Lesson Plan Management Standards.

Posted by David Parish, Ph.D., CEO Calypso Systems
Monday July 20th, 2009 | 0 Comments

There's an old joke about standards that says if they're such a good idea, everyone ought to have one. OK. Not much of a joke, but it's about as good as it gets when you're dealing with engineering humor. The point is, standards get a lot of lip service, but often fall short when it comes to delivering the type of universal value they could create. The reality is that it's often difficult, if not impossible, to get those with competing, well-entrenched interests to agree to a common and practical set of guidelines for how, when, where and why to do anything. It's true in all fields, including education. It's an especially relevant topic in education as we as an industry rush headlong into the creation of next generation, media rich, interactive curriculum materials just as districts are making fundamental architecture decisions about Lesson Plan Management (LPM) systems.

Wouldn't it be great if standards allowed you to import lesson plans from any publisher into your LPM, no matter which one you purchase? With proper standards in place your curriculum decision could hinge entirely on qualitative differences between the lessons under consideration rather than on technical compatibility issues. Really, no district technology director or curriculum coordinator should ever have to unwind the pros and cons of IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, IMS Common Cartridge formats or simple self-contained web pages as a format foundation for lesson plan management.

Thanks to a terrific group led by CORE Education, a New Zealand-based not-for-profit educational research and development organization, lesson plan developers large and small can take advantage of a free, open source tool called exeLearn. This application was created to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. Most importantly, content authored in exeLearn can be exported in any of the standard (there's that word again) formats, making its content compatible with nearly any LPM solution. I don't know, but assume the tool can also be used to convert from one format to another.

If you have anyone in your district interested in media rich lesson plan creation, point them at the exeLearn web site, where they can download and use the application on nearly any platform. They also host a series of very useful videos that explain the exeLearn philosophy and tools. The little bit of time I've spent playing with the tool leads me to conclude they've hit a home run. If you do download and use it, let me know how it works for you. Seems like a support group in the making ...

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