3 ms·

How a Teacher Made $1 Million Selling Lesson Plans

66 points by designtofly 14y ago

ktsmith 14y ago
I'm waiting for TPT to get sued for copyright infringement. From what I've seen of plans purchased by my wife and/or her school they tend to be distributed with copy protected content that have specific licenses preventing commercial redistribution. The plans will have "source" links included at the end but the distribution of the material is still happening and only after the plan has been paid for. Since TPT gets a percentage of the sale or a yearly fee I would expect the argument to be that TPT directly profits from the copyright infringement.
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  Between the teaching exception for copyright and the DMCA safe-harbor, I am not sure the lawsuit is a slam dunk. At the end of the day, major educational publishers might be forced to submit DCMA requests or sue teachers/schools (which would never happen). It would be far smarter for the big educational publishers to buy this thing back for mega-bucks rather than launch a lawsuit they could lose.
  - ryanhuff 14y ago
    Why would the publishers buy a third party service when they already have a captive audience of customers (teachers)?
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      Publishers are in the business of helping teachers convey information to students by selling schools and teachers materials such as lesson plans, textbooks, and workbooks. TPT does the same thing but cuts out the publisher. I am not sure what you mean about captive audience. Are you saying they should just build their own marketplace?
      - ryanhuff 14y ago
        Sure. If there is really a multi-million dollar market opportunity, why not build it themselves instead of buying a start-up. The publishers already have the relationships with the schools.
  - timwiseman 14y ago
    Additionally, suing a site designed to help teachers and run by a former teacher might generate some rather bad publicity.
    - ktsmith 14y ago
      That's never stopped other copyright holders. How many lawsuits have made the press because they were against elderly, dead people, etc? Quite a few.
    - bradleyland 14y ago
      I wouldn't count on that saving them. Plenty of independent publishers are run by former teachers. Many large publishers employ droves of former teachers. Yet there are lawsuits between industry players all the time. TPT is able to sell lesson plans at extremely low prices, in large part, because they're not burdened with the task of identifying and paying rights holders. I'm close friends with an independent book packager. Literally one woman who works from home, packaging book ideas. Book packaging means taking a manuscript from an author, building a book design, and sourcing/creating the associated media (images and illustrations) that make up the book. The only staff she employs (part-time) is dedicated to identifying and obtaining images for her books. It's a surprisingly difficult task. You can't just perform a Google Image search for a topic, because the site you land on is rarely the rights holder of the image. You end up chasing a rabbit down the hole. She ends up using sites like Getty. While their pricing might seem ridiculous, it's a lot less expensive than dumping hours in to tracking down and negotiating with the person whose photo you found in a Google Image search. It's easy to see TPT as this awesome, disruptive, middle-man slaying startup, but it's also easy to see how they're not playing by the same set of rules as everyone else. Maybe the rules are wrong. I'm open to hearing that argument. However, I am certain of one thing: it is not OK to hold people like my book packager friend to one standard while TPT is held to another.
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    The teaching exception does not include copying, only performance and display, copying and distribution is what's happening here. The plans I've looked at contained fonts/images that have specific licenses forbidding commercial redistribution/resale and they are distributed as part of purchased plans. The author of the plan includes links to where the fonts/images can be purchased but still distributed them in a commercial form. The DMCA safe harbor would be the only thing I think that would protect them, but that hasn't stopped suits in the past.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    I'm afraid that's not how it works at all. TPT is selling these materials to other teachers. They are, in effect, a publisher. The teaching exception means that a teacher in a classroom can show a copyrighted piece as part of her lesson plan. It does not mean that you can "package" a lesson plan that includes the same materials, then sell them to other teachers. If it were possible to use the teaching exception in this way, all educational book publishers could use any image they want without paying for it. I've worked with a children's educational book publisher for the last 10 years. They have to buy all copyrighted materials used in their books. A caveat. I've never seen a TPT lesson plan, so maybe I'm unclear on how they "package". Specifically, I use the term package to mean that the actual copyrighted materials are included with the file you receive. TPT could get around the copyright issue by inserting reference placeholders, then instruct the purchaser to acquire the images on their own, but that's a significant amount of work. I would be surprised if that's how they were packaged.
