School needs centralized site for lesson plans

December 7, 2006 9:00 AM

I'd like to develop a searchable (by tags) database of leson plans for the 20 odd teachers at my school. Any ideas?

The plan would be for teachers to be able to email their lesson plans (perhaps with the tags in the subject heading?) to a site, which would automatically catalog them. A teacher could then go a central location (ie, a website) where they could search for lesson plans based on keywords, like "outline", or "geometry". I wouldn't mind putting in the legwork, adding tags, if necessary, but the more automated the whole system is, the more likely it'll be adopted by the teachers here.

Oh yeah, one last thing. I'd like it to be free! If that's not possible, the cheaper the better.

posted by bronxteacher to technology (4 comments total)

Why not use a blogging software that could accomplish both of these tasks.

I am most familiar with Wordpress which allows you to file posts by category. It also allows you so set up an email (i.e., [e-mail]) where anything received automatically is posted to the site. And I believe that you can make the email subject become the category it is filed under.

Wordpress can either be used at their domain, or, with the right server access, at your school's domain.
posted by jk252b at 9:31 AM on December 7, 2006

Do they have to e-mail them? I'd set up a site that allowed them to upload their own lesson plans. The upload code saves them to a directory, while also putting a record in a database with a unique ID for the document, and its location on disk.

On a separate page teachers can browse uploaded documents, and add tags to them. These tags are placed into a table with the ID of the document. Voila! Tagged lesson plans.
posted by sherlockt at 9:33 AM on December 7, 2006

Make sure one of them spells lesson right? OK?

The teachers aren't ALL ODD are they?
posted by Freedomboy at 10:39 AM on December 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

I believe that you can do this in Moodle. However, each teacher would have to register with their own email address and join the same course or module. If that email function is not there, they could at least upload the lesson plans. Does your school already have any kind of learning management system or course software?
posted by mattbucher at 11:18 AM on December 7, 2006