Dude, Where's My Planbook?

My first year I taught using the traditional planbook. I'd essentially fill in a basic schedule, and a generic title for what I was teaching (i.e. "Sunken Ship, GLE 3.2" etc). I would do more extensive planning using a form I adapted from student teaching, laying out objectives and student/teacher actions. That process really didn't lend itself to being very reflective, since it was in a book that I really didn't want to flip back through (why flip backwards, when you can fill it going forwards?!).


During that year my district started using OneNote. Essentially: a binder with pages where you can use it as you would Word, but share it on a network with others. Pretty great for work done as a team, since each teammate can add, subtract, edit or view the document (assuming they are on the network). You create a section like you would in a regular binder, then create pages to fit in those sections. You can insert files, add links, pictures, to-do's, questions, notes etc. I really didn't start using it for my own practice until the summer when I thought it would be a great way for me to record my notes about books I was planning to use with kids in guided reading or literature circles. That gave me the brilliant idea of taking notes about on the various pieces of Units of Study for Writing... leading me into using it as my planbook.


I was excited about continuing that usage this year. My hope was to go back through the notes from the start of the year this week (since I actually made notes in the margins, and had to-do's in the plans- something I didn't do as much of with the pencil/paper version). Unfortunately I need to start from scratch this year. Why you ask? Because I had my computer re-imaged since our district is going to Windows 7! I pulled a ton of stuff off the desktop before summer, anticipating the re-imaging. But when I inquired about when laptops would be re-imaged I was told that they weren't planning to do anything with them until the fall. When I went in to do some curriculum work for technology this past week I was able to work my way into getting it updated (teacher desktops were done, but I don't have a desktop... I have a laptop!)... and hence lost the stuff I hadn't put on the network or my flash drive. Bummer.


Next time I'll tread more lightly instead of hastily jumping for joy that they were going to upgrade my laptop!