.

The issue that arise in artificial professional learning communities is that the participants are not equally incented to solve a problem. I wrote to some folks in MySpace about this particular drawback when it comes to Professional Learning Communities.The reality is that when you assemble as an artificial learning community to solve problems, you are either solving generalized problems to “appeal to the group” or you are solving a specific problem of one of the dominant group members. In either case you will alienating some portion of the group.

By self-organizing around shared problems, micro-communities are endorsing the utility of collaboration by buying into the learning from collective intelligence.  Micro-define your problem then seek out a group that is trying to solve that same problem or if you are using PlansForUs, that group will find you…at least that’s the goal.

Asynchronous data entry is the second feature of Wikipedia that allows collaboration to scale. Teachers are on different schedules: life, school, work load, all contribute to the time a teacher has to address her classroom strategy for the following day. When a teacher is forced into a schedule that doesn’t take into account these outside limiters the teacher may not be in the mindset to participate collaboratively. Collaboration is rigorous and exhausting and if you are already exhausted or your mind is elsewhere, can you possibly contribute your most beneficial information? I would argue that you can not.

With asynchronous data entry, you can contribute to the conversation when you are ready to contribute to the conversation. Those who have come before you have done the same thing, so the outcome is a richer more nuanced collaborative experience. The consequence of this, is that the collaboration does not happen instantaneously, it is an extended conversation. At PlansForUs, we are aggregating the conversations and then using our software to make sense of the ongoing dialogue over an extended period of time. Your job is to contribute when you can, PlansForUs will harness that contribution to improve the overall collaborative experience.

In part 2 Matt Blumberg lays out exactly why collaboration is hard. In my next piece I will describe how you can overcome these hurdles and specifically how PlansForUs is addressing these hurdles.

I started reading Ben Wilkoff’s blog Discourse about Discourse recently. Ben has been honored by Yahoo as one of the most connected teachers out there. His understanding of how technology should be put to use in the classroom is articulated in a series entitled the Ripe Environment. The core thought behind this series is that technology is worthless without usage, so lets stop talking about technology implementation and start using technology (in his more eloquent words):

The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom.

The corollary to this point is that the tools need to be accessible to teachers across a wide range of technical knowledge. So make it easy and we can really get somewhere.

The first unit in the Ripe Environment series is on Connection. This is where it really starts to align with PlansForUs. Here, according to Ben, are the three types of connection that create thee most value: The 1:1, The autograph (aka 1:many), The frame (aka many:many).

Like Ben, the PlansForUs team agrees that successful implementations require that a tool satisfies each of these connections within the application. Simplicity + mult-tier connections is a recipe for success.

Enjoy Ben’s series, it is superb.

At PlansForUs our focus is upon releasing ideas and teaching strategies from a single school or mind and moving it onto a platform where the idea can be edited and remixed to fit a particular context.

So what would my wife’s Neighborhood Study look like if it were done in Baton Rouge, Juneau or Normal, IL? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to see what it looks like. You can find her plans and others by creating an account at PlansForus.

This is awesome, what an amazing way to utilize Skype. Connecting classrooms in China and California together and getting kids to come back to school after hours. Now what happens when this isn’t exceptional, but commonplace.

Teachers can make these connections, build lessons around them and alter the way they instruct. Perhaps next year my wife can take her Chinatown neighborhood study curriculum and connect with a teacher in China and likewise a teacher in China can perform a unit on NYC and connect with my wife.

Open API’s, great teaching ideas and a platform for connecting classrooms. Education is an amazing place to be right now.

I just read this piece from David Jakes. Here is an excerpt that I found particularly illuminating in light of our efforts at PlansForUs.

Here are my four essential literacies, within the context of today’s networked information world that Web 2.0 supports, that I believe to be essential for kids today.

Be able to connect. Not just to classmates. Not just to the teacher. To authors, to scientists, politicians, and to other teachers and kids, with the understanding that these individuals are important to personal growth, and that you can be just as important in theirs. Use these connections to understand the world view of others, and learn how to forge and develop mutually beneficial relationships that lead to cooperation rather than competition. Use the same connections to distribute you, your creativity, and what you represent beyond the walls of the school. Understand that learning is no longer, or does not have to be, limited by time and space, by brick and mortar, so go global, go 24-7, go 365.

Be able to create. Not posters, not PowerPoints, not some absolutely silly brochure on the tundra, but some serious digital content for posting on the platforms and networks of Web 2.0. Create content and products by mashing up the work of others into something new, and then have the expectation that others will do the same with your content. Create something and make it available for all-and allow the world to recreate it, amplify it.

Be able to communicate. Not by writing for the teacher, but for the world. Not to give a notecard-driven speech in class, but to develop a podcast, screencast, or vodcast for the world to hear or see. Write in a blog and actively contribute to someone else’s perception and thoughts by commenting in theirs. Communicate not for an audience within four walls, but for an audience without walls.

Be able to collaborate. Not only with classmates, but with “classmates” in other states, other provinces, other countries, other continents. Use the power of wikis to collaboratively create content with individuals who have the same interests. Be a life-long contributor.

We can expect some positive change to happen in classrooms as consensus builds around the power of creation through collaboration. This collaboration will only occur if toolsets are developed that amplify a teacher’s efforts, rather than create additional layers of work for teachers. PlansForUs intends to develop at least a portion of this collaborative toolset and we look forward to working with teachers to enhance their teaching lives.

When we conceived of PlansForUs the notion of sharing lesson plans seemed like a no brainer, when we surveyed teachers across a wide range of age groups we found that 90% of teachers feel comfortable sharing their lessons.

However, what happens when you actually take something that you have worked so hard on and post it for the world to use. A couple weeks back my wife and I were out to dinner and I asked her that question. She immediately said that she planned to share her neighborhood study. This was an extensive curriculum that she built for her 5-6’s around neighborhoods, in this case New York City’s Chinatown. She invested enormous amounts of time and energy in this effort and the outcome has been an exceptional one, her students, co-teacher and parents all were taken on an amazing learning experience.

However, upon reflection my wife felt a twinge of regret at letting all this hard work be opened for the publics use. Wouldn’t she be doing the work of others by sharing this work product? I then asked her the question, Is it worth keeping this great information locked in your drive and used once a year or can it be used by other teachers to equally positive effect?

Her answer reinforced why we had created PlansForUs. She acknowledged that the possibility that other teachers could use her plan to great effect in their classrooms was an exciting prospect. She has since posted her curriculum. If you are a k-3 teacher, search “neighborhood study” and check out her stuff, I hope it works as well in your classroom as it did in hers.

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.

Had to share this.

This evening right before we dug into some delicious hamburgers, my wife and I worked on a lesson plan together. She is teaching her 1st graders units of measurement. It is amazing to see her break down concepts that are seemingly elemental into their own elemental parts. I was so pleased to be consulted on this lesson and hope she will continue to ask for my thoughts. Our collaboration resulted in what we hope is a great plan, I can’t wait to hear the feedback tomorrow.

Thanks for the opportunity to help tonight G.

Just imagine 10 million teachers collaborating around the world on lesson plans.
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