I just want to throw out an electoral prediction based on nothing more than my new found enthusiasm for Barack and an interesting editorial from David Brooks.

The November 2008 election is going to be….. Obama v McCain

This ballot presents all sorts of interesting generational differences, beyond just the obvious policy differences. We will just have to see if I am right. Put your prediction in now in the comments, if you get it right, I’ll send you the book I am reading at the time…lucky you.

I know that I still haven’t answered my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Teacher’s Needs question, nor have I posted the updated presentation. The presentation should be up by the end of the week. The hierarchy of needs may take a little bit longer.

I read a post in VentureBeat today. It is entitled “Exclusive: Barack Obama to name a Chief Technology Officer.” I know, I know the title is riveting.
OK, back to it. First off, I am not a member of One Million Strong for Barack. Also, I am pretty sure that I am going to keep my political opinions to myself in this polarized age, since my views liberal/conservative/independent don’t offer a whole lot of upside to PlansForUs.

Here is the statement to help set-up the whole discussion:

The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.

This is just fascinating.

I. OPEN GOVERNMENT

He wants Cabinet officials, government executives and rulemaking agencies to hold meeting that are open to the public and transmitted with a live feed. The CTO’s mandate will be to ensure this happens. Specifically, Obama wants the public to be able to comment on the White House website for five days before legislation is signed.

Look, I don’t know if this going to just be edited crap and it ends up as a PR stunt, but the notion is really fascinating. What happens when you link this data dump with the media amplifiers or data management software, you could have some really interesting stuff come out of this. With filtering technologies, we could all become Tim Russert (for better or for worse) as we search the government data dump for inconsistencies. Even more interesting, how does freeing this information effect accountability and transparency? Is there a historical precedent?
The one policy that is stupid is the Privacy policy, but I guess every candidate has to have a position to save our children from the pandora’s box of content that the Internet has unleashed.

Obama is a pretty interesting dude and his message definitely resonates. Looking forward to the next few months of the campaigns. What are your thoughts?

I like these quick hits because they give me a chance to clear my mind and share something that is not directly related to the daunting work of getting PlansForUs off the ground. No one really tells you how hard it’s going to be, but man, there are just a litany of issues, particularly as a 1st timer.

Anyway, last night my beautiful wife and I made a great dinner, albeit an utterly gluttonous one, that had us both staring blankly by the end. This is a rarity at our home, because there is a lot of great take out in Union Square and most importantly…we don’t have a dishwasher. So without further ado here is our meal from last night.

Garlic and Olive Oil Smashed Potatoes-Really good, easy, fresh potatoes. With that said it took us about 20-25 minutes to get our potatoes properly tender.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts-These are just ridiculous. We have them all the time, they are easy and so good it is astounding. Also, it ends up that they are really good for you. A bonus.

Burgers-I am from the Midwest, so it is rare that a meal goes by without it including some sort of meat. As you can see, this meal was consistent with that theme.

Berger Blauer Zweigelt 2006-This wine is cheap and good. The linked review does a better job of describing the flavors. I can just tell you that my wife and I enjoyed it very much. A bonus feature to this wine is that they use a bottle cap to “cork” the wine. Really kind of awesome.

There is a question going around the NextNY forums about blogs as labors of love…I will admit that this blog is absolutely a labor of love. That said I would always love to hear from my readers, it makes me feel awesome to see a comment in the morning, or to see a new reader on my Feedburner or MyBlogLog.

Enjoy the weekend, I’ll be seeing a near complete look at our new PlansForUs wireframe design, which will really improve our user experience. Looking forward to it.

Scott Heiferman the founder and CEO of Meetup wrote a great piece a week ago on why he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to running a tech company in NYC. My favorite line:

I love New York. And I’ve got a great company to grow. Silicon Valley Companies succeed because of who they are, how they are, why they are… not where they are. It’s just been a coincidence. The non-SV companies haven’t had the right who/how/why. A company that NEEDS to exist  — a company with a vital purpose to serve milions of people’s real needs — will attract the people to bring it to life — and it can exist anywhere.

I also love New York and could think of no other place in the world that is a better fit for a company like PlansForUs. Now back to hammering on Steve to fulfill our users needs.

So I was doing some research this morning on Professor Tom Hatch, who I am looking forward to meeting in a few weeks, and came across the KEEP Toolkit. This toolkit is an outgrowth of the work that Tom and his colleagues have done capturing and archiving the classroom experience for the NCREST and the Quest Project.

Here’s the punchline. In a few months, Yahoo will launch its Yahoo Teachers site w/ the vaunted “Gobbler” feature, which sounds an awful lot like what they have been doing with KEEP Toolkit for some time now.
I am not so sure that gobbling or copying from the Internet is the killer app for teachers, but it is interesting to see the parallels in these two products.

I don’t know Charlie O’Donnell, though I understand he is a minor celebrity on Silicon Alley due to his work and his prodigious networking skills. Anyway, Charlie has posted his business plan presentation online, here. I am a big fan of transparency and this seems like a cool tactic for getting attention on your idea. Best of luck Charlie.

Thanks to my brother we’ve decided to add a Meebo chat function to our blog sidebar. Now if you happen to be reading our blog and you have a question, just drop a comment in the chat box. I’ll try to be online as much as possible so that I can answer your questions.

As always, let us know if you like it.

Sarah Puglisi, a 1st grade teacher in California, writes an interesting blog called A Day In the Life. I read her blog because it provides a raw view into the triumphs and difficulties of teaching. This particular post dealt with the difficulties.

Thank you for sharing your point of view Sarah.

So I am sitting here reading the NY Times, WSJ, ESPN and the blogosphere in search of interesting thoughts. Since PlansForUs rarely leaves my thoughts I locked on to this particular article, The Class Consciousness Raiser, and its description of how teachers occupy a unique position in our society. Teachers are in one of the few professions where different economic classes mix. Now according to Ruby Payne, the main character of this article, there are different ways to understand the personalities of different economic classes. I’m not so sure that Ruby has got this one right, but her body of experience is  more extensive than mine, so I will just keep this one in the back of my mind and form a more complete opinion.
So here is the meat of the post and a thought on how PlansForUs could play a role for teachers facing issues with class distinctions in their classroom. I’ll set it up with this quote from the article:

At the Jekyll Island seminar, I met Steve Kipp, a science teacher at Brunswick High with a ponytail and a jumpy, eager energy…In 10th grade at Brunswick High, Kipp told me later, the advanced students usually take chemistry, and the other students, the ones who are more likely to wind up in technical college, take Kipp’s class, which is called General Physical Science. And each year it’s the same, Kipp said: the rich and middle-class kids are tracked into chemistry, and he gets the kids from poverty. Kipp grew up in the middle class, and in the past, he said, before he read Payne’s book, he would get frustrated by his poor students. They seemed unwilling or unable to learn; they laughed when he tried to mete out discipline. And so he found it hard to keep exerting himself. What was the point in teaching them, he thought, if they weren’t going to make an effort?

But after he immersed himself in Payne’s work, about five years ago, Kipp’s ideas changed. “I realized, these kids aren’t dumb,” he said. “They just haven’t had the enriching experiences that I had growing up.

So Mr. Kipp came to a realization that he could teach better with a more refined understanding of how socioeconomics played a role in his students learning experiences.  Our goal is that PlansForUs will be a facilitator of connections that can lead to these insights, so that teachers can spend their money on their classrooms and themselves.

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.

Just wanted to let our loyal readers know that Brian, Steve and I are working our butts off to get PlansForUs up on May 1.

Looking forward to working with all the teachers out there to build the best possilbe platform for teacher collaboration.

Talk to you soon.