Babel is an online education portal. It has articles for teachers, a searchable lesson plan database, and free online tools designed to help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. The idea for this site sprung out of an assignment for a Masters of Ed class at Rutgers, Graduate School of Education. As a group, we had to create a teaching toolkit - a sample of lesson plans and teaching resources that we could share and then take with us as we went into the professional world. Later, in Methods class, we had to create a Unit Plan and share it with the entire class. Again, the thought was that we'd each have fifteen to twenty use-able units and culminating projects as we started teaching. A bit of a head start. After these classes, I kept thinking - why not make this bigger? Teachers tend to hunker down in their own rooms, but we've all got so much to share. Each of us has our own spheres of interest and useful talents. If we come together and share those interests and talents, we'll all be able achieve our goal - to educate students.
What's With the Name? The name, Babel, comes from the story of the Tower of Babel. The figurative meaning of the parable seemed to capture of the essence of this project perfectly. As a profession, if we collaborate, we can achieve any goal. With hundreds of thousand of educators contributing one or two great resources - we'll all be much better equipped to help our students. It seems that we've been through a proverbial scattering. We each speak the language of our own discipline, our own district, or our own grade level. It's easy to withdraw into our own private worlds and do our best on our own. Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, educators can achieve just about anything through collaboration - but if we each work alone, we might not be able to make it. So that's what's with the name.