4 ms·

A Sharing Economy Where Teachers Win

39 points by kareemm 11y ago

nekopa 11y ago
As a teacher, I tried this site out a few years ago[1], and it didn't work out too well for us. Mainly because of timing and the fact that we didn't try to market it at all. I may look into it again, but it almost feels like the old stories of people making millions off of the app store, very few and far between. I was quite proud of the piece, worked a lot on the layout, and search far and wide for public domain images to use. The friend and I who developed it have used it in our own classes to great success. If anyone wants a copy of it, my email is in my profile, or leave a comment here and I will send it to you... [1] https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dear-Santa-You-Suck-472067 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dear-Santa-You-S...
aaron695 11y ago
> A Sharing Economy It's not a sharing economy. More like a free market breaking a government controlled model. Schools are monoliths impossible to move. Teachers are agile. The beauty is is skips around the government and goes straight to teachers, the trick being prices are low enough teachers are also willing to skip the government and pay for it from their own wages.
- mseebach 11y ago
  "Sharing Economy" is a pretty incomplete term, but to the extend it means anything, it means allowing people to turn otherwise idle or under-utilized assets that exists anyway (cars, spare bedrooms, lesson plans) into productive assets by providing a low-friction market place for them.
  - PretzelFisch 11y ago
    "Sharing Economy" doesn't really apply to lesson plans they are not an object that must be shared it can be duplicated and used concurrently by an infinite number of people.
    - mseebach 11y ago
      Again, "Sharing Economy" is, at best, an incomplete term, but lesson plans absolutely are assets. The fact that they are easy to duplicate is immaterial to this.
      - aaron695 11y ago
        I'd guess I see your point in that traditionally lesson plans are used once and thrown away. But I'd go as far as saying even if this site started this way now it's not. The lessons are designed to sell, with the top sellers possibly longer teachers.
tokenadult 11y ago
I am a teacher, and I looked at those lesson plans the last time this was in the news. Most of the lesson plans were crap--I fear for a world in which many teachers pay money for crap like that because they aren't even able to make crap like that on their own. The main reason I can neither be a customer nor a seller in a marketplace for teachers' lesson plans is that I use rarely used (that is, actually good) curricular materials for teaching mathematics at the "prealgebra" level,[1] and few other teachers use those. Most other teachers who do use the same materials I use are both smart enough to specify using those materials and smart enough to write their own lesson plans individualized for the classes they teach day by day. [1] http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra http://www.amazon.com/Math-Focus-Singapore-Teachers-Edition/dp/0547561008 http://www.amazon.com/Math-Focus-Singapore-Teachers-Edition/...
- PretzelFisch 11y ago
  My observation has been that for my wife even a good lesson plan is just a starting point that she will spend hours tailoring for her students. For the most part this site is selling ideas and outlines(which are already plentiful and free on the web or via co-workers). I would rather we spend our money on something that reduces her work load or removes some pain point from her job.
- tiatia 11y ago
  "Most of the lesson plans were crap--I fear for a world in which many teachers pay money for crap like that because they aren't even able to make crap like that on their own." They know that the lesson plans are crap. They don't buy them to teach (a good teach does not need a lesson plan) but to satisfy bureaucratic bullshit.
- douche 11y ago
  As opposed to the crap lesson plans from the twenty-year old programs the school already owns?
- lghh 11y ago
  My wife is a kindergarten teacher and absolutely loves TeacherPayTeachers. For younger kids, the quality of stuff she finds is much higher than what I guess you find for older kids' math. She uses is not because she can't make materials, but because the ~$1 it costs to purchase material cuts about an hour or two out of her several hours of planning and creating materials a night that she does between 5-10 on weeknights.
amelius 11y ago
This seems like a business proposition that is not sustainable. (Simply because of saturation, either through the service itself, or by other means, such as open programs).
buro9 11y ago
If the original plans were made within contracted hours, do the teachers own the rights to the work? I ask this as my wife is an academic and I imagine her institution would not take a favourable view of her selling access to resources that they are likely to consider as owned by them.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  My understanding is that many school districts have in fact tried to get a piece of the action in recent years.
- lghh 11y ago
  I don't know if this is the case for upper grades, but my wife is a kindergarten teacher and the idea that she has time to make lessons during her contracted hours is really far from reality. In her contracted hours, she has about 20 minutes to herself where she can sit down and eat and that's about it. I remember in high school the teachers had about an hour during the day to themselves, but I always heard that went straight to grading.
germinalphrase 11y ago
As a teacher I've looked into TpT in the past, but as an end-user it has rarely saved me any time or effort. At best, documents could provide fresh ideas - but document discoverability + adaptability feel severely inadequate. What the success of this site does speak to is an underlaying desire by educators to have a shared resource for the rapid creation/adaptation/implementation of curriculum materials. Teaching still remains a craft-based occupation and experienced educators naturally want to individually create their own curriculum materials; however, I believe this has less to do with the inherent inadequacy of shared documents then it is the cumbersome nature of adapting someone else's documents to your purposes. A strong teacher creates their curriculum documents based on the specific needs/interests of their students (not the ones down the hall, or the ones from last year) so even with the 'best' lesson materials they will need the documents to remain flexible. Yes - a Word .doc does this to a point, but even fighting the oddities of formatting can be a sufficient enough time-suck to abandon the document and begin from scratch. The document format should instead be a combination of structural curricular patterns (sharable + driving discoverability through the assigned utility of a given pattern [e.g. discussion pattern for groups of four]) + instructor assigned style guide (largely automated in application based on instructors previous style/formatting decisions). I couldn't care less about your font/color choices (which may conflict with customs in my classroom) - but I do care about the underlaying utility of your {activity, introduction, guide, etc.}. If it doesn't save me time (in doing something I'm already capable of) or empower me to do something (I'm not otherwise able to do), then what's the point?

