Filed under: Software, Productivity, Education, Internet Tools
Planbook: Lesson planning for teachers, Mac style
In an education world where parents make all the decisions and administration knows less about teaching than the students, teachers can use all the help they get. While I wait for Assistants R Us to open in the Denver area so I can take some of the burden off my wife's high school English-teaching shoulders, educators of all kinds might be able to take some solace in Planbook from Hellmansoft. Designed and developed by Jeff Hellman, a 9th grade physics and science teacher, Planbook aims to do away with the clunky ways of writing lesson plans with paper by providing tools to plan, attach files, print, publish and search the digital way. Teachers can plan out lessons for one or multiple classes for the week, month or year, attach files the students will need for homework and publish it all to the web via FTP or to a local folder. Students, parents and administrators alike can then view the site, the daily lessons and download the files at their leisure. Still need paper versions? No sweat - Planbook can print out customized reports for students and administrators, great for handing out or posting in class.
Since I am the farthest thing from a teacher, my wife graciously offered to give this software a whirl and share her thoughts. To be honest, after a minute or two of poking around, she was absolutely thrilled. She was impressed with Planbook's feature set and how easy it was to start writing plans for multiple classes. She loved the publish-to-web idea since her school already provides some digital records for parents to check from home, but I am sad to report that there was one killer deal-breaker that took the bounce out of my wife's step - Planbook is Mac-only. Now my wife is a Mac user through and through, but her school lives in the Windows world making Planbook ineligible for consideration.
[Update: Jeff Hellman stopped by to comment that he's one step ahead of me; he actually is working on a Windows version and hopes to enter beta this weekend. This could certainly boost Planbook's appeal in Windows and mixed-OS environment and for teachers who live on both sides of that fence between the home and office.]
If you or your teaching friends are fortunate enough to work on the Mac side at school, I (via my wife) definitely recommend you take a look at Planbook. Even as a 1.0 product it sounds like Hellman has hit most of the large nails right on the head, and more interest and support can only make a good product get better over time. Check out the Planbook site for more information, including an example published Planbook, as well as IM support and a Yahoo! Groups link. Individual licenses are $30, while volume licenses begins at up to 10 teachers for $100, going all the way up to 65+ teachers for $300. As a bonus, the volume license allows teachers to use Planbook on both their home and work computers.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Angela said 3:12PM on 8-30-2007
This looks great! Especially love the liberal licensing terms (esp. needed for teachers). I'm going to forward this to our local schools as most of them are Mac-based.
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pepe said 3:53PM on 8-30-2007
Great writeup, David.
I have no use for this product but can feel your enthusiasm nevertheless :-)
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Borjan said 4:45PM on 8-30-2007
This looks like a great app!
You know, whats a kind of relative software like this, but for students? As in, planning what coursework and things have to be done and when, or when and where lectures are taking place.
Sure, I probably can just use iCal, but would like a dedicated app...
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Jeff said 5:11PM on 8-30-2007
Hi!
Wow. Thanks for the great write-up. Just as a quick note, I am working diligently on a Windows version of Planbook and I *hope* to enter beta this weekend. I don't know if this will be of much interest to TUAW readers, but I thought I'd pass along the word.
Your write-up really conveyed the enthusiasm I have for this product and making teaching just a little bit easier. Thanks!
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jess said 9:07PM on 8-30-2007
are there any features with the program that can link to state standards? it would be cool if i could just click and drag standards into my lesson plans instead of typing them out fresh every single time.
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ct77 said 9:28PM on 8-30-2007
@Borjan:
On the student side of things, this might do the trick:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/schoolhouse.html
I haven't tried it myself but it looks good and you can't beat the price.
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saamvisual said 1:16AM on 8-31-2007
I will give this a go.
One thing that is really needed is a place for mac-based educators to go which isn't primarily about selling stuff. I have been really liberated to do some quality teaching over the years by the mac tools that have been available and a few friends of mine have been amazed and equally inspired by the stuff they discovered after getting a mac machine.
I am interested in bringing a quality experience into the classroom (and beyond) for my students, but often this has happened because I work in isolation. Is there anything out there for a (uk) teacher?
(If anyone is interested, this is my teaching site:
whatisyourworldview.com)
For what it's worth, the best tools so far have been:
Rapidweaver
Final Cut Express/DVDSP
iLife
Podcast maker
iWork (brilliant)
I am also hoping to bring in the SMART tools this term for the first time, but as with those classic 'death by powerpoint' observations, I remain slightly unconvinced by the way people are taking up interactive white board tools.
I think that the difference that mac stuff brings to the classroom is that you can have some fun making stuff with the students seeing how you do it. Plasqs Comic Life is another tool I intend to use in class over the coming term.
As with anything like this in teaching, the tools are not a substitute for being a good teacher - but finding dynamic uses is something which I am always interested in.
Any links? Can tuaw bring on a teacher to do some education-specific posting?
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Adam Smith said 11:27AM on 9-01-2007
Hi there,
The program is definitely an excellent one, and one for which I've been pining. Unfortunately there's one big problem. It's of limited use to those of us who are teaching in the primary panel for a two simple reasons: lessons must fall into the same timeslot everyday (our schedules may be more erratic than those of high school teachers. Some days we have library and some days we don't); there's a limited number of lesson slots available in the day (I teach a grade one/two split, and in primary we have to change activities more often. Our students just don't have the attention spans).
I'm going to try out the program for a bit, regardless, and see how it goes. It'd be great if future updates allowed for more customization for those of us in the primary panel.
Great app, tho!
Adam Smith
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Jeff said 11:33PM on 8-31-2007
Adam-
Version 1.1 will feature, at a minimum, different schedules on different days. It will also increase the # of lessons you can have per day....
If you're interested in submitting other feature requests, drop me an e-mail. Or better yet, join the Yahoo group-
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/planbook
Thanks-
Jeff
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Peter said 4:44PM on 9-19-2007
Anything similar that also includes a gradebook?
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