Teachers Swap Recipes

Bill Tucker:

In every school in America, in three-ring binders and file folders, sit lesson plans--the recipes that guide everyday teaching in the classroom. Like the secrets of talented cooks, the instructional plans of the best teachers have much to offer their creators' colleagues. But while the plans are increasingly digital, they are still not easily shared across classrooms, nor, especially, across districts or states. Even when these plans are accessible, they are often not organized in a way that makes them easy to use, understand, or customize.

Now, a host of new web sites, from A to Z Teacher Stuff to Lesson Planet to Lessonopoly, are trying to solve that problem and make it easier for teachers to share, find, and make better use of lesson plans and accompanying materials. One, TeachersPayTeachers, a sort of Craigslist for educators, says it has paid more than $1 million in commissions to teachers, who have sold everything from classroom hand puppets to lesson plans on the Civil War. The site even hosts a "lesson plan on demand" auction, in which teachers advertise for, say, 4th-grade materials on Texas history and other teachers bid to fulfill the request.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 18, 2011 2:11 AM
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