39 points by kareemm 11y ago

As a teacher, I tried this site out a few years ago[1], and it didn't work out too well for us. Mainly because of timing and the fact that we didn't try to market it at all. I may look into it again, but it almost feels like the old stories of people making millions off of the app store, very few and far between. I was quite proud of the piece, worked a lot on the layout, and search far and wide for public domain images to use. The friend and I who developed it have used it in our own classes to great success. If anyone wants a copy of it, my email is in my profile, or leave a comment here and I will send it to you... [1] https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dear-Santa-You-Suck-472067 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dear-Santa-You-S...

aaron695 11y ago

> A Sharing Economy It's not a sharing economy. More like a free market breaking a government controlled model. Schools are monoliths impossible to move. Teachers are agile. The beauty is is skips around the government and goes straight to teachers, the trick being prices are low enough teachers are also willing to skip the government and pay for it from their own wages.

mseebach 11y ago
"Sharing Economy" is a pretty incomplete term, but to the extend it means anything, it means allowing people to turn otherwise idle or under-utilized assets that exists anyway (cars, spare bedrooms, lesson plans) into productive assets by providing a low-friction market place for them.
- PretzelFisch 11y ago
  "Sharing Economy" doesn't really apply to lesson plans they are not an object that must be shared it can be duplicated and used concurrently by an infinite number of people.
  - mseebach 11y ago
    Again, "Sharing Economy" is, at best, an incomplete term, but lesson plans absolutely are assets. The fact that they are easy to duplicate is immaterial to this.
    - aaron695 11y ago
      I'd guess I see your point in that traditionally lesson plans are used once and thrown away. But I'd go as far as saying even if this site started this way now it's not. The lessons are designed to sell, with the top sellers possibly longer teachers.

tokenadult 11y ago

I am a teacher, and I looked at those lesson plans the last time this was in the news. Most of the lesson plans were crap--I fear for a world in which many teachers pay money for crap like that because they aren't even able to make crap like that on their own. The main reason I can neither be a customer nor a seller in a marketplace for teachers' lesson plans is that I use rarely used (that is, actually good) curricular materials for teaching mathematics at the "prealgebra" level,[1] and few other teachers use those. Most other teachers who do use the same materials I use are both smart enough to specify using those materials and smart enough to write their own lesson plans individualized for the classes they teach day by day. [1] http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra http://www.amazon.com/Math-Focus-Singapore-Teachers-Edition/dp/0547561008 http://www.amazon.com/Math-Focus-Singapore-Teachers-Edition/...

PretzelFisch 11y ago
My observation has been that for my wife even a good lesson plan is just a starting point that she will spend hours tailoring for her students. For the most part this site is selling ideas and outlines(which are already plentiful and free on the web or via co-workers). I would rather we spend our money on something that reduces her work load or removes some pain point from her job.
tiatia 11y ago
"Most of the lesson plans were crap--I fear for a world in which many teachers pay money for crap like that because they aren't even able to make crap like that on their own." They know that the lesson plans are crap. They don't buy them to teach (a good teach does not need a lesson plan) but to satisfy bureaucratic bullshit.
douche 11y ago
As opposed to the crap lesson plans from the twenty-year old programs the school already owns?
lghh 11y ago
My wife is a kindergarten teacher and absolutely loves TeacherPayTeachers. For younger kids, the quality of stuff she finds is much higher than what I guess you find for older kids' math. She uses is not because she can't make materials, but because the ~$1 it costs to purchase material cuts about an hour or two out of her several hours of planning and creating materials a night that she does between 5-10 on weeknights.

amelius 11y ago

This seems like a business proposition that is not sustainable. (Simply because of saturation, either through the service itself, or by other means, such as open programs).

buro9 11y ago

If the original plans were made within contracted hours, do the teachers own the rights to the work? I ask this as my wife is an academic and I imagine her institution would not take a favourable view of her selling access to resources that they are likely to consider as owned by them.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
My understanding is that many school districts have in fact tried to get a piece of the action in recent years.
lghh 11y ago
I don't know if this is the case for upper grades, but my wife is a kindergarten teacher and the idea that she has time to make lessons during her contracted hours is really far from reality. In her contracted hours, she has about 20 minutes to herself where she can sit down and eat and that's about it. I remember in high school the teachers had about an hour during the day to themselves, but I always heard that went straight to grading.

germinalphrase 11y ago

As a teacher I've looked into TpT in the past, but as an end-user it has rarely saved me any time or effort. At best, documents could provide fresh ideas - but document discoverability + adaptability feel severely inadequate. What the success of this site does speak to is an underlaying desire by educators to have a shared resource for the rapid creation/adaptation/implementation of curriculum materials. Teaching still remains a craft-based occupation and experienced educators naturally want to individually create their own curriculum materials; however, I believe this has less to do with the inherent inadequacy of shared documents then it is the cumbersome nature of adapting someone else's documents to your purposes. A strong teacher creates their curriculum documents based on the specific needs/interests of their students (not the ones down the hall, or the ones from last year) so even with the 'best' lesson materials they will need the documents to remain flexible. Yes - a Word .doc does this to a point, but even fighting the oddities of formatting can be a sufficient enough time-suck to abandon the document and begin from scratch. The document format should instead be a combination of structural curricular patterns (sharable + driving discoverability through the assigned utility of a given pattern [e.g. discussion pattern for groups of four]) + instructor assigned style guide (largely automated in application based on instructors previous style/formatting decisions). I couldn't care less about your font/color choices (which may conflict with customs in my classroom) - but I do care about the underlaying utility of your {activity, introduction, guide, etc.}. If it doesn't save me time (in doing something I'm already capable of) or empower me to do something (I'm not otherwise able to do), then what's the point?