Teaching and Teaching Resources

Teaching is at the heart of education, teaching resources are at the heart of teaching. As a teacher, I love sharing my knowledge. But without resources, it is similar to cooking without the main ingredient. It can be done definitely, but it will mean a lot of extra effort not only for me but also for all my students.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world

Nelson Mandela

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What are the Teaching Resources?

Teaching resources or materials is the general term used to refer to the supplies (materials) teachers use as an aid to delivering instruction. These aid in student learning and increase the success rate of students. They are tailored to fit the content and context in which they are used. Teaching resources come in many different shapes and sizes, but to enhance student learning and understanding of the topic being taught.

I remember when I was young, the teacher had the teachers’ edition of the textbook, and our resources were limited to those notes written in the class. I almost forgot, and a handful of reference books. There used to be a queue and an advance booking system in the library for getting hands-on these.

And then, the Internet Happened!

Today’s students are not limited to choices. And they are digital citizens; the pioneers have done their bit. They have grown up in the world of smartphones, tablets, and social media, where the floppy disk icon is just for saving, (they probably have never seen or even heard of floppy disks). These digital tools are here for the long run. Thus, it calls for the teachers and teaching resources to become digitized in the digital age. Teachers need to become technology savvy and use digital aids. The teaching resources used should be converted in digital format and made relevant to the students. Digitizing teaching resources has the advantage of improving student engagement and learning outcomes.

Why are Teaching Resources Important?

Teaching Recourses play an important role in teacher delivering successful session as well as students’ ability to understand the topic being taught. They help teachers keep the lessons interesting by keeping it meaningful and relevant. This will serve as a great start for active learning.

Understanding and Implementation

They can exponentially increase students’ achievement by helping students understanding and implementing. Let us take the example of a worksheet, simple will allow the student the chance to practice skills taught in class by the teacher. This process helps in processing the information, implementing, and practicing the skills. This is also achieved independently with repetition that ensures the details will be remembered.

Motivation

Learning becomes a tedious process when the motivation is missing. The usual setup where the teacher stands at the front talking and students passively listening does not make for an ideal class. The interest of the students will plummet. Teaching resources, activities especially when combined will motivate them to be creative and attentive in class. This will have a significant impact on school experience. 

Easy to Learn

The teaching resources make the content more relevant and relatable, students find it easy to pick up in a relaxed environment. Presentations, worksheets, activities, games will add to the interest of the students and it will be simple to introduce a new topic. This will meet the cognitive needs of the student. This will be a good start to learning, engaging, teaching, cooperation, and many other things that will make this class/teacher a memorable one for the student. While also succeeding in imparting knowledge that will last a lifetime.

What Type of Teaching resources do you use in your Class?

We talked about the internet changing the way teachers approach teaching. This is evident as there are innumerable ed-tech tools and resources available for teachers. The idea is to search the internet! Then choosing the one you feel is correct for your class, The problem is no longer about finding them, it’s about finding the ones that are relevant for your students. 

So, instead of struggling of building a new lesson plan, you can look for one. And if you find more than one, you can even combine to create something of your own. Now, you will have to evaluate the different ones and pick up bits from all and decide things like, which video is more relevant, which game is appropriate for teaching in class.

But a big question remains, which is a good site that has appropriate teaching resources? As a teacher, it is your responsibility to provide the best to your learners. The best one would be one that can provide all in one place for your lesson plans, activities, games, etc. Let me make your choice a little bit easy.

A course that demonstrates excellent usage of significant teaching resources is the TEFL course provided by Henry Harvin. It is one of the best in the industry and will set you up for a bright future in teaching English as a foreign language. So don’t wait and start as soon as you can!

What is Teachers pay Teachers?

We’re the world’s most popular online marketplace for original Educational Resources.

Teachers Pay Teachers are waiting for you to begin using their resources.

You can find lots of free things for you to start as a sample. Then, you can also opt to become a member at no cost. As a member, you have access to millions of free teaching materials. 

