Organize and Access Your Lesson Plans Anywhere

Have you ever written and taught a great lesson plan, only to lose it by the following year?  Or perhaps you wrote it in a Word document on your home computer and forgot to bring the file to school with you on the day of the lesson?  Or maybe you’re stuck at the in-laws for the weekend, but you need to update your lessons for next week and you forgot your laptop?

One possible solution is to sync your written lesson plans to the “cloud”, which is the cool kids’ way of saying the Internet.  That way, you can access your lesson plans from anywhere you have Internet access.  A big plus is that this doubles as online backup of your files, too.  So how can we do this?  Well, there are quite a few options, but I’ll mention a few here.

Taskstream ($49/yr or cheaper for multi-year subscriptions)

Taskstream is a web service that is designed specifically for educators to solve our exact dilemma.  You can develop lessons, insert standards into those lessons, organize the lessons into cohesive units, share and copy lessons from others, attach files, develop rubrics, and even download an archive of all your work as a local backup.  The interface is simple and intuitive.  It’s not free, but for what it does it’s a very nice solution.  I’m guessing you could use the teacher tax deduction and claim this as a classroom software expense, though.  My teacher intern program provided a free license for me to taskstream, and I found it to be such a useful tool that I was really sad when I had completed the intern program and that license expired.

Dropbox or Skydrive (free)

If you prefer to write your lesson plans in Microsoft Word or something similar, then you can still make those files web-accessible.  Skydrive is 25Gb of free online storage.  So you just upload your lesson plan files to Skydrive and you can download them from anywhere.  Dropbox only offers 2Gb, but has the added benefit of automatic syncing.  In other words, if you change one of your lesson plans on your home computer, that change is automatically synced to the cloud (the Internet) as well as any other computers that you have Dropbox installed on (like your school computer).  Both services allow you to share any of those files with others.  For example, if you need to send your sub the day’s lesson plans, you can just email them the link you the appropriate file in Dropbox or Skydrive.  Really, unless you’re including videos, 2Gb is plenty of storage for both lesson plans and associated files for most people; so, Dropbox is my preferred choice.

Evernote (free, with paid upgrades for more storage)

Evernote is a web service that also has desktop and mobile clients (Windows, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry, etc).  It is meant to be a universal receptacle for all of your notes, including pictures, web links, and even files.  However, we teachers can turn this around to make it be our universal receptacle for our lesson plans.  You can organize these notes (lesson plans) into virtual folders, give them searchable tags, embed images and files, and much more.  The best part is that Evernote indexes all of your notes so that they are easily searchable (it even searches text contained in images and does handwriting recognition)!  If you have handwritten lesson plans, you can scan them in and Evernote will allow you to search for words in your handwriting.  You can share notes with others (like a sub), too.  I’ve just started using Evernote, but so far I really like the features.  The desktop and mobile program versions sync with the cloud so your notes are accessible from anywhere.  Rather than a total storage limit, the free version of Evernote limits you to 40 Mb of uploads per month.

Screenshot of the Windows Evernote program.

Do Everything Online

As we know, teachers are not the most highly-paid professionals.  So, getting stuff for free is good.  Teachers also don’t have a lot of time to install and try out every computer program they might need.  So, using stuff you don’t have to set up yourself is even better.  The good: Free programs have been around for a long time, and the Internet has made them easy to get.  The better: In the last few years, a lot of alternatives have been popping up online.  You don’t even have to install them, they run right from your web browser.  This means you can use these on school computers, where the installation of random programs is usually restricted (and you often have to go through a lot of red tape to get something you want installed).  You can also recommend these to students who otherwise would pirate software because they can’t afford it either.  Here are a few suggestions:

Instead of Photoshop

• Sumo Paint.  Sumo Paint looks almost exactly like Photoshop, and requires no sign-up.
• Photoshop Express.  Photoshop Express is also by Adobe, and offers all of the basic photo-fixing features that most users need, including 2Gb of free online storage.

Instead of Word, Excel, Powerpoint

• Google Docs has most of the basic features of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, plus even more, including collaboration.  You can save your docs online, pull them up on any computer, and even publish them as web pages… all for free.  I’m planning on a whole post on Google Docs, but let’s just say it’s awesome for now and leave it at that.

Instead of Inspiration

• Mindmeister.  Mind mapping software Inspiration is awesome, but in addition to being free and install-less, these online versions have one big advantage: online collaboration.
• Mind42.  This is of course the answer to everything (42).

Instead of Adobe Premiere, FinalCut, Movie Maker, iMovie

• JayCut.  Believe it or not, you can even edit and create videos online.  JayCut has all the basics of full video editing.
• Animoto.  Animoto can turn a bunch of photos into a 30-second music video.  Its not a full video editor, but is a cool way to document a school event if you only have pictures.

Instead of a Thumbdrive

• SkyDrive.  Are you always e-mailing your files to yourself just so you can have a copy that you can access from anywhere?  There are now a lot of online storage alternatives.  Microsoft’s own Windows Live SkyDrive allows you to store 25Gb of you files, photos, and etc., online for free.  You can then access them from anywhere and even share them with others.  This is also great for students who don’t have thumbdrives.
• DropBox is super easy to use, but is limited to 2Gb online storage and has an installed utility (for Windows, Mac, and Linux).  I’ll describe DropBox in a future post because it’s just that good.

Instead of Paperbacks

• Project Gutenberg.   Many times in English class, you’re reading the classics, which have long since been out of copyright.  That means they are free, as in free speech.  Project Gutenberg and Google have also made these works free, as in free beer.  You can download electronic copies of Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, the Odyssey, and many, many more.  Even if you don’t want to use these to replace physical novels for your students, it saves you the trouble of transcribing or scanning if you want to include a passage on a test or quiz.
• Google Book Search.  Similar to Project Gutenberg, but also allows online viewing directly in your web browser, and has the original scanned pages.

Instead of Textbooks

• Wikibooks, These may not really replace actual textbooks completely, but they do provide great supplemental references that are easily searchable.  You can link topics on a web page and assign it as homework reading, for example.  In addition, some publishers provide online-accessible versions of some of their out-of-print books; check the publisher’s website.
• Wikiversity.  Similar to WikiBooks, but presented in a different manner.