People you went to high school with may have wanted to write the great American novel, but today's students want to write the great American screenplay, and there's software to help them do it. This article from the NYTimes discusses several of the software programs that exist to help screenwriters, not only programs that provide instant associative ideas, but ones that help writers organize the plot graphically, develop characters, and construct dialogue, which can then be played back in computer-generated male and female voices.

One feature that seems to be missing currently is the ability to easily collaborate in these software programs, though I'm sure screenwriters are just as, or more, protective of their material than other writers.

Sure, teachers have plenty of software programs for grading, and we have course management tools, but as I'm sitting here writing this instead of working on my lesson plans for class later this week, I wonder if a software program might be developed which helps teachers write effective, well historicized, lessons. You could have a database of activities, resources, etc. And you could easily see the relationship (or lack of relationship) between learning outcomes and activities. Maybe this already exists to some degree. But what then of software that allows the easy exchange of current classroom work, or that lets you evaluate the effectiveness of what you do in the classroom each day.

What other professions are still in need of their own software?