News and Notes
I am a high school physics, AP Physics, chemistry, AP Chemistry and freshman science teacher at Elmira High School who became frustrated with the limitations of a normal paper planbook. This book, while obviously useful in general planning, always seemed like an ‘extra’ place I had to write down what I did in class. And, since I write or have assembled from outside sources most of the documents I use in class, my planbook could never contain all the handouts I need to teach a lesson. I’ve had the idea for a computerized planbook kicking around for several years but finally got around to writing something I could use this past summer (‘06). In addition to replicating the functions of a traditional planbook, I wanted to implement several features that make use of the power of computers- search, file attachments, web export, reports, etc...

This software is a work in progress, but one that I find makes my life easier- my students are happy that I’m instantly able to pull up and print any file we’ve used in class, I’m happy that I can tell my students to “check the website” rather than having to deal with them every time they lose a paper, and my students’ parents are happy that they can find out exactly what we’ve done in class and whether their son/daughter should have homework.

I’m always looking for feedback, feature suggestions and interesting uses of the software- drop me an e-mail using the link below if you’ve got something to say!

Jeff Hellman