Launching LessonIndex.com
In late October, an unexpected phone call revived my interest in the subject of “lesson plan resources for teachers.” The first result of that inspiration is my newest web site, at LessonIndex.com.
Some background: From mid-2002 through late 2004, I explored teaching as a career, but eventually decided that it just wasn’t a good fit for me. As a new teacher, I was starved for resources, and couldn’t easily identify and obtain relevant and useful lesson plans or teaching guides that could reduce my workload. (I ended up spending much of my time “re-inventing the wheel,” duplicating the work of thousands of other teachers.)
After I quit teaching in 2004, I created a “literature lesson plan” directory web site, as a part-time effort; after several hundred hours spent designing and implementing the site, I spent five to ten hours per month updating the site. In July 2007, I sold that web site (and agreed not to compete for two years). After my interest was revived in October, I learned that the earlier web site has stagnated; that discovery led me to do more research.
By mid-November, I was confident that I could create a new lesson-plan directory, this time for a full range of K-12 teaching and learning materials, in all content areas (integrated with state-specific content standards).
I spent some time designing an ontology and a preliminary database implementation, and soon I began work in earnest. On January 1, 2011, I “launched” LessonIndex.com — which I believe is already the most useful and relevant directory of “Literature Lesson Plans” for K-12 teachers.
After gathering data from many sources and launching this version of the site as a “proof of concept,” I’m turning back to refine the ontology, database structure, and import scripts so I can expand the site to include resources for all K-12 content areas.
Some relevant links for my new site:
- Short Index page (with links to directory pages for about 200 literary works);
- Big Index page (with links to directory pages for each of 2,034 literary works);
- blog.LessonIndex.com, which provides update information, suggestions for publishers and merchants, and a list of the “Most Frequently-Taught Works” (works with the most resource links).
While my attention was focused on this new project, of course, I stopped posting to this blog.
We’re looking forward to continuing to watch the development of LessonIndex.com. In the meantime, thanks for including us!
The folks over at Professional Learning Board