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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 16 - 27 Jul 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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| | | Selling Lesson Plans
A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans are changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given. It seems possible that lesson plans could be shared under the Creative Commons' framework, as some software has been, in order to increase sharing and the quality of lesson plans. | |
>
> | Creative Commons
licenses are not used for sharing software. Creative Commons
recommends the GPL as the license for software. The better
comparison here would be with all the existing educational materials
released under Creative Commons licenses, such as the entire MIT
curriculum available as MIT OpenCourseware. A little more research
would have helped. You might even have pointed to the Creative
Commons-licensed lesson plans from the Media Lab at Temple University
for teaching about copyright,
for example. | | | Why Sharing Lesson Plans Makes Sense
Good teachers write lesson plans and rework those plans each year based on the needs of individual students in a particular class. If some teachers were to share lesson plans for free, additional teachers could continue modifying the lesson plans to meet the needs of particular groups of students and then share the modified versions of the lesson plans. Over time, many different versions of an original lesson plan would be available such that less and less modification would be necessary for each teacher. For example, the original poster of a lesson plan might write a lesson plan on dividing fractions. An ESL teacher might use that lesson plan, but modify it to meet the needs of English Language Learners, and then share the version targeted at ELLs. A third teacher could take that ESL version and modify it further, focusing on the particular needs of very new English Language Learners who share a primary language. Over time, many versions of the same lesson would appear, each suited to a particular group of students. Similarly, teachers might try the lesson and find ways to improve it generally - those improvements could also be shared. By mimicking processes already used for open source software, teachers could create less work for themselves AND write stronger lesson plans. The continued process of revision and new modifications would create incentives for teachers to post both original lesson plans and modifications, because anything posted might later be re-posted in a modified (and useful) form. | | | Why Sharing Lesson Plans is Better Than Selling Lesson Plans
Some websites are already set up that allow teachers to share lesson plans with each other. Sharing lesson plans makes more sense than selling them. If a teacher creates a lesson plan and then sells it, he will profit financially from its sale and the purchasers may profit (in time, knowledge, lesson quality, etc.) as well. However, any modification or improvement made to the lesson plan by the purchaser does not benefit anyone but him and his students. Presumably, purchasers are not authorized to resell their modified versions of a lesson plan, particularly if they've made only small changes. Thus, in a sale-based lesson plan market, the additional work of purchasers benefits only them. In contrast, when teachers share, the modified lesson plans may be posted and the efforts of those teachers who modify lesson plans may benefit lots of other teachers. Thus, by sharing (as they so often tell their students to do) teachers will in fact receive greater benefits overall than if they were to sell their lesson plans. | |
<
< |
I don't understand why the free culture option, which is the center of the analysis, is postponed to a paragraph at the end, which seems to take off in a separate direction. The controversy over who should benefit, the teachers or the taxpayers, is resolved in the free culture arrangement: both teachers, collectively, and school districts, collectively, benefit. If the lesson plans and other teaching materials produced and shared are shared on Creative Commons' BY-SA-NC terms, every teacher will get attribution and recognition, every modification and improvement to lesson plans will have to be put back in the commons, which means they will constantly adapt and improve, and no one will be able to make commercial distribution use of them, which means the companies that want to sell lesson plans will have to make their own. This is the optimal solution to the problem you explain, but you don't explain why.
ORIGINAL TEXT
---++ Selling Lesson Plans
A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given.
How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans.
What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View
If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, the materials purchased were typically created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms.
