About BetaCabinet
Developing BetaCabinet has been a labor of love for me since 2018. But in truth, it can trace its orgins back to August of 2000. That is when my career as a teacher first started in an 8th grade science classroom.
At that time, the thought of using a Learning Management System (LMS) in secondary education was unheard of, but I thought it would be cool to have a class web page where I could maintain a calendar and post content for my students. The web site then was called MrMayberry.net...a name I thought would be easy for my students to remember. But back then I had no idea how to integrate what I was doing with a database, or to automate the many tasks involved in maintaining the web site, so I spent hours every day updating content for my students.
After three years teaching 8th grade, I returned to graduate school, eventually earning a Master's in Physiology and Developmental Biology, and a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. Along the way I took every opportunity I could to pick up classes as an adjunct or visiting professor, and after successfully defending my doctoral dissertation, took a full time position as a college professor. Because LMSs had become standard by then at the college level, this gave me experience using a variety of different systems.Also along the way, I independently furthered my understanding of coding, web development, database management, and security; I developed these skills on numerous pet projects that in the end didn't go anywhere specific, but were still super fun to work on.
After many years teaching at the college level, I decided to return to teaching at the secondary level. The school where I took a job didn't have an LMS, so I found myself looking back to the first web site I developed all those years ago. Drawing on my experience with different LMS systems, and my newly developed coding skills, I slowly began developing a new web site. Because I was primarily teaching Biology, I first called it BuddingBiologists.com...a clever name I thought.
By the time COVID hit and we were all forced to do school remotely, my little web-site had developed to the point that my class was already almost fully online, meaning that other than learning how to Zoom, not much had to change to transition my classes to online learning. In fact, while many other teachers were scrambling over spring break to figure out how to get content and information out to their students, I decided to build a discussion board into my platform because I thought it might be useful. The following year, while still teaching remotely, I decided to add communication tools, a way to build online quizzes, and many other useful features.
I may be tooting-my-own-horn a bit, but as I have continued to develop numerous features, all designed to make teaching easier and more effective for my students, I have come to believe that what I now call BetaCabinet.com may be one of the most powerful Learning Management Systems out there. At present I have decided to make it available to any teacher who wants to use it, and so am working to make that happen.