Meet Jim Hurley, Founder and CEO of Lesson Planet
Lesson Planet is an American website that catalogues lesson plans and therefore acts as a search engine for teachers. The website is run by a group of educators who rate and catalogue each lesson uploaded by tags that relate to the subjects, skills, grade level, and core/state standards. Teachers, schools and school districts can purchase a membership to website which allows them to quickly search for lesson plans and technology resources that relate to their curriculum. In addition, Lesson planet offers online tutorial videos and live professional development sessions. The website is aimed at creating an easy and effective way for teachers to introduce technology into their classrooms.
Hurley’s mother was a teacher and she inspired him to also become an educator in 1985. By 1993 Hurley had also obtained a Masters of Education from the university of California, Santa Barbara(Hampton, 2013). Hurley always had an interest in computers and after the web boom he started his company Education Planet that was open to parents, teachers and administrators. After seeing the enthusiasm of teachers on the website he changed the name in 2004 to Lesson Planet and focused mainly on teachers. The company now has 50 employees, 20 of which are teachers and Hurley considers this a “built-in focus group” (Hampton, 2013). It seems like Hurley has a genuine interest in education and helping teachers and wants to work in the technology sector. As an educator, he knows his audience and created a company with a number of skilled teachers working to improve the lives of other teachers. This seems like a good strategic move and makes his organization more credible to teachers, his clients. Though it is difficult to find information about his board and advisors, there are a number of his employees who have master’s degrees in education (Hampton, 2013). For example, Learning Planet’s director of content and learning has 18 years of teaching experience and the company’s director of strategic relationships has 22 years of teaching and administration (Smith-Meyer, 2014). I think that they have a strong and fairly large team of qualified individuals, some of whom have dealt with budgeting and purchasing in the education sector before (admin.). My only concern is if the business and web design staff as they are not mentioned, but based on their website I would say the web design is good.
Hampton, C. (2013, Fall). Gaucho company helps teachers bring exciting curriculum to the classroom. CoastLines UC Santa Barbara Alumni Associaton. Retrieved From: http://www.ucsbalum.com/Coastlines/2013/Fall/feature_planet_lesson.html
Smith-Meyer, J. (2014, March 21). Helping teachers become campus TechEd leaders: Lesson Planet to present at CUE. Lesson Planet. Retrieved from: http://www.lessonplanet.com/us/about_us
I am interested in this venture. It seems like the founder and most of his employees are experts in their field. Who would know what teachers want better than teachers? 50 employees with 20 of them being teachers sounds like a pretty big venture. He should be able to create some really interesting and useful resources.
The only thing that I worry about is that if schools or districts bought into this service, teachers might feel pressured to use these lesson plans rather than their own.
James.
Hi James,
Thank you for your comments. It was interesting when researching this company, everyone focused on the fact that it was created by educators, it seemed to be a big selling point for them. I agree that there could be some pressure to use these lessons, but at the same time I see it being used more as a resource. The reason I say this is because we subscribe to library resources through our district, and I know it is not the same, but it is certainly filled with a lot of resources and lessons, and teachers use it to varying degrees. I have only ever seen these things as resources, because teachers like to adapt them and modify them for their classes. Also the subscription rate is quite low for the website access. Does this make sense to you?
Danielle
Hi Bobbi,
For some reason I can’t reply directly to you but I wanted to say thank you for posting the pricing. I had seen it online and thought about writing about it but I decided not to, but I can see it holds value. It might be worth mentioning then that they also have a discounted district price that would allow teachers to access it for free. I understand that this means that the decision is in the hands of the districts, but I remember reading that it was rather reasonable and many districts in the US were purchasing it. One thing I did wonder about is what kind of technology do they require in these lessons. For example do any lessons need a particular app or program? I would be interested to know this as it would also have a huge impact on the use of the website.
Danielle