A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | >
> | So, as I said in
commenting on the initial draft, that's the easy part. As it turned
out, you have little trouble explaining why curriculum sharing makes
rational sense. (This is not even a topic of discussion in most of
the world's educational systems, of course, because uniform national
school curriculum is produced by public entities. One has to have
already the utterly atypical localism of American public education to
be confused about it.) But you haven't used the remaining third of
your available space to deal with the less easy part, which is the
immense resistance to the obviously rational, involving the textbook
publishers, the legislatures, the unions and all the others who have
stakes in the existing system's many pathologies. As funding for
American public education nosedives in the next five years, and
school systems face overwhelming financial pressures, there will be
opportunities for change that are unavailable in less desperate
times. Some thinking on your part about how to make change happen
on the ground as horrendous budget cuts take hold would be very
useful indeed. |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 15 - 20 May 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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| | | -- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009 | |
<
< | Final Version | >
> | Revised Version | | | Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given. It seems possible that lesson plans could be shared under the Creative Commons' framework, as some software has been, in order to increase sharing and the quality of lesson plans. | >
> | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans are changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given. It seems possible that lesson plans could be shared under the Creative Commons' framework, as some software has been, in order to increase sharing and the quality of lesson plans. | | |
Why Sharing Lesson Plans Makes Sense | |
<
< | Good teachers write lesson plans, and rework those plans each year based on the needs of individual students in a particular class. If some teachers were to share lesson plans for free, additional teachers could continue modifying the lesson plans to meet the needs of particular groups of students and then share the modified versions of the lesson plans. Over time, many different versions of an original lesson plan would be available such that less and less modification would be necessary for each teacher. For example, the original poster of a lesson plan might write a lesson plan on dividing fractions. An ESL teacher might use that lesson plan, but modify it to meet the needs of English Language Learners, and then share the version targeted at ELLs. A third teacher could take that ESL version and modify it further, focusing on the particular needs of very new English Language Learners who share a primary language. Over time, many versions of the same lesson would appear, each suited to a particular group of students. Similarly, teachers might try the lesson and find ways to improve it generally - those improvements could also be shared. By mimicking processes already used for open source software, teachers could create less work for themselves AND write stronger lesson plans. The continued process of revision and new modifications would create incentives for teachers to post both original lesson plans and modifications, because anything posted might later be re-posted in a modified (and useful) form. | >
> | Good teachers write lesson plans and rework those plans each year based on the needs of individual students in a particular class. If some teachers were to share lesson plans for free, additional teachers could continue modifying the lesson plans to meet the needs of particular groups of students and then share the modified versions of the lesson plans. Over time, many different versions of an original lesson plan would be available such that less and less modification would be necessary for each teacher. For example, the original poster of a lesson plan might write a lesson plan on dividing fractions. An ESL teacher might use that lesson plan, but modify it to meet the needs of English Language Learners, and then share the version targeted at ELLs. A third teacher could take that ESL version and modify it further, focusing on the particular needs of very new English Language Learners who share a primary language. Over time, many versions of the same lesson would appear, each suited to a particular group of students. Similarly, teachers might try the lesson and find ways to improve it generally - those improvements could also be shared. By mimicking processes already used for open source software, teachers could create less work for themselves AND write stronger lesson plans. The continued process of revision and new modifications would create incentives for teachers to post both original lesson plans and modifications, because anything posted might later be re-posted in a modified (and useful) form. | | |
Why Sharing Lesson Plans is Better Than Selling Lesson Plans |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 14 - 20 May 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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<
< | Lesson Plans as Commodities: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | >
> | Practice What You Preach - The Case for Sharing Lesson Plans | | | -- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009 | |
<
< | Under Revision | >
> | Final Version | | | Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given.
