Lesson Plans: Questions and Answers
Have questions about how to use this lesson plan database? Look no further!
Here you'll find a list of frequently asked questions and instructions for sharing your own lesson plans. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to send an e-mail to us at babel@walkere.frih.net.
Questions
General Questions
- Why should I share my ideas?
- How do I post my lesson plan or project idea?
- Why do I need to create an account?
- Will other people see my personal information?
- Who owns the copyright to my work?
Submission Questions
- What do I put in each field on the form?
- How should I format and type up my lesson plan?
- Why can I not use HTML?
- Ok, then how do I format my work?
- How do I add a link?
- How do I add an attachment?
- How do I add an image?
Technical Questions and Troubleshooting
Answers
General Questions
1. Why should I share my ideas?
Education is naturally a collaborative effort. Any given child will have had dozens of different teachers by the time he or she graduates high school. If we're all working towards the same end, why not pool together our resources and make sure that goal is reached?
Every teacher has different interests and different strengths. By sharing, we can complement our own weaknesses with the strengths of others. If every teacher in the country shared their one, favorite activity we would have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.
This also provides you with a public forum to share your ideas and get feedback. Other teachers can read about your activities and comment on them. You can use this to fine tune your practice or simply to inflate your ego.
We will also be implementing user profiles into the site soon. This will allow you to create a pen name and a byline for yourself - so if you host a website or a blog, each one of your lesson plans will be a mini-advertisement for you.
Perhaps the best response, though, is... why not? What have you got to lose?
2. How do I post my lesson plan or project ideas?
Once you have created an account and logged in, you can go to the submission page. On this page, you enter some information into a form (title, course information, methods used, description, objectives, etc) and the computer does the rest. It formats your input and automatically creates a web page with all of the information you entered.
Once you've entered all of the information, your lesson plan will be saved as a draft. Before it can be viewed by other users, you should proof read it. Once you're happy with it, you can "Publish" it and make it available to the public. Under the "My Account" tab, go to "My Lesson Plans." Look through the list for your draft and click on the "Publish" link - that's it!
3. Why do I need to create an account?
Before you can share your lesson plans, you need to create an account. The biggest reason for this is to prevent the database from getting filled up with spam.
By creating an account, you can also share certain information with other users. For example, if you run a website or a blog you can publicize that in your profile.
4. Will other people see my personal information?
By default, the only information shared with other users is your username or pen name. This is attached to every lesson plan that you share. Your e-mail address is never published - it is only used to confirm your registration.
In the near future, we will be implementing a user profile system into the website. Through this system you can choose to share certain pieces of information about yourself. Rest assured that you are under no obligation to share any personal information at all - it is entirely up to your discretion.
5. Who owns the copyright to my work?
Full ownership and copyright for all submissions are retained by the original author - you. By submitting your lesson plan to Babel, you are granting us the temporary right to display it on this website.
You are free to re-use or re-sell it at any time, and you are free to remove it from the website at any time. To do so, simply go to your "My Lesson Plans" listing and click the "Remove" link for the lesson plan you would like to remove.
Submission Questions
1. What do I put in each field of the form?
Most of the labels are self explanatory. While you are filling out the form, if you have a question about what exactly should go in a certain field, hover your mouse over the label. A small pop-up will appear to explain it.
The Title, Subtitle, and Description fields are intended to help other users quickly know what your lesson plan is about. This is the bulk of what a user will see when they browse through the database - so it should be short, informative, and enticing... you do want people to read your lesson plans, right?
In the "Lesson Plan Content" section, type up your lesson plan. This should be a full write-up from start to finish - detailed enough for another teacher to implement it into his or her own classroom.
The "Methods Used:" section at the bottom is intended to help other users know at a glance what kind of activity the students will be engaged in doing. This doesn't need to be an exhaustive list - but you should make note of any major instructional strategies used (i.e. jigsaw, simulation, cooperative grouping, etc).
2. How should I format and set up my lesson plan?
You should use the format that you feel most comfortable with. However, remember that the purpose is to help other teachers read your plan and implement into his or her own classroom. The short summary that you hand in to your supervisor every week might not be that detailed. Think back to your Education courses in college and ask yourself, "Would my professor have accepted this format?"
You should also break your plan up into the major components of a lesson. You might have your own terms for these pieces - but in general your plan should have an anticipatory set/do now, an introduction, a work period, and a closing or wrap up. Also don't forget to include any links or attachments that would help a teacher implement the lesson.
3. Why can I not use HTML?
This is for security purposes. Whenever users are allowed to enter input directly into a database, there's the possibility that they could enter html markup or other code that would break the website. This might be accidental (we all make typos!) or it could be the work of a malicious hacker.
In the interest of not having months of work wiped out by a typo or an evil-doer, all html and other code is stripped from your input before it is sent to the database to be stored.
