Share My Lesson is a free online lesson-sharing community funded by the American Federation of Teachers. Aimed at educators, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, the site houses more than 300,000 high-quality lesson resources across Preschool – Grade 12, with 900,000 community members and more than 10 million downloads.
After three years of running Share My Lesson as a joint venture with TES Global—the world’s largest online network of teachers—the AFT was poised to take 100 percent ownership of the site and wanted to truly maximize its potential for AFT union members and other users.
The goal was to make Share My Lesson a user-centric, substantive and customized destination where teachers could easily register, access, and share content—ultimately increasing referrals, and in turn, growth. In addition to replacing an outdated proprietary Content Management System (CMS) that could no longer be updated, the AFT wanted to increase the site’s overall functionality while making it more visually compelling.
After searching for a nimble, strategically minded, digitally-innovative agency to take on this task, the AFT engaged Inflexion Interactive. The first step for Inflexion was a comprehensive discovery phase that included a full vetting of the site’s current infrastructure, features, content, SEO strategy and beyond. Those key learnings resulted in a fully redesigned and optimized site, including:
- Redesigned, modernized branding to emphasize AFT backing
- Bold, visually compelling new site design with user-friendly interface for quicker and easier navigation
- Migration to Drupal, a well-supported, open-source content management platform
- Complete responsive design/mobile optimization, including member login, search, upload and download
- Sophisticated and comprehensive SOLR search capabilities with filtering
- Scalable, world-class infrastructure to ensure uptime and speed
- Refreshed, SEO optimized content… and more!
The end result? The new Share My Lesson is the Amazon of lesson plans with the search capability of Google, visual appeal of Pinterest, and community features of Facebook.