How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans. | >
> | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given. It seems possible that lesson plans could be shared under the Creative Commons' framework, as some software has been, in order to increase sharing and the quality of lesson plans. | | | | |
<
< | What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View
If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, the materials purchased were typically created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms. | >
> | Why Sharing Lesson Plans Makes Sense
Good teachers write lesson plans, and rework those plans each year based on the needs of individual students in a particular class. If some teachers were to share lesson plans for free, additional teachers could continue modifying the lesson plans to meet the needs of particular groups of students and then share the modified versions of the lesson plans. Over time, many different versions of an original lesson plan would be available such that less and less modification would be necessary for each teacher. For example, the original poster of a lesson plan might write a lesson plan on dividing fractions. An ESL teacher might use that lesson plan, but modify it to meet the needs of English Language Learners, and then share the version targeted at ELLs. A third teacher could take that ESL version and modify it further, focusing on the particular needs of very new English Language Learners who share a primary language. Over time, many versions of the same lesson would appear, each suited to a particular group of students. Similarly, teachers might try the lesson and find ways to improve it generally - those improvements could also be shared. By mimicking processes already used for open source software, teachers could create less work for themselves AND write stronger lesson plans. The continued process of revision and new modifications would create incentives for teachers to post both original lesson plans and modifications, because anything posted might later be re-posted in a modified (and useful) form. | | | | |
<
< | A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | >
> | Why Sharing Lesson Plans is Better Than Selling Lesson Plans
Some websites are already set up that allow teachers to share lesson plans with each other. Sharing lesson plans makes more sense than selling them. If a teacher creates a lesson plan and then sells it, he will profit financially from its sale and the purchasers may profit (in time, knowledge, lesson quality, etc.) as well. However, any modification or improvement made to the lesson plan by the purchaser does not benefit anyone but him and his students. Presumably, purchasers are not authorized to resell their modified versions of a lesson plan, particularly if they've made only small changes. Thus, in a sale-based lesson plan market, the additional work of purchasers benefits only them. In contrast, when teachers share, the modified lesson plans may be posted and the efforts of those teachers who modify lesson plans may benefit lots of other teachers. Thus, by sharing (as they so often tell their students to do) teachers will in fact receive greater benefits overall than if they were to sell their lesson plans. | | |
I don't understand why the free culture option, which is the center of the analysis, is postponed to a paragraph at the end, which seems to take off in a separate direction. The controversy over who should benefit, the teachers or the taxpayers, is resolved in the free culture arrangement: both teachers, collectively, and school districts, collectively, benefit. If the lesson plans and other teaching materials produced and shared are shared on Creative Commons' BY-SA-NC terms, every teacher will get attribution and recognition, every modification and improvement to lesson plans will have to be put back in the commons, which means they will constantly adapt and improve, and no one will be able to make commercial distribution use of them, which means the companies that want to sell lesson plans will have to make their own. This is the optimal solution to the problem you explain, but you don't explain why.
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | ORIGINAL TEXT
---++ Selling Lesson Plans
A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given.
How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans.
What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View
If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, the materials purchased were typically created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms.
A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 13 - 23 Apr 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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| | | Under Revision
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | >
> | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. However, while the ease with which the internet allows for sharing of lesson plans will almost necessarily change the frequency and form in which plans are shared, the involvement of money is not a given. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans. |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 11 - 23 Feb 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
|---|
| | | -- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009 | |
>
> | Under Revision | | | Selling Lesson Plans
A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | | | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, the materials purchased were typically created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms. | |
<
< | The Dangers of Turning Lesson Plans Into Commodities
Currently, lesson planning, providing in-classroom instruction, and grading papers (among other activities) are all part of a teacher's job. It is generally at the teacher's discretion, at least in Public Schools, to decide how much time he will spend getting his work down beyond those hours that he is required to be in the classroom teaching. For many teachers, the day stretches far beyond 3PM dismissal, with grading, planning and outreach to parents taking up hours each day. If lesson planning becomes optional, and also a potential means of earning additional income, the jobs included within the title of "teacher" will change. | >
> | A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | | | | |
<
< | The Existence of a Capitalist System Suggests Commodifying Lesson Plans Will Change Teachers' Behavior
As discussed in class, America functions on a Capitalist system in which many decisions are made based on potential financial gain. This suggests that if teachers can buy and sell lesson plans in the new internet market, the value of time spent lesson planning will go up and the opportunity cost of other tasks like grading papers will rise. While teaching currently functions as a profession with many discrete tasks within the overall job, as teachers begin to earn money from their lesson plans they may focus more on the potential for additional financial gain than on the best interests of their students. | | | | |
<
< | A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | | | I don't understand why the free culture option, which is the center of the analysis, is postponed to a paragraph at the end, which seems to take off in a separate direction. The controversy over who should benefit, the teachers or the taxpayers, is resolved in the free culture arrangement: both teachers, collectively, and school districts, collectively, benefit. If the lesson plans and other teaching materials produced and shared are shared on Creative Commons' BY-SA-NC terms, every teacher will get attribution and recognition, every modification and improvement to lesson plans will have to be put back in the commons, which means they will constantly adapt and improve, and no one will be able to make commercial distribution use of them, which means the companies that want to sell lesson plans will have to make their own. This is the optimal solution to the problem you explain, but you don't explain why.
