Teaching Channel Revolutionizes Teacher Lesson Planning With New Tool

Nonprofit org launches online planner to help teachers save time and maximize student success

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Teaching Channel (Tch) announces the release of its new Lesson Planner tool, which allows teachers and educators to weave content and resources from anywhere across the Internet into a single, organized workspace with timely reminders. Teaching Channel is a robust resource for teacher professional development and lesson planning, hosting a free, online video library that provides educators with inspirational curriculum tools and resources categorized by subject and grade level, and aligned with Common Core State Standards.

"Teaching Channel's Lesson Planner is the time-saving personal assistant for teachers," said Pat Wasley, Teaching Channel's Chief Academic Officer. "The Lesson Planner will help teachers incorporate new teaching practices, lesson ideas and great video into their classrooms more easily. Instead of wasting time trying to remember where they found an engaging lesson idea, teachers can give themselves automatic reminders about lessons and materials they want to use months down the road. It's like a working memory for your lesson planning."

Educators can access the free Lesson Planner by joining the Tch community and dragging the simple toolbar button into their browser's bookmarks bar. Similar to the Wish List feature developed by Amazon.com, Teaching Channel's Lesson Planner lets users pull content they like from any website and organize it in a calendar with personalized notes. Teachers can then schedule personal reminders to alert them when it is time to use a piece of content.

The Lesson Planner tool fills a critical need for teachers who are pressed for time but always seeking to improve their teaching. Like all of Tch's offerings, the Lesson Planner tool ensures that teachers have free, easy access to top-notch resources and best practices no matter what their time constraints.

"When I first started using this tool I knew immediately that it would be a quick and easy way to help me organize all the new ideas for engaging lessons that I find on the Web," said high school English teacher and 2010 National Teacher of the Year, Sarah Brown Wessling. "As teachers, we spend hours outside the classroom each week preparing lessons and in the short time I've been using it, this lesson planner not only gives me a way to track the videos on the site that I want to incorporate into my lessons, but it lets me merge all of the resources I find online into one place that keeps me centered and efficient."

In addition to allowing teachers to pull in content from any website, the Lesson Planner can organize videos on Teaching Channel's website. The site's videos feature great teachers sharing best practices to help their peers learn and grow. The Lesson Planner follows on the success of the site's Notes feature, which allows viewers to tag a video with their own time-coded comments and share them with peers and colleagues.

In September, Tch launched Teaching Channel Presents, in partnership with WNET New York Public Media, an acclaimed weekly program airing on public television stations across the country.

Teaching Channel (Tch) is a comprehensive showcase—online and on television—of inspired teaching in America's public schools. A nonprofit organization, Tch engages teachers across the country to reinvent and revolutionize professional learning through video content and online innovation. The Tch mission is simple: Working with teachers to improve instruction so that every student can succeed. On the Web at TeachingChannel.org, and on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, @TeachingChannel.

SOURCE Teaching Channel