Teachers sell lesson plans online

[jason]

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

From eSchool News online Teachers sell lesson plans online:

A new web site launched in April, teacherspayteachers.com, aims to do for teachers what eBay has done for the masses: It gives teachers a far-reaching platform for selling their lesson plans to other interested educators. Buyers say the site helps them quickly find relevant content that can be adapted for their classrooms; sellers say it allows them to earn some extra money for their work.

This does bug me, though i know that teachers are underpaid enough that any extra form of income would be helpful, especially for educators in the younger years. There are so many issues going on though. Do I have the right to sell curriculum that is based on the work of others? What if some of the ideas come from, or substantially draw on a textbook or text? What quality control is there for what I might be buying? And who is to say that the teacher doing the selling actually created the materials. Did they just modify something they picked up along the way?

THough I’m not necessarily endorsing these groups in particular, Open Source Education Foundation and CanOpenER - Canadian Open Source Education and Research represent more interesting and meaningful models that will, though not make money for teachers, perhaps make their jobs a bit more easy.

Of course, we know who will end up making the money, and it won’t be the average teacher.