Online Course Guides Help Teachers Share Ideas

As a young teacher, Kristen Bowers toiled night after night, struggling to grade tests and come up with innovative teaching materials for her English courses at South Hills High School in West Covina.

“I remember thinking, ‘Can somebody just invent something so I can have a life?’ ” said the 32-year old San Dimas resident.

Unsatisfied with the little she found in the way of help, Bowers spent two years creating literature and writing guides she could share with other teachers online.

Educators across the nation, Bowers found, were hungry for precisely the same things she longed for: good, reliable teaching materials.

Since posting her guides on TeachersPayTeachers.com, a new, EBay-like website that allows educators to post their work online, Bowers has seen her course materials fly off the site.

“We as teachers are the best writers,” she said. “We know what other teachers are looking for. You don’t have to go back and reinvent the wheel.”

Bowers is one of the more than 200 teachers who are selling materials on the site, which started in April. The idea to create an online marketplace for course materials came out of a similar frustration shared by site founder Paul Edelman, a former English teacher from Brooklyn in New York City.

“For years, I spent a lot of time creating my own course materials, borrowing ideas from colleagues and going online to find resources,” Edelman said. “But only a tiny fraction is posted on the Web; there was no real incentive to take the time to do that.”

Edelman created a financial incentive, motivating experienced teachers to share their work for a fee and drawing in busy or new teachers looking for ways to freshen their curricula. To keep the site running, Edelman takes 15% of each sale, allowing teachers to keep the rest.

For buyers, there’s an incentive to buy from the site: Each purchase is tax deductible.

What has motivated many teachers to buy and sell is that they’re rewarding each other for their work, Edelman said.

American history teacher Greg Feldmeth, who teaches at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, found himself drawn to the site for that reason, among many.

“I’d much rather buy from a teacher than from a textbook publisher,” Feldmeth said. “You want to be able to help out teachers when you can.”

Feldmeth, 54, recently posted a series of crossword puzzles that help his history students study for exams in a more engaging way. Within one week of posting his materials, Feldmeth had already sold four sets.

Teachers who wish to sell course materials pay a $29.95 flat fee to post unlimited course materials online, ranging from kindergarten activity guides to aids for college and continuing education classes.

Those who buy materials pay no fee -- just the amount posted for each course guide. Materials on the site run the gamut, from a $4 guide on the building blocks of geometry to a $39.95 writing guide created by Bowers on how to write clear, concise and sharp essays.

Buyers can search by topic, grade range or by state, given that states set various curricula standards.

Like much content posted on the Internet, piracy will be a concern, Edelman concedes. He encourages teachers to use the Creative Commons licenses -- flexible copyright licenses available free for public use.

The site operates on a free-market system. Edelman does not read over each course guide or set of worksheets posted on the site, nor does he set a price. Instead, each seller is required to post one free guide so that potential buyers can assess the quality of the materials.

“It’s a democracy,” Edelman said. “Over time, the cream will rise to the top.”

After making a purchase, teachers can rate the course material, much like an EBay user rates a seller. Transactions are handled through PayPal, an online payment system that facilitates money transfers over the Internet, making the process seamless.

Already a seasoned EBay user, Ron Hubbard, a fifth-grade teacher at Dublin Elementary School in Dublin, Calif., found the site a breeze to navigate. He has made a few purchases since finding the site in May, including an innovative Microsoft Excel spreadsheet tool that allows him to create randomized groups for his approximately 32 fifth-graders.

“You’re not going to pay $30 at the store for software that can do that, but it was something like $5 on the site, so it was perfect,” Hubbard said.

Plus, unlike out-of-the-box educational tools sold by traditional companies that are impossible to change, most of the worksheets and course plans created by teachers are in Microsoft Word or Excel, making them easy to modify, he said.

When he bought an American history timeline initially envisioned for high school students, for example, all he had to do was modify some of the language.

“I’m able to go in and make the language more suitable for a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old,” Hubbard said.

Now, Hubbard is preparing to put up his own materials on the site. As the site picks up steam, Edelman said, he is excited to see teachers get a taste of how it works and to see it become a natural place for them to seek classroom materials.

“This is new for teachers,” Edelman said. “A lot of them are wary at first, but it is fascinating to see them catching on, really enjoying the entrepreneurial spirit.”