Teachers pay Teachers

Foundation of  Teachers pay Teachers

Teachers pay Teachers was founded by Paul Edelman, who himself is a former New York City public school teacher in 2006. Teachers, work extremely hard to create a lesson plan/game for each session, Mr. Edelman thought. And there was incredible, unused potential in the work that teachers put in to create for every lesson, every day. He also quickly realized that his students performed their best when he incorporated these ideas from other teachers into his lessons.

This was the small kernel of the spark that inspired him and is burning bright today called Teachers pay Teachers which has grown into an enormous organization and a truly global staff room: an incredible place where any teacher can search and definitely can find essential resources, collaborate with other educators, and become an inspiration for the new joiners.

The Teaching Resources available in Teachers pay Teachers

The essential brief is that the best ideas and approach to learning will always come directly from the educators. They have got the experience and know the best ways to connect with students. Thus, keeping true to this thought, each teaching resource in Teachers pay Teachers is created by a teacher/author. These are uniquely tailored to be used for specific or more common niches.

Every teacher will try to bring the best to their class, combined with teaching resources from Teachers Pay Teachers, the classroom becomes a rich, relevant active learning environment. Teachers understand this and share this experience through teaching resources and spread it throughout the globe. Thus, this benefits everyone especially many students irrelevant to where they are located, the benefits reach everyone, most of all the students irrelevant to their location. Thus, it always fulfills the aim of every teacher, give your student the best.

The Network

Teachers pay Teachers has undeniably taken on the difficult task of building a network of educators brick by brick. The Internet has given us the incredible reach to the farthest corner of the globe. So, the teachers, authors, educators can all come together in one great community. It is difficult to imagine the expertise and experience that is held within a single entity called Teachers pay Teachers, a staggering 5 million teachers used teachers to pay Teachers last year to download 1 billion teaching resources. 

Teachers pay Teachers network

Through Teachers pay Teachers, you as Teacher as well as Authors can connect with your fellow educators and quickly respond to their always evolving needs. And provide them with the teaching resources; help them to be their best. So how does that sound to you? You are responsible for improving those thousands of students’ lives, touching them directly or indirectly. What a huge achievement!

When teachers work together, Education for all becomes a Reality

Teachers Pay Teachers is working hard in a new transformation, to change the face of classroom education is delivered, one classroom at a time. By bringing together the expertise and experience from all over the world, sharing teaching resources, aiming to make classroom experience memorable, studying fun while the teachers become experts in their filed. 

Achievements

Just the concept and scope of Teachers pay Teachers is huge. And one of the biggest achievement to date is giving a single platform to many educators and touching the lives of thousands, maybe even millions of students. This on its own is fantastic attainment, but there is a little more. 

Fast Company named Teachers pay Teachers as one of the top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world in 2019. Along with them also awarded Teachers pay Teachers and awarded them the number 1 spot for the education sector. This commitment and dedication to innovation are always present in the NYC headquarters, and of course in extension by all teachers and students.    

Also Read: Top 15  tefl course online free in 2021

How does Teachers Pay Teachers Work?

Do you create resources for your students as that game or activity is not available commercially? And they are stunning and popular with the students. So, you share these with a few teammates in school. Well then,

What if teachers all around the world could use it?

What if you got paid an amount every time?

An earning source beyond your regular salary?

Interested, read More.

This is the main premise behind Teachers pay Teachers, a big open marketplace for teaching resources. The creativity that you have utilised only for creating plans, activities for your students, well its time you got paid for it.

How to sell on Teachers Pay Teachers

You have to register for Teachers pay Teachers subscription. There are usually three choices, a membership which primarily is for teachers intending to join the community, downloading free teaching resources, and buying resources.

Then there is a basic seller account, again there is no charge for the account. The additional features include share and sell teaching resources, access to sales data, and reports.