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      > The teaching exception means that a teacher in a classroom can show a copyrighted piece as part of her lesson plan. > If it were possible to use the teaching exception in this way, all educational book publishers could use any image they want without paying for it. Your logic is flawed here. TPT is selling lesson plans and live teaching materials, not books. (Or at least they could reasonably make this argument) Also, the packages typically include references. Teachers using these materials should be aware that they are potentially infringing on copyright, thus could be sued. Like I said, TPT could be saved via DMCA, and the teachers are the ones that could be sued. The teachers would then be protected by the teaching exception. My point was that the lawsuit is not an obvious winner.
      - ktsmith 14y ago
        > Your logic is flawed here. TPT is selling lesson plans and live teaching materials, not books. I think the reverse is true here. An individual plan isn't that different from a compilation of plans. The rules of copyright still apply and the teaching exception does not apply as distribution (for sale no less, though there are free plans on TPT) is not exempted. Including a reference to the source doesn't remove the liability of distributing/selling a copyrighted work which the distributor doesn't have a license for. > Like I said, TPT could be saved via DMCA, and the teachers are the ones that could be sued. The teachers would then be protected by the teaching exception. My point was that the lawsuit is not an obvious winner. I stated this elsewhere but the teaching exception doesn't cover copying or distributing a work to other teachers or for sale. It provides an exception for the purposes of teaching face to face or in the case of an online course, electronically to a registered student.
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    > It would be far smarter for the big educational publishers to buy this thing back for mega-bucks rather than launch a lawsuit they could lose. The linked article points out that Scholastic bought the site from it's creator and then sold it back when it didn't become an overnight viral success.
akldfgj 14y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3989803 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3989803 "Kindergarten Teacher Earns $700,000 by Selling Lesson Plans Online" May 2012
- baseh 14y ago
  Not sure of the outcome, ( Marenem vs Jump was behind paywalls) but a company seemed to have sued. http://www.macon.com/2012/06/12/2056692/north-carolina-company-suing-warner.html http://www.macon.com/2012/06/12/2056692/north-carolina-compa...
DrStalker 14y ago
What stops lesson planning being done at a higher level than per-teacher? That's obviously how it is happens now making TPT a great resource but why are schools/states/federal bodies not providing the lesson plans that are needed instead of making each teacher do something unique?
- jetti 14y ago
  Some schools/districts do that. It turns out though, that many teachers want to control their own classroom and do their own plan. One of the gripes my fiance had while student teaching and then subbing was that she wasn't in control of her lesson planning. One of the issues with the Chicago Public School strike was that the teachers weren't able to create their own lesson plans. Standardizing the lesson plan eliminates (or greatly reduces) the ability for the teacher to be creative in their classroom and teaching. On top of that, a standardized lesson plan would also be hard to work around in case there were areas that took the students longer than expected.
marcamillion 14y ago
This seems like something that Patio11 could have (or still can) capitalize on. It seems a natural progression from generating Bingo Cards, to branching out to lesson plans to facilitating the sale of user-generated lesson plans.
- patio11 14y ago
  It might have worked. There's a few reasons why BCC works. The fact that I "get" teachers is one of them, but that's far from the most lucrative skill I developed. Having a list of ~50k teachers for a newsletter would help sell activities but, honestly, I think I'm sort of done with that market until I have school-aged kids.
  - marcamillion 14y ago
    Well....always something to keep in your back pocket. You never know when you can come up with a way to leverage that list powerfully.

