Getting Organized for Curriculum Development

I work at a 1:1 Mac laptop school where we are developing the curriculum maps for our courses. As we are a young and small school (our first graduating class is next year), I find myself developing the units in mainly WebQuest format for the students while keeping teacher notes in Pages for me while also working in our curriculum mapping tool to document each unit for the school. This means having several balls in the air while working to stay organized keeping lots of information in place ready for easy access.

I recently gave up trying to manage all the Pages docs that were saved in a variety of folders and replaced them with an organizational software program developed by a company called Circus Ponies. The program is called Notebook and I suspect several readers of U Tech Tips are familiar with it.

The strength of the product is that it is much like a regular paper notebook with dividers/tabs on the side that provide natural organizational sections for each of the units one develops. By being digital, you can simply select a divider to access a unit of study or go to the contents page to click on the specific page you want to reach.

There are many other functions and ways to use Notebook.  Even if you are familiar with it, think about how having all of your lessons and curriculum in an indexed and easily accessible digital notebook could make your life that much easier. Instead of relying on your word processor and folder directory, look to choose this one tool that combines them into one program to increase your productivity and organization.

My students shared with me that Microsoft Word has the capability of being used to create notebooks. I do not know if it offers the indexing and easy navigation of Notebook. I would be interested to see if any U Tech Tips readers use Word as a notebook or have other tools they use to stay organized when it comes to unit creation and curriculum planning.

Tags: Circus Ponies, Curriculum