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 10 - 25 Jan 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | Ready for review. All comments are appreciated! | | | Lesson Plans as Commodities: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | | | A Better Option
Free lesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | |
<
< |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line:
# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, HeatherStevenson
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list | >
> | I don't understand why the free culture option, which is the center of the analysis, is postponed to a paragraph at the end, which seems to take off in a separate direction. The controversy over who should benefit, the teachers or the taxpayers, is resolved in the free culture arrangement: both teachers, collectively, and school districts, collectively, benefit. If the lesson plans and other teaching materials produced and shared are shared on Creative Commons' BY-SA-NC terms, every teacher will get attribution and recognition, every modification and improvement to lesson plans will have to be put back in the commons, which means they will constantly adapt and improve, and no one will be able to make commercial distribution use of them, which means the companies that want to sell lesson plans will have to make their own. This is the optimal solution to the problem you explain, but you don't explain why. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 9 - 06 Jan 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | >
> | Ready for review. All comments are appreciated! | | | Lesson Plans as Commodities: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | | |
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. As with many items that formerly carried little economy value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | >
> | A lesson plan is like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and elaborating the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. In class, Professor Moglen discussed the tendency of the internet to transform goods previously outside of the capitalist economy into commodities. As with many items that formerly carried little economic value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the personal lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans.
What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View | |
<
< | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms.
It's Not All New...
Notably, the concept of purchasing teaching materials is not a new one. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, it was typically school districts or schools that purchased materials rather than teachers themselves. More significantly for the purposes of this paper, in the past, the materials were created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms. | >
> | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, the materials purchased were typically created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms. | | |
The Dangers of Turning Lesson Plans Into Commodities |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 6 - 04 Jan 2010 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
<
< | Commodifying Lesson Plans: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | >
> | Lesson Plans as Commodities: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | | | -- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. As with many items that formerly carried little economy value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | >
> | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. As with many items that formerly carried little economy value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the "commoditization" of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans. | | | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms.
It's Not All New... | |
<
< | Notably, the concept of purchasing teaching materials is not a new one. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, it was typically school districts or schools that purchased materials rather than teachers themselves. More significantly for the purposes of this paper, in the past, the materials | >
> | Notably, the concept of purchasing teaching materials is not a new one. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, it was typically school districts or schools that purchased materials rather than teachers themselves. More significantly for the purposes of this paper, in the past, the materials were created specifically for sale, rather than for use in the creators' classrooms. | | |
The Dangers of Turning Lesson Plans Into Commodities
Currently, lesson planning, providing in-classroom instruction, and grading papers (among other activities) are all part of a teacher's job. It is generally at the teacher's discretion, at least in Public Schools, to decide how much time he will spend getting his work down beyond those hours that he is required to be in the classroom teaching. For many teachers, the day stretches far beyond 3PM dismissal, with grading, planning and outreach to parents taking up hours each day. If lesson planning becomes optional, and also a potential means of earning additional income, the jobs included within the title of "teacher" will change.
