Yahoo! Teachers Online Utility Announced

Social networking is great – in principle.

Today, a lot of what makes networking on the Web seem to some (including myself) like a whole lotta time wasted is the apparent purposelessness of it. It’s just one of those things that, ideally, can be quite extraordinary, but in general practice is both time consuming and unproductive.

But there are exceptions to that “rule”. One such diamond in the rough, is a new piece in Yahoo!’s puzzle. It’s called Yahoo! Teachers.

It was debuted at the TechCrunch 40 Conference about two days ago. And though it did not claim the top prize of the event – that went to Mint, a free Web-based money management tool – it gets my vote as one of the most useful social networking constructs to be debuted in the last few months.

Essentially, Yahoo! Teachers is a tool which allows teachers - whether located in the same district or even spread out across the country (it’s not clear if Teachers will be made available outside the US) - to pull information from the sources throughout the Internet (as well as things locally assembled by said educators) to create lesson plans, manage projects, and more or less organize lots of different things into a coherent, ever-amendable framework.

In other words, Yahoo! has assembled a product that will let teachers do to much the same things they’ve done for many, many years, only now much more easily and more quickly than they’ve been able in the past. Well, as long as they’re semi-Web-savvy. Which I’m certain many today in the wide-reaching K-12 bracket are. So, yes, overall, top notch invention by Big Y.

What really gives it that top-notch designation is its power to allow teachers to collaborate and share ideas, teaching solutions, and full-fledged lesson plans with one another – and even with the entire Yahoo! Teachers network at large – with just a few clicks of a mouse. Sounds simple, and, really, it is, but it’s undeniably a powerful creation because it is structured in that sort of “do anything” fashion. Opinion makers and senior leaders at the US Education Department have been stressing the need to overhaul the American elementary schooling system, and, not to put Yahoo! up on a pedestal, but it seems that the company’s new Teachers network – keyword being “network” - will likely help many educators achieve their goals.

I second Duncan Riley’s wishes. Here’s to hoping this Yahoo! Teachers project great success.

You can check out a video preview of Teachers here.