I just read my last post about ratings. It is really terrible. I usually let these entries sit for an hour and then come back to them with a clear mind, in this case I did not…and it shows.

Have a great Columbus Day weekend.

We are working with a user interface expert to improve your lesson plan sharing experience. Please have a read of the note below. If you are interested, either leave a comment and I will have Jackie get in touch with you or shoot me an email and I will have Jackie get in touch. Thanks.
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My name is Jackie and I am currently looking for teachers to interview for a project I am working on. I basically want to understand how teachers go about creating lesson plans and how they might use an online lesson planning tool we are currently designing. The interview will last approximately an hour, ideally at your apartment if possible (otherwise we can find another place to meet in the city). If selected, you will be rewarded a $5 Amazon.com gift certificate for your time.
We are hoping to conduct the interview either sometime this weekend, next saturday, or during the evenings of next week. (9/29 - 10/6).

Let me know if this is something you’d be interested in. If so, please answer the following questions:
Name
Email or phone number to contact you at
What days AND times are you available? (9/29 - 10/6)
Grade(s) and subject(s) you teach
Type of school (public or private)
Do you create lesson plans?
If so, how much interest do you have in creating and sharing lesson plans online? (very interested, somewhat interested, not interested at all)
How long have you been teaching?
What is your age range? (under 25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40, 40+)

Thanks!

Jackie

So we had a great response to our inclusion in the History Channel back to school emailing. Welcome to all of our new members who found out about us through this emailing. As a result of this huge boost in traffic, PlansForUs had a breakage. If you registered with us yesterday be on the look out for an email from us. This email will detail the breakage and any steps that need to be applied to fix it, but we are working on eliminating your steps.

Two other notes for today.

Clarence’s “School Begins…But Not Here” is a really cool post. I wish that we had video Skype back in the day so that I could have communicated between New Trier (my alma mater) and our “sister school“. No wonder Clarence is an educator of the year in Canada…and yes I continue to encourage Clarence to give PlansForUs a try.

Sarah you might want to look Clarence up to discuss using Skype for video conferencing between classrooms. I know you had asked me for my thoughts, but Clarence is probably a better resource, though I am of course open to discuss.

Finally, I am really loving Caribou and Phoenix right now. In particular the song “North” by Phoenix and “Eli” by Caribou. Check them out on HypeMachine and let me know what you think.

Thanks to our friends and partners at MediaTemple for working hard on solving our hosting problem, we are back online. We apologize for the inconvenience and are taking steps to ensure that this incident does not repeat itself.

Look for the launch of version 0.2 of PlansForUs on Tuesday.

Good night.

If you happened to go to www.plansforus.com you will have seen that error. We are working with our hosting partner MediaTemple to fix this problem. When we go back online expect to see a number of new features including:

1. Now you can comment on the lesson plans. It is our first step in building a community around lesson plan sharing.
2. We have changed the first page that you land on upon login. Now you go directly to the lesson plan creator page upon login.

3. The ability to begin a plan without publishing it immediately to the community. Now once you have finished simply check the “SHARE” box at the top of the page, until then make sure you press save.

More features to come.

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.