4. Ok, then how do I format my work?
We've developed a simple mark up language - similar to HTML but with far fewer options. By using this, you can add all the basic formatting that you'll need and we can maintain the security of our database. All of the possible options are detailed below.
Bold and Italics. You can achieve these effects by surrounding the text with [b] and [/b] (for bold) and [i] and [/i] (for italics). So for example [b]strong[/b] would be displayed as strong and [i]emphasis[/i] would be displayed as emphasis. If you forget to "close" the tag, the formatting will simply be ignored.
Headers. Similar to bold and italics, enclose the "Heading" text in [h] and [/h].
Lists. You can create lists of items with bullet points like this. Surround the entire list with [list] and [/list]. Then, surround each item of the list with [item] and [/item]. Here's an example...
[list]
[item]Item One[/item]
[item]Item Two[/item]
[item]Item Three[/item]
[/list]
would be displayed as...
- Item One
- Item Two
- Item Three
If you would like to use another formatting feature, shoot us an e-mail and we'll look into implementing it.
5. How do I add a link?
There are two ways to do this.
If you view your lesson plan while you are logged in, you'll see a set of options on the right hand side of the screen. One set will be entitled "Add a Link." Type the URL into the "Site URL:" field and a short description into the "Site Name:" field. When you click "Add Link," a link will be added in the sidebar in a section called "Links and References."
Alternatively, you can use our markup system to create a link inside your lesson plan. The basic format is [link url="http://nytimes.com";]. This would create a link to that website, like http://nytimes.com. You can also add a "text=" option, which will display that text as the link to click on. You can also add a "title=" option, which will be displayed if the user hovers the mouse over the link.
To extend the previous example... [link url="http://nytimes.com"; text="New York Times"; title="Read the New York Times online";] would be displayed as New York Times. Note that after each option (url=, text=, or title=), you should place a semi-colon.
In the future, we are going to implement a nifty little pop-up box that will build this tag for you... but in the meantime suck it up and learn some quasi-HTML.
6. How do I add an attachment?
As with links, you can choose one of two methods to attach a file to your lesson plan.
The first option is to upload the file to our server and then create a link to it on the sidebar of your lesson plan. Under the "My Account" tab, choose "Upload Files." Here you can upload a file from your hard drive to our server. Then, view your lesson plan. On the right hand side of the screen, you'll see an "Add an Attachment" option. Choose the file that you uploaded from the dropdown menu and click "Add Attachment." This will create a link to your attachment in the sidebar, in the section "Attachments."
Alternatively, you can create a link to a file that you have uploaded or found elsewhere on the internet. To do so, use the url of the file and create a link as per one of the options above (Read: How do I add a link?).
7. How do I add an image?
You can add an image using a special code - very similar to the one you can use to add a link. The basic tag to insert into your lesson plan is [image url="url.com";].
"url.com" refers to the url of the picture that you want to display. This basic tag will insert the image at the point that you insert the code - and by default it will be displayed on the left side of the page, inline with the text.
At this time, we don't support hosting images due to bandwidth and space constraints. However, you can sign up for a free account with a photo-hosting service, such as Photobucket. Once you upload pictures to your Photobucket (or other hosting service) account, you can copy and paste the URL that they give you for your picture.
You can add a few other options to your tag, as well. The "Text" option will add a short line of text that will be displayed in case a user can't view the image itself. The "Title" option will add a short bit of text that will be displayed when the user hovers the mouse over the picture. The "Align" option can be used to make the picture float on the right side of your text - use "align=right;".
Here's an example of a full [image] tag using all of the options.
[image url="http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj11/spectrumplastering/cat-10.jpg"; text="Cat in a field"; title="Picture of an orange cat laying in a grassy field."; align="right";]
Technical Questions and Troubleshooting
1. Why didn't my formatting show up?
When using the formatting tags (i.e. [b] and [i]), there are a few rules to follow.
- Each tag must have an opening (i.e. [b]) and a closing (i.e. [/b]). If an opening or closing tag is missing, all of the tags in that paragraph will be ignored.
- The tag must start and end in the same paragraph. You shouldn't be placing entire paragraphs in boldface anyway...!
- If you're creating a [link] tag, make sure that each piece of the tag (i.e. url="url";) has a semi-colon after it. This helps the website break it down into its pieces and build the proper html tag
If you're following all the rules and still having trouble, it just might be possible that we screwed up the code and there's a bug hanging around. Send an e-mail to questions@teachbabel.com. We'll fix it as soon as we can.
2. Why isn't my lesson plan listed in the database?
When you first submit a lesson plan, it is listed as a draft. While your plan is a draft, it will only be viewable by you in your "My Lesson Plan" list.
In order to make it publicly viewable, go to your "My Lesson Plan" list and click the "Publish" link attached to that lesson plan. This gives you a chance to proofread and edit your lesson plan, rather than making it instantly available.
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