I read this article in the NY Times today about inducing mindful awareness as a classroom teaching tool. Seems like a pretty cool idea and one that is striking a chord with educators. I would love to see some plans that suggested ways to execute mindful awareness in classrooms.

Interesting side note, the top two most emailed articles today were on education.

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.

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.

What started with the intent of being a comment to Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s post on “It Is Still About the Learning…” has now turned into a full post of my own. The numerous blog posts and comments that Sheryl highlighted got me thinking and wondering whether teachers are more apprehensive toward technology than any other group of professionals? And, if so, why? I think there are two aspects to this topic: 1) teachers using technology for their own use and 2) teachers incorporating technology into the course material they teach. Number 2, although not always, could be a natural progression from number 1.

Problems with the adoption of a new product or new piece of technology are not unique to the teaching community. From my experience, a majority of people feel as though they lack the necessary and desired amount of time it takes to become comfortable with a new technology. It was a common complaint that I heard while working with support teams for a couple different credit card processing companies in the past (and these were teams of people dealing with complex software everyday). However, I think, as a software developer, that the technology needs to be more intuitive - especially in the education industry. It is completely unrealistic to place software in the hands of a teacher and expect them (during their off hours) to figure out how to derive value from its use unless it is intuitive enough to require nominal to no training. That same software should also have a clear, positive result from its use - that is, it should either produce enjoyment from its use or produce a higher quality of work in the same or less amount of time.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching my fiance go through a 3 day training seminar on how to use a new IEP management system her school was deploying this past fall. She and her fellow resource teachers were instructed on which error messages they should ignore and how to properly interpret the different status messages. This was absurd! And, it’s no wonder that some of the teachers refuse to use it. Technology must serve a visible purpose if you ever expect non-techies (for the lack of a better word) to naturally adopt to it. When easy-to-use, productive technology becomes the norm rather than the exception, you will see more teachers willingly (and eagerly) use and promote it. Once this happens, it becomes a natural progression for technology to be incorporated into the daily lessons they teach.

There are early adopters in all aspects of life, and the active teachers in the blogosphere are those people. They are more willing to deal with buggy software; more willing to spend a weekend learning how to install widgets on their blog; more willing to read a manual and figure something out on their own. This, in my opinion, is as much related to one’s personality as it is to the generation in which you were raised. Rather than focusing a school’s hopes and efforts on new teachers or on mid-career teachers, why not place it in the teachers who have shown a propensity for being an early adopter? Why not place it in the teachers who are highly respected by their peers and tend to have their actions followed? These are the people who will help force the technology to evolve into a usable tool for the rest of the teaching community. These are the people who will push the envelope and help create a more effective and efficient educational system. These are the people that PlansForUs would love to talk to while we try our best to release an intuitive, easy-to-use, productive utility for the teaching community.

Let me know if you think I am way off base here. Not being a teacher, and not working on a daily basis in a school setting, it’s quite possible that there is a dynamic to the situation that I’m just not aware of…

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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What do you think of for-profit philanthropy?

PlansForUs has a mission of increasing the impact teachers have on their students. We believe that we can partly achieve this by building tools at PlansForUs that increase the flow of ideas between teachers. The impact of this free flow of ideas will be that appropriate classroom strategies will find the the teachers that need them. PlansForUs is a knowledge organization and collaboration tool that will create new intellectual partnerships that may not have existed without PlansForUs.

Sorry for the plug, but it helps to talk about what we are up to. Anyway back to for profit philanthropy and fulfilling our mission.

What about those schools that lack the resources for a teacher to fully realize his or her lesson plan and curriculum. What about those teachers who are losing the interest of their students because they are limited in their ability to create valuable out of classroom experiences. What of those classrooms that don’t have enough books or a staff that has been worn down by years of administrative neglect. In order to achieve our mission we are going to need to broaden our scope. That’s why we will seek to create relationships with teacher focused non-profits that we admire, like DonorsChoose and Teach for America.

