Our Story
From sticky tables and tiny chairs
My students will call me Mr Franklin, but you can call me Stephen.
From the leafy suburbs of Ashburton, a team of year 4 teachers during a planning session asked each other:
- "Why do I need 30 tabs open to plan a week?"
- "How can I see the curriculum and write at the same time on my laptop?"
- "Where's the yearly planner in the drive?"
- "Can the term overview be presented in a better way?"
I went to every teacher in the school and asked them what they find challenging in planning, what their routine is and how long they spend planning. When I learnt how long my fellow colleagues were at their laptops was deeply concerning.
The impossible task for teachers
The Grattan Institute (2022) found that it would take the average teacher 500 hours to create a detailed lesson by lesson plan for just one subject. Multiply that by at least 4, a teacher needs 10 hours a week just in planning time, excluding all over duties. In the same report, just 15% if teachers have access to high-quality curriculum materials, with most teachers in rural schools small schools having to plan alone.
A common theory is that planning get's easier as teachers become more experienced, but evidence shows that they spend the same amount of time planning due to new responsibilities, subjects and curriculum updates.
Spurred on by my grade 4 students who are expecting me to be on SharkTank Australia anytime soon, I launched MapMaster in the Summer of 2025; a company dedicated to helping teachers and educators in all the tasks the students don't see.
A big yet simple idea.
Our first product in the works is Planna. Planna is a curriculum integrated planning platform, designed for teachers to plan everything they will teach in their classroom.
The purpose of Planna is to consolidate planning documents and present them in a way that is appealing and easy to interact with on a laptop. Curriculum content descriptions are built in, allowing rapid assembly and organisation of units.
Planna is an investment that will save teachers hundreds of hours a year needlessly creating tables in Docs and finding planning material in a bloated staff drive. Planning should be quick and to the point, not a Where's Waldo experience.
Currently, Planna is in development, and we want to make sure it works for your school. Please don't hesitate to enquire below.