Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans • Hacker News Board

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#11

Post by r_smart » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #8

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I'll be curmudgeonly ... can someone open-source lesson plans so the community could work to improve them and they would be free? Teachers shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket for this stuff. Or does such a thing exist? I guess I'm torn: I like that teachers are seeing compensation by selling their lesson plans, hate that other teachers have to pay. (I'm personally working on a site to eventually provide free pr…

Ideally we'd abandon this weird psuedo-capitalist idea of education and just convince our government that education is the best investment a country can make . An educated populace will devise better defense technologies and strategies. An educated populace will create more efficient means of production. An educated populace will strategize better trade deals. An educated populace will create more cultural icons that…

Assuming you're talking about the US, we already spend more per student than pretty much anybody else. I'd argue we spend plenty, but if we're going to inflate education spending, why stop at 500%? Why not 5000%? We can print as much money as we need!

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#12

Post by panzagl » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I'll be curmudgeonly ... can someone open-source lesson plans so the community could work to improve them and they would be free? Teachers shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket for this stuff. Or does such a thing exist? I guess I'm torn: I like that teachers are seeing compensation by selling their lesson plans, hate that other teachers have to pay. (I'm personally working on a site to eventually provide free pr…

My experience is that this stuff is used piecemeal instead of as a main curriculum- maybe you need a differentiating activity for a few students, or something for a weird chunk of time caused by testing or something.

You used to just grab this type of stuff out of the 'resource room' every school has, but between the combination of Common Core making old material 'obsolete' and the big educational publishers locking down more material through stringent copyright assertion it's become more necessary to look elsewhere.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#13

Post by pee_arrr » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

This is textbook PR, literally from the first word. The headline is crafted specifically to engender resentment and outrage.

The intention is to reinforce the counterfactual narrative that teachers in the US are overpaid, which is needed to depress opposition to the looting of public school systems.

Now, a market for lesson plans is interesting - and I'm much happier with money going to entrepreneurial teachers actually creating content that might otherwise end up in the pockets of the Blackstone Group or Holtzbrinck - but the real point of this article has more to do with parochial politics.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#14

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I'll be curmudgeonly ... can someone open-source lesson plans so the community could work to improve them and they would be free? Teachers shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket for this stuff. Or does such a thing exist? I guess I'm torn: I like that teachers are seeing compensation by selling their lesson plans, hate that other teachers have to pay. (I'm personally working on a site to eventually provide free pr…

As a teacher, I find it absurd how much redundant labor takes place in classrooms. When I was just starting out I'd find myself making something simple - like a comprehension quiz for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - and just swearing under my breath. What I was doing must have been done thousands of times over the years. The silo'ing of curriculum in filing cabinets and hard drives helps no one.

This is likewise true for assessment. Another HN member and I have been developing an assessment creation tool that makes use of a library of shared assessment elements. Still really early in the development process, but it takes aim at this exact issue (while, hopefully, building in some additional benefits: save time, easily generate multiple versions of the assessment for different skill levels, iterative improvement with use, etc). If it comes together, we're intending to branch into general purpose curriculum and lesson performance tools as well.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#15

Post by panzagl » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #9

I say great for the teachers who found a way to make some well deserved extra money for all of their hard work. The thing that makes no sense is the need for it in the first place. The constant changing of books for the curriculum forces everyone to reinvent the wheel for their lesson plans. So much wasted time and energy that the teachers could be spending actually helping children and being more satisfied. This isn…

It's mostly driven by publishers who want to sell books every year instead of every decade. Add some academics looking to justify their existence plus upper administrators who are given big salaries to 'do something' to 'improve' education and you soon have a system that's very willing to slosh taxpayer money around.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#16

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #8

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I'll be curmudgeonly ... can someone open-source lesson plans so the community could work to improve them and they would be free? Teachers shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket for this stuff. Or does such a thing exist? I guess I'm torn: I like that teachers are seeing compensation by selling their lesson plans, hate that other teachers have to pay. (I'm personally working on a site to eventually provide free pr…

Ideally we'd abandon this weird psuedo-capitalist idea of education and just convince our government that education is the best investment a country can make . An educated populace will devise better defense technologies and strategies. An educated populace will create more efficient means of production. An educated populace will strategize better trade deals. An educated populace will create more cultural icons that…

Open Education Resources (OER) is already a thing - but access is so fragmented between different websites and organizations that I've never found it particularly useful.

Additionally, it often takes as much time to find & modify OER to fit my classroom needs as it does to simply make it from scratch on my own.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#17

Post by devopsproject » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I'll be curmudgeonly ... can someone open-source lesson plans so the community could work to improve them and they would be free? Teachers shouldn't have to be paying out of pocket for this stuff. Or does such a thing exist? I guess I'm torn: I like that teachers are seeing compensation by selling their lesson plans, hate that other teachers have to pay. (I'm personally working on a site to eventually provide free pr…

it is hard getting people to work for free

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#18

Post by panzagl » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

pee_arrr wrote: post #13

This is textbook PR, literally from the first word. The headline is crafted specifically to engender resentment and outrage. The intention is to reinforce the counterfactual narrative that teachers in the US are overpaid, which is needed to depress opposition to the looting of public school systems. Now, a market for lesson plans is interesting - and I'm much happier with money going to entrepreneurial teachers actua…

Agreed, this is the big publishers trying to maintain a monopoly.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#19

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

I've always felt that Teacherspayteachers is interesting, but it can’t be a general purpose curriculum tool. The marketplace model also distorts (in my mind) the incentives for sharing while limiting buyers/users to the infrequent, desperate and/or inexperienced. The relationship between teachers is purely transactional, so there is no collaborative development or improvement of the content over time. Likewise, it is reliant on discrete documents, which I find inflexible. This inflexibility might not matter if you're working with young kids and just need a fun activity/game - but (as a high school teacher) it is a significant hinderance to using this platform on a regular basis.

All that said, sincere props to Paul Edelman for developing a strong community around the site.

Re: Millionaire teachers: a lucrative online marketplace for lesson plans

#20

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #4

>Some legal experts argue that the resources teachers produce while working for a school district may actually be the property of the school district. I think as this industry grows, this becomes a huge issue for retention. Some teachers may decide to leave the profession and produce content full time if they can make more money (which isn't hard in some states).

I doubt it can happen, but I believe we would be well served to more clearly and firmly limit copyright within the classroom setting. I understand that publishers need to protect their investment, but teacher actively and regularly break the law in preparing curriculum for their classes.