66 points by designtofly 14y ago

I'm waiting for TPT to get sued for copyright infringement. From what I've seen of plans purchased by my wife and/or her school they tend to be distributed with copy protected content that have specific licenses preventing commercial redistribution. The plans will have "source" links included at the end but the distribution of the material is still happening and only after the plan has been paid for. Since TPT gets a percentage of the sale or a yearly fee I would expect the argument to be that TPT directly profits from the copyright infringement.

jcampbell1 14y ago
Between the teaching exception for copyright and the DMCA safe-harbor, I am not sure the lawsuit is a slam dunk. At the end of the day, major educational publishers might be forced to submit DCMA requests or sue teachers/schools (which would never happen). It would be far smarter for the big educational publishers to buy this thing back for mega-bucks rather than launch a lawsuit they could lose.
- ryanhuff 14y ago
  Why would the publishers buy a third party service when they already have a captive audience of customers (teachers)?
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    Publishers are in the business of helping teachers convey information to students by selling schools and teachers materials such as lesson plans, textbooks, and workbooks. TPT does the same thing but cuts out the publisher. I am not sure what you mean about captive audience. Are you saying they should just build their own marketplace?
    - ryanhuff 14y ago
      Sure. If there is really a multi-million dollar market opportunity, why not build it themselves instead of buying a start-up. The publishers already have the relationships with the schools.
- timwiseman 14y ago
  Additionally, suing a site designed to help teachers and run by a former teacher might generate some rather bad publicity.
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    That's never stopped other copyright holders. How many lawsuits have made the press because they were against elderly, dead people, etc? Quite a few.
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    I wouldn't count on that saving them. Plenty of independent publishers are run by former teachers. Many large publishers employ droves of former teachers. Yet there are lawsuits between industry players all the time. TPT is able to sell lesson plans at extremely low prices, in large part, because they're not burdened with the task of identifying and paying rights holders. I'm close friends with an independent book packager. Literally one woman who works from home, packaging book ideas. Book packaging means taking a manuscript from an author, building a book design, and sourcing/creating the associated media (images and illustrations) that make up the book. The only staff she employs (part-time) is dedicated to identifying and obtaining images for her books. It's a surprisingly difficult task. You can't just perform a Google Image search for a topic, because the site you land on is rarely the rights holder of the image. You end up chasing a rabbit down the hole. She ends up using sites like Getty. While their pricing might seem ridiculous, it's a lot less expensive than dumping hours in to tracking down and negotiating with the person whose photo you found in a Google Image search. It's easy to see TPT as this awesome, disruptive, middle-man slaying startup, but it's also easy to see how they're not playing by the same set of rules as everyone else. Maybe the rules are wrong. I'm open to hearing that argument. However, I am certain of one thing: it is not OK to hold people like my book packager friend to one standard while TPT is held to another.
- ktsmith 14y ago
  The teaching exception does not include copying, only performance and display, copying and distribution is what's happening here. The plans I've looked at contained fonts/images that have specific licenses forbidding commercial redistribution/resale and they are distributed as part of purchased plans. The author of the plan includes links to where the fonts/images can be purchased but still distributed them in a commercial form. The DMCA safe harbor would be the only thing I think that would protect them, but that hasn't stopped suits in the past.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- bradleyland 14y ago
  I'm afraid that's not how it works at all. TPT is selling these materials to other teachers. They are, in effect, a publisher. The teaching exception means that a teacher in a classroom can show a copyrighted piece as part of her lesson plan. It does not mean that you can "package" a lesson plan that includes the same materials, then sell them to other teachers. If it were possible to use the teaching exception in this way, all educational book publishers could use any image they want without paying for it. I've worked with a children's educational book publisher for the last 10 years. They have to buy all copyrighted materials used in their books. A caveat. I've never seen a TPT lesson plan, so maybe I'm unclear on how they "package". Specifically, I use the term package to mean that the actual copyrighted materials are included with the file you receive. TPT could get around the copyright issue by inserting reference placeholders, then instruct the purchaser to acquire the images on their own, but that's a significant amount of work. I would be surprised if that's how they were packaged.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    > The teaching exception means that a teacher in a classroom can show a copyrighted piece as part of her lesson plan. > If it were possible to use the teaching exception in this way, all educational book publishers could use any image they want without paying for it. Your logic is flawed here. TPT is selling lesson plans and live teaching materials, not books. (Or at least they could reasonably make this argument) Also, the packages typically include references. Teachers using these materials should be aware that they are potentially infringing on copyright, thus could be sued. Like I said, TPT could be saved via DMCA, and the teachers are the ones that could be sued. The teachers would then be protected by the teaching exception. My point was that the lawsuit is not an obvious winner.
    - ktsmith 14y ago
      > Your logic is flawed here. TPT is selling lesson plans and live teaching materials, not books. I think the reverse is true here. An individual plan isn't that different from a compilation of plans. The rules of copyright still apply and the teaching exception does not apply as distribution (for sale no less, though there are free plans on TPT) is not exempted. Including a reference to the source doesn't remove the liability of distributing/selling a copyrighted work which the distributor doesn't have a license for. > Like I said, TPT could be saved via DMCA, and the teachers are the ones that could be sued. The teachers would then be protected by the teaching exception. My point was that the lawsuit is not an obvious winner. I stated this elsewhere but the teaching exception doesn't cover copying or distributing a work to other teachers or for sale. It provides an exception for the purposes of teaching face to face or in the case of an online course, electronically to a registered student.
- ktsmith 14y ago
  > It would be far smarter for the big educational publishers to buy this thing back for mega-bucks rather than launch a lawsuit they could lose. The linked article points out that Scholastic bought the site from it's creator and then sold it back when it didn't become an overnight viral success.

akldfgj 14y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3989803 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3989803 "Kindergarten Teacher Earns $700,000 by Selling Lesson Plans Online" May 2012

baseh 14y ago
Not sure of the outcome, ( Marenem vs Jump was behind paywalls) but a company seemed to have sued. http://www.macon.com/2012/06/12/2056692/north-carolina-company-suing-warner.html http://www.macon.com/2012/06/12/2056692/north-carolina-compa...

DrStalker 14y ago

What stops lesson planning being done at a higher level than per-teacher? That's obviously how it is happens now making TPT a great resource but why are schools/states/federal bodies not providing the lesson plans that are needed instead of making each teacher do something unique?

jetti 14y ago
Some schools/districts do that. It turns out though, that many teachers want to control their own classroom and do their own plan. One of the gripes my fiance had while student teaching and then subbing was that she wasn't in control of her lesson planning. One of the issues with the Chicago Public School strike was that the teachers weren't able to create their own lesson plans. Standardizing the lesson plan eliminates (or greatly reduces) the ability for the teacher to be creative in their classroom and teaching. On top of that, a standardized lesson plan would also be hard to work around in case there were areas that took the students longer than expected.

marcamillion 14y ago

This seems like something that Patio11 could have (or still can) capitalize on. It seems a natural progression from generating Bingo Cards, to branching out to lesson plans to facilitating the sale of user-generated lesson plans.

patio11 14y ago
It might have worked. There's a few reasons why BCC works. The fact that I "get" teachers is one of them, but that's far from the most lucrative skill I developed. Having a list of ~50k teachers for a newsletter would help sell activities but, honestly, I think I'm sort of done with that market until I have school-aged kids.
- marcamillion 14y ago
  Well....always something to keep in your back pocket. You never know when you can come up with a way to leverage that list powerfully.