Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/11437
NS SALE “Others critiqued my materials on the website and s aid my questions didn’t encourage critical thinking skills. So I took a look at how I asked ques- tions of my students, and then went back and tweaked my materials. For me, it was a learning experience as well as a sharing experience.” He decided to become a seller after purchasing materials on TPT from oth- ers. “What I f ound was much better than some of the materials I had seen from professional curriculum writers,” Lim comments. “Often those materials were tough to implement or unrealis- tic. What teachers wrote and sold was much more practical.” He now sells products on TPT in- cluding worksheets and PowerPoint presentations pertaining to short sto- ries commonly assigned in En glish classes. He earns about $300 a month and uses the extra cash to buy class- room supplies he previously paid for with his salary. “It’s not easy money,” he says. “It takes a lot of time to do this. You have to look at materials from a teacher’s point of view in addition to the point of view of the students in your class. But I would definitely encourage others to try it. There are a lot of rewards.” TPT was created in 2006 b y Paul Edelman, a f ormer midd le s chool teacher in New York City. The idea took hold because he was always surfing the Web looking for new ideas to try in his classroom. “It was mind-numbing because there was so much online, and also so little,” says Edelman. “But I knew there were millions of teachers creating lesson plans every day and that very few of these were on the Web. Most were just sharing with local colleagues. They didn’t have much incent ive to post them, and that’s where the idea of TPT came from.” TPT handles all transactions, for a fee, and pay sellers on a quarterly basis. Presently 10,000 teachers from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Britain have seller accounts, with 6,000 of them con- sidered active contributors. Most mate- ABOVE: Kristen Bowers, a South Hills High School teacher and member of the Covina Unified Education Association, who sells her lesson plans online. rials are cheap (under $5), while a few sell for as high as $50. In addition to of fering potent ial buyers a preview of materials and the opportunity to post reviews and rat- ings, buyers can also ask the s eller questions via e-mail. “It’s truly an open market place with quality controlled by user ratings and comments,” says Edelman. “But we do MAY 2010 | www.cta.org 17