A big thank you to the teachers from Teach Plus who blogged here last week. Interesting posts and good food for thought.
And on the subject of teachers, the marketplace for teacher online sharing sites is pretty frothy right now. There are a host of companies trying to carve out niches where teachers can share lessons and curriculum – especially materials geared toward the Common Core standards. A lot of questions remain, particularly around who owns the IP and can profit from it, but a lot of activity nonetheless. Lat year the American Federation of Teachers partnered with a British corporation to launch one site called “Share My Lesson” and now the National Education Association is jumping into the fray by partnering with the U.S.-based start-up Better Lesson. From the HuffPo account of the new partnership:
“It’s Share My Lesson plus,” said Bill Raabe, an NEA executive.
Update: More smack talk! AFT head Randi Weingarten responds here.
Its wonderful to see teachers sharing lesson plans with one another and I love that the internet allows for that to happen across the globe. Great post.
Echoing guest blogger Bhatt’s post from last week, I think spinning common core as putting the creative power back in the teachers court is a productive position to take. Sharing these quality lesson plans is a great way to spread that creative edge to the students benefit. My concern with paying teachers for their lesson plans is how are we deciphering a high quality from a low quality lesson plan? And who is making that call? I love the concept of providing teachers plans containing both content and a method for implementation. However, we need to ensure high quality lessons are being distributed, not just mediocrity trying to make an extra buck.