The Existence of a Capitalist System Suggests Commodifying Lesson Plans Will Change Teachers' Behavior | |
<
< | As discussed in class, America functions on a Capitalism system in which many decisions are made based on potential financial gain. This suggests that if teachers can buy and sell lesson plans in the new internet market, the value of time spent lesson planning will go up and the opportunity cost of other tasks like grading papers will rise. While teaching currently functions as a profession with many discrete tasks within the overall job, as teachers begin to earn money from their lesson plans they may focus more on the potential for additional financial gain than on the best interests of their students. | >
> | As discussed in class, America functions on a Capitalist system in which many decisions are made based on potential financial gain. This suggests that if teachers can buy and sell lesson plans in the new internet market, the value of time spent lesson planning will go up and the opportunity cost of other tasks like grading papers will rise. While teaching currently functions as a profession with many discrete tasks within the overall job, as teachers begin to earn money from their lesson plans they may focus more on the potential for additional financial gain than on the best interests of their students. | | | A Better Option
Freelesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 5 - 28 Dec 2009 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | |
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | >
> | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. However, the methods of creation and sharing of lesson plans is changing. As with many items that formerly carried little economy value, with the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans. | | | What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View
If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms. | |
<
< | | >
> | It's Not All New...
Notably, the concept of purchasing teaching materials is not a new one. School districts often purchase textbooks and accompanying curricula. Furthermore, stand alone workbooks have long been used to reinforce memorization of material, such as multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or important dates in history. However, in the past, it was typically school districts or schools that purchased materials rather than teachers themselves. More significantly for the purposes of this paper, in the past, the materials | | | | |
<
< | More Collaboration Will Lead to Better Teaching | | | | |
<
< | The Commodification of Lesson Plans May Lead to the De-Professionalization of Teaching
Currently, lesson planning, providing in-classroom instruction and grading papers (among other activities) are all part of a teacher's job. It is generally at the teacher's discretion, at least in Public Schools, to decide how much time he will spend getting his work down beyond those hours that he is required to be in the classroom teaching. For many teachers, the day stretches far beyond 3PM dismissal, with grading, planning and outreach to parents taking up hours each day. | >
> | The Dangers of Turning Lesson Plans Into Commodities
Currently, lesson planning, providing in-classroom instruction, and grading papers (among other activities) are all part of a teacher's job. It is generally at the teacher's discretion, at least in Public Schools, to decide how much time he will spend getting his work down beyond those hours that he is required to be in the classroom teaching. For many teachers, the day stretches far beyond 3PM dismissal, with grading, planning and outreach to parents taking up hours each day. If lesson planning becomes optional, and also a potential means of earning additional income, the jobs included within the title of "teacher" will change.
The Existence of a Capitalist System Suggests Commodifying Lesson Plans Will Change Teachers' Behavior
As discussed in class, America functions on a Capitalism system in which many decisions are made based on potential financial gain. This suggests that if teachers can buy and sell lesson plans in the new internet market, the value of time spent lesson planning will go up and the opportunity cost of other tasks like grading papers will rise. While teaching currently functions as a profession with many discrete tasks within the overall job, as teachers begin to earn money from their lesson plans they may focus more on the potential for additional financial gain than on the best interests of their students.
