{"id":381,"date":"2010-08-22T19:30:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/?p=381"},"modified":"2010-08-22T19:43:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-22T11:43:07","slug":"the-great-plan-book-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/22\/the-great-plan-book-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Plan Book Migration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when I was a classroom teacher, I rearranged the furniture in my classroom regularly, looking for that perfect arrangement. \u00a0Now that I teach in a computer lab with desktop computers, moving the furniture is out of the question. \u00a0Maybe that is why I keep changing lesson plan books.<\/p>\n

Other than sub plans, I haven’t kept a paper plan book in longer than I can remember. \u00a0Maybe never since student teaching. \u00a0For major planning I use an Understanding by Design inspired Word document. \u00a0However, for weekly plans for each of my 15 classes, I keep shifting what I use.<\/p>\n

First I used Word. \u00a0Tried Exel, then went back to Word. \u00a0Then One Note<\/a> became available and I loved using that. \u00a0Moving between classes was so smooth. \u00a0The first year I used it I made a tab for 2008-09 and made each teacher a page within that tab.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was excited the next year when during my team planning with the classroom teachers, I found I had to reorganize the notebook. \u00a0For 2009-2010 each teacher had their own tab and the plans and other supporting documents such as rubrics, worksheets, etc., were separate pages within that tab.<\/p>\n

I loved how that worked, except I could only check it on a Windows computer. That meant I kept lugging my work laptop home each night so I could work on my lesson plans.<\/p>\n

At some point during last year our school acquired its own Google Apps<\/a>. \u00a0In the interest of learning its quirks and strengths, I switched my plans from One Note to Google Docs. \u00a0The advantages were I could work on my plans on any computer with internet access. I could even check them on my iphone. \u00a0I was surprised at how often I did look them up on my phone.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, I didn’t love this format. \u00a0Having been copied over from One Note there must have been stray bits of code that I could never find but they made some of the tables behave poorly. \u00a0Now I know I should have exported each from One Note to Word, then uploaded them to into Google Docs.<\/p>\n

I also had significant lag and denial of access problems. \u00a0This was good in that I raised a ticket on it with our IT Help and one of the engineers fixed it by changing some network settings. \u00a0I was glad to have that problem identified and fixed before large numbers of our users began using the platform. Even with these problems fixed, I still didn’t love this option. \u00a0It felt clunky despite its advantages.<\/p>\n

This fall, I decided to return to One Note. \u00a0I now had a little Lenovo S10-3 netbook running Window 7. \u00a0It had One Note on it which was going to make my life much easier. \u00a0I have everything set up with my lesson plans stored in a One Note notebook in Sharepoint so I could access them at work or at home.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it isn’t playing well with the netbook. \u00a0Sections keep getting corrupted. They work fine on any computer at work, but on the netbook they quit syncing. \u00a0Of course, it happens the most to the sections I use the most. \u00a0Not handy.<\/p>\n

Today as I stared in dismay as my lesson plan notebook began corrupting on the netbook, I felt like I was back at square one, needing to lug my work laptop home when my lovely Mac was already there. \u00a0Then lateral thinking kicked in an I thought of another idea. \u00a0Why not use Evernote<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In case you haven’t heard of it, Evernote is a collection of software and services that allows users to collect, sort, tag and annotate notes and other miscellaneous information. \u00a0— en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Evernote<\/em><\/p>\n

Evernote comes in many versions. \u00a0You can have a free account or one with an annual fee with more features and more storage. \u00a0You can use it on the web by logging into their site. \u00a0You can also download their free desktop app which can work offline but syncs with the web one when it can get online. \u00a0There are also mobile versions.<\/p>\n

All of these versions sync. This means I can access my Evernote notebooks at work on any computer there either through the web or by downloading the desktop app. Then, when at home I can access it on my Mac. I also have the free iphone app and it has worked well on there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I have had an Evernote account for a few years. \u00a0Like One Note, I have a number of separate notebooks within it. \u00a0This summer, as part of an AppSumo<\/a> deal, I was able to purchase a one year subscription to the pro version of Evernote and \u00a0a number of other online apps for the same price as the Evernote subscription usually costs so I jumped in.<\/p>\n

One of the premium features in Evernote is the ability to have your notes on your phone. \u00a0With the free account, you must be connected to the internet to access your notes. \u00a0Now I have all my notes on my phone all the time.<\/p>\n

Another feature is the ability to import Office files. \u00a0Since I already had lessons started in One Note, I used One Note’s Send to Microsoft Word<\/em> feature. \u00a0After I had done this with the plans for each class, I emailed them to myself so I could work on my Mac instead of the netbook with its smaller screen. \u00a0If I already had Evernote on my netbook, I could have eliminated the email step.<\/p>\n

I just made all of these changes today so I can’t tell you if this is THE solution. \u00a0I am already finding things to like about it. \u00a0One nice feature in Evernote is tags. \u00a0In addition to tagging each page with lessons2010<\/em>, I also tagged them with their grade level + 2010. For example, 3rd2010<\/em>. \u00a0Now I can quickly find just my third grade classes and copy information between them when they happen to be doing something similar.<\/p>\n

I also accessed them on my iPhone. Because the lesson plans have tables, they are stored as rich text and cannot be edited on the iphone. \u00a0However, I am able to view them just fine. \u00a0I was in a similar position when the plans were in Google Docs.<\/p>\n

I think I will miss having a tab for each teacher. I haven’t yet figured out how I will keep rubrics and other items with the lesson plans. \u00a0I can think of a number of options. \u00a0I did have to put numbers in front of the teacher names (e.g. 01., 02., 03.) to force the plans to be arranged in the order of my classes rather than alphabetically by teacher name.<\/p>\n

I will update you later on how this works out. \u00a0In the mean time, if you have a digital lesson plan book, please tell me what you are using and how well you like it. \u00a0I need to get back to those lesson plans I was working on two hours ago.<\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when I was a classroom teacher, I rearranged the furniture in my classroom regularly, looking for that perfect arrangement. Now that I teach in a computer lab with desktop computers, moving the furniture is out of the question. Maybe that is why I keep changing lesson plan books.<\/p>\n

Other than sub plans, I haven’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssedro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}