TARA is a new tool designed to help you streamline your lesson planning process. It was designed for teachers by a few teachers. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to watch a live demo of TARA. It had a feature that really stood out to me as something that could be useful for new teachers as well as those of us who have been around for some time.
TARA has a resource bank that you can access when planning your lessons. Resource banks include the collection of assets across the web. This is not the part that caught my attention (there are many similar collections of services). The thing that caught my attention inside the resource bank was what I would call a “strategy bank”. Those strategy banks may be useful for new teachers who are looking for a little guidance for developing a lesson. Strategy banks can also be useful for experienced teachers who are looking for some inspiration for new ways of teaching a favorite subject.
TARA Resource Bank for strategies includes templates and links to resources that you can duplicate, modify and save in your free TARA account. Check out my screenshot below to see what it looked like when I went to find ideas for class discussion openers and closures.
Application for education
There is much more you can do in the TARA environment, including creating your own resource collection, to-do list, and complete lesson plans. I may spend more time exploring them in the future. For now, I think the strategy bank associated with the resource bank is a feature that makes TARA suitable for all teachers who are looking for some new strategy ideas.