ESBPLANNERS - PLANNING TOOLS FOR EDUCATORS

​Throughout the years I have written numerous articles on the power of planners and their ability to assist educators in realizing their vision. In these blogs, I have stressed the importance of planners that are fluid and have the capability to change over time, planners that are individualized and consider a teacher’s position (mainstream, specialist, support, etc.) and class composition (split-grade, multi-level, etc.), and planners that are directly in-line with one’s desired outcomes. Always in the back of my mind during the entire time I have been writing these articles was the question of how to best develop a software program that would allow educators to easily design customized templates that meet all three of the above criteria. I am now happy to share that the software is in the works and ESBPlanners will be available in 2022!

​While there are currently many planning tools available to teachers, what separates ESBPlanners from all the rest is its ability to help a teacher to easily design, customize, share and store templates! Some of the software’s key features enable teachers to:

• design any type of template – yearly, unit, lesson, for any amount of time and based on whatever teaching schedule they may follow (daily, 2-day rotation, weekly, etc.).
• open multiple planning templates simultaneously and copy/paste between them, thus avoiding the need to retype information from, say, one’s yearly planner into one’s unit planner.
• select curriculums from our existing bank and enter new ones as needed.
• work with multiple curriculums and grade levels on a single document so that a teacher teaching a split-grade or multi-level class can do all their planning on a single template.
• track both class and individual student progress on a single document – ideal for classrooms with students on IEPs who may be working on modified goals.
• select from a bank of pre-made templates and customize them as needed, or create one’s own personal template bank.
• easily modify existing templates to accommodate new learnings from professional development attended.
• shift rows and columns around to accommodate changes in teaching schedules, such as on snow days.
• share templates and planners (online and/or printed versions).
• work collaboratively on templates and planners, share comments and notify others.
• share individual planner cells so that teachers can collaborate on one or more blocks of time for the week without having to work on identical planners – the perfect solution for support staff needing to access certain lessons throughout a week!
• create, store, share and work collaboratively on timetables, rubrics and documents!

​These are but a few highlights outlining what ESBPlanners will offer educators. Stayed tuned for its upcoming release next year!