These relationships might integrate these organizations directly into our website. A DonorsChoose submission widget on every user account page or a special section of the website dedicated to the teachers and alumni of Teach for America. Combine this with significant financial commitments from PlansForUs and you establish an ecosystem of good for teachers. An ecosystem that allows us to achieve our mission.

Speak to you soon.

In our ongoing effort to put the best foot forward and think deeply about our business, we have decided to rewrite our business plan. We recognize that we will have to improve the organization of our plan if we are to be successful in raising future rounds of funding. Additionally, since our first meeting with a group of test teachers, our plan has evolved.

In order to organize properly we have turned to Brad Feld. Brad writes an amazing blog about venture capital, that is both an interesting read and an invaluable resource to entrepreneurs. There is one particular post that we have gone back to in an effort to address the important questions that a company should seek to answer in their business plan.

Using this post as a guide, we have begun to recompose our original business plan and during this process we (or at this point, I) have been challenged by the question of customer acquisition costs. Because we are building a tool that relies upon word of mouth, PR, product advocacy to grow the PlansForUs user base we figure that customer acquisition costs will be determined by the human resources expended marketing through word of mouth, PR, and product development. The problem is, we are unclear as to what the formula looks like for computing valid customer acquistion cost assumptions. If you happen to have any thoughts on how we might put a value on our customer acquisition efforts or have read something, please leave a comment or send me a link in del.icio.us (username: tylerfonda).

Anyway, thought I would share some of the thinking from the business formation end. We are working hard to launch PlansForUs and hope to have something for our teachers to work with near the end of April. Till then, we will continue to write and share this process with you.

Speak to you soon.

Will we lose the collected wisdom of retiring teachers?

Many teachers will be retiring over the next 10 years. In fact, of the ~4 million teachers teaching now, nearly half are over the age of 50. Check out the National Center for Education Statistics for this info and a mountain of other interesting stats; I can assure you, the PlansForUs team is combing through these stats right now. While the impact, as Brett Pawlowski points out, of the changing demographics of teaching will be significant, the PlansForUs team is concerned about losing the amazing accumulation of knowledge that is bound up in our retiring teachers.

PlansForUs is the solution for capturing this knowledge. At PlansForUs, the knowledge becomes evergreen the minute that the ideas, lesson plans and feedback are entered into the system. While styles of teaching evolve, the essential knowledge gained through 30 years of experience is captured and passed on to generations to come. (If any teachers need help moving this knowledge from their hard drives, either computer or brain, please contact us, we would love to help you make this content available.)

PlansForUs is the place for teachers to come, to plan, to learn and to share their collective experience. It is a place where an idea can impact a classroom a world away or a door away. Education is our most important cultural asset, lets make sure that nothing is lost in this demographic transformation occurring in teaching.

Speak to you soon.

There was an interesting piece from Liz Gannes over at GigaOm this past Thursday. It was entitled “When Social Web Tools Get Creative.” What fascinated me about the post was that it took social networks in a new direction. No longer were the explicit social aspects of the network the key attribute, instead the piece described how a network’s members could refine a product online through network collaboration.

But these social, accessible, dare-I-say-web-2.0 tools can be brought to another level to enable you to make something you can bring back to your offline life. Then they’re not just social, but collaboratively creative.

What about teachers? Teachers don’t teach online; they must transfer a digital good into a physical lesson plan. Perhaps, by utilizing a social network that was integrated with a lesson plan builder teachers could build better lesson plans and expand their range of classroom experiences.

At PlansForUs we are building the toolset to help teachers refine their lesson plans through the participation of a social network of teachers. Those tools that are built with a layer of social networking resting on top of their core utility will continue to grow, particularly in vertical markets. PlansForUs intends to apply this layer of utility onto lesson plan building for the tens of millions of teachers worldwide.

Speak to you soon.

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.