by eric benzel

Go check out betterlesson.org

Garrett and I have had several long conversations about what might be and might not be helpful online resources for teachers. I just ran across BetterLesson.org in a post on gothamschools.org today, and after exploring a bit, I definitely think this deserves a place in the helpful category. Its organic, user driven, has a rating system similar to facebook’s ‘like’. I’m impressed by the idea. Really, someone should have thought of this a long while ago. They have over 7000 users and the gothamschools post said that users have stayed quite active, even during the summer. I’m excited to see if this can be a helpful resource during student teaching this coming fall.

So I joined today and will be working on my profile and uploading some content soon! I gave the system a whirl while designing a factoring unit for a class I’m in. There were quite a few users with empty folders that may someday contain useful factoring resources, but besides this, there were a few helpful files to look at. This seems like it will be a great space to share some of the best lessons I will come up with over the next several years.

Downside: They don’t have a category for education students in the registration process. Which means I had to lie, pretending to be a 9th and 10th grade geometry teacher at the ‘other’ school in my 10032 zipcode. I hope the BetterLesson czars will forgive me.