A Better Option
Freelesson plans, created by teachers and for teachers, are available as well. Teachers should choose to use these free sites rather than the pay sites, both by submitting their own plans and using those of others. Because there are multiple free websites, there is likely a larger selection of lessons available for free than on any one pay site. Clearly, the more teachers that contribute to free rather than pay sites, the greater the difference in selection will be. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that websites that charge automatically do or must provide better quality lesson plans; the difference may simply be one of differences in beliefs or preferences of contributors. The internet should be used to create the possibility of collaboration and sharing in order to improve the quality of education both in the U.S. and abroad; this improvement could better occur if teachers chose to share rather than profit financially. | | | |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 4 - 28 Dec 2009 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | |
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has begun. | >
> | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has rapidly accelerated. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold | |
<
< | Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatedebate has arisen as to who owns the plans. | >
> | Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on Craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatehas arisen as to who owns the plans. | | |
What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View | |
<
< | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson. They will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction for based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms. | >
> | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will likely spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson, and they will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms. | | | | |
<
< | Why Teachers Still Shouldn't Sell Their Lesson Plans | >
> | | | | More Collaboration Will Lead to Better Teaching |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 3 - 25 Dec 2009 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | |
Selling Lesson Plans | |
<
< | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class, and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed and share shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has begun. | >
> | Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class period and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past, lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed, and shared shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has begun. | | | How Lesson Plans Are Sold | |
<
< | Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatedebate has arisen as to who owns the plans. | >
> | Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers are required by their employers to write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatedebate has arisen as to who owns the plans. | | |
What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View | |
<
< | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson. They will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction for based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. | >
> | If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson. They will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction for based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. On the other hand, some teachers may be inclined to unthinkingly use the strategies planned out by another teacher for a different group of students. Notably, the possibility of purchasing lesson plans (or even of using lesson plans purchased by a school district with a set of textbooks) is not new. However, what is different is that teachers are purchasing lessons that were developed by other teachers for use in their own classrooms, rather than by curriculum designers for use in other people's classrooms. | | | Why Teachers Still Shouldn't Sell Their Lesson Plans |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 2 - 23 Dec 2009 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondPaper" |
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<
< | | | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
<
< | Paper Title | >
> | Commodifying Lesson Plans: So what if teachers want to sell their work? | | | -- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009 | |
<
< | Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1 | >
> | Selling Lesson Plans
Lesson plans are like a teacher's road-map, guiding him through a class, and the strategies that he will use in order to help his students learn a particular aspect of a curriculum. In the past lesson plans were often hand-written notes, stored in binders, xeroxed and share shared among teachers within a school. With the rise of the internet and the discovery that people will pay to purchase lesson plans, the commodification of the lesson plan has begun. | | | | |
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> | How Lesson Plans Are Sold
Good teachers have always used lesson plans in order to help their students achieve the maximum possible amount of learning in a small amount of time. Though variations in pedagogy (and skill, personal preference, experience, time, etc.) lead to very different plans, almost all teachers write something down in preparation for the classes that they teach. New websites like Teachers Pay Teachersfacilitate the process of purchasing and selling lesson plans by teachers. As on craigslist, users may post a lesson plan and ask for a particular price from purchasers; unlike on Craiglist, the same lesson plan may be purchased and downloaded many times, allowing the poster to earn money from the sale of the lesson plan to multiple people. The concept of paying for educational materials online is not new. Websites like Edhelper.com have long offered worksheets, created by employees of edhelper, and accessible to teachers through an annual subscription fee. However, now that teachers have started selling lesson plans that they created for use in their public school classrooms, a debatedebate has arisen as to who owns the plans. | | | | |
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> | What Selling Lesson Plans Means from a Practical Point of View
If teachers can simply purchase lesson plans, it means that they will spend less time creating the basic framework of each day's lesson. They will spend less time creating worksheets used to reinforce students skills and knowledge. This may be a good thing: some teachers will use the extra time to refine the purchased lesson plans, creating plans for differentiated instruction for based on the different needs and strengths of individual students in their classes. | | | | |
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> | Why Teachers Still Shouldn't Sell Their Lesson Plans | | | | |
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> | More Collaboration Will Lead to Better Teaching | | | | |
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> | The Commodification of Lesson Plans May Lead to the De-Professionalization of Teaching
Currently, lesson planning, providing in-classroom instruction and grading papers (among other activities) are all part of a teacher's job. It is generally at the teacher's discretion, at least in Public Schools, to decide how much time he will spend getting his work down beyond those hours that he is required to be in the classroom teaching. For many teachers, the day stretches far beyond 3PM dismissal, with grading, planning and outreach to parents taking up hours each day. | | | | |
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HeatherStevensonSecondPaper 1 - 20 Dec 2009 - Main.HeatherStevenson
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-- By HeatherStevenson - 20 Dec 2009
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