The New Lesson Plan Please feel free to e-mail this article to a friend, a principal, a parent, a colleague, a teacher librarian, a college professor, a poet, a magician, a vendor, an artist, a juggler, a student, a news reporter or to anyone else you think might enjoy it. The New Lesson Plan by Jamie McKenzie about the author New technologies may be offering a promising kind of lesson plan that is both user friendly and resource rich. A few years ago, Web-based lessons plans required knowledge of HTML raw code. Then the raw code dropped away as user friendly editors arrived to speed and ease the process of creating Web pages. In all too many districts Web publishing is a torturous process requiring multiple approvals and much patience.
Bureaucratic delays can deter and discourage the most enterprising teachers.
Fortunately, recent versions of major word processing programs allow teachers to create pages of clear lesson instructions with links to Web resources built into them. These lessons may be easily shared with students as files without bothering to post them on a Web site. In districts with student e-mail, the teacher can send the lesson to students as an attachment. In districts allowing teachers to post materials on the school fileservers, the lessons can be up and running the same day they are created. In those places providing less access for students and teachers, the lesson can be passed around by diskette.