The last option is a premium seller account, this includes additional benefits of higher rate payout, bigger upload limit for teaching resources, and access to premium marketing tools and features including better payout rates than basic seller account. The annual fee is $59.95 (as in August 2020)

The comparison table for both memberships is below:

  Basic Seller Premium Seller 
Membership Fee FREE $59.95/yr
Marketplace Payout Rate 55% on all sales 80% on all sales
Transaction Fees 30 cents per resource  15 cents per resource (only on orders totaling less than $3)
Max Uploads UNLIMITED UNLIMITED
  File Size Limit 200 MB 1 GB
Video Uploads X
Access to Premium Features and Marketing Tools   X   ✔
Ability to participate in the TpT School Access Catalog (as eligible).   ✔   ✔

 

Once your registration for the seller account is complete, you can start to upload teaching resources to your store. Set your prices, create sales when you need, use tools and analysis to promote and market your store for higher sales.

Why use Teachers Pay Teachers?

We now have a basic idea about Teachers pay Teachers and how it operates. The next question often asked is:

What are the Advantages of Using Teachers pay Teachers?

So, here we go:

Teachers pay Teachers is a great platform if you are entrepreneurial by nature. It will be right up your alley if you want to use your creative teaching skills for earning some serious money.

It is simple to the sign-up process, so anybody can sign up easily. The steps to set up your store are also easy and you can be set up your online store in minutes. 

There are no specific educational requirements to become a seller. Thus, you just have to be able to create resources. However, you always have a better opportunity to connect with potential buyers and selling your products if you have a background in teaching.

As a teacher, you are trained to teach the future generation. It will be a fantastic experience to be in a position to return something to the community and leave a positive impact. Also, your reach is anywhere around the globe as Teachers pay Teachers is available worldwide

You can command your price for the teaching resources created by you. Being able to set your price is another great aspect of Teachers pay Teachers.

You can choose when and where and how you want to work. Thus, you can have a 100% flexible schedule. This allows you to structure your time as per your convenience and speed. 

Teachers pay Teachers offers a flexible earning option. You can use it as a casual side earning source, or even a full-time business opportunity. Both options would be viable based on your need and decision.

Another important fact is about passive income potential. And it can be huge! This will have a big impact on your life and lifestyle as passive income means no effort on your side beyond providing the products when the orders pour in. And if it is a product that can be delivered online, it is even better. 

The Downside

Teachers Pay Teachers has a lot of great features, but everything has drawbacks too. So, you will have the question too.

What is the downside to Teachers pay Teachers?

Downside of Teachers pay Teachers

So then, they are listed below:

The biggest problem probably is plagiarism. Marketplaces are useful, but they are very difficult to control. A team of a handful of people combing through millions of documents sounds unrealistic. So, someone else often takes credit for someone else’s work.

You will be working from home, but don’t treat is as a ‘work from home’ job. Especially as the pay and sale are not guaranteed and there no structures work schedule unless you personally. There are certainly thousands of sellers on Teacher Pay Teachers with quality products who haven’t made a single sale.

How do you succeed in a market palace with so many competitors? It is difficult when there are thousands of sellers for the same or similar products. The research and marketing strategies you would use to succeed at that will play a pivotal role. Teachers Pay Teachers takes a big cut (45%) unless you pay the sixty bucks for a premium membership.

You will be creating materials spending a lot of time and effort. But it will be a tough task to predict the response of the buyers. You may end up investing a lot of time creating materials that are not bought.

To make any business a success, a lot of business training may be required. You may require additional training especially in online marketing, SEO, audience research, etc. to drive traffic to your online store. That will require more time from you.

Are there any Alternatives?

What are alternatives of Teachers pay Teachers?

Any business will have competitors, even if it is the first one, over time competitors will enter the market. Teachers pay Teachers is not beyond the scope of the same principle. Though it is one of the first ones founded in 2006, other providers compete within the same space.  

Betterlesson.com

Better Lesson brings together educators from all over the world to share knowledge and share effective lessons and planning. The basic platform remains free with thousands of teaching resources available. They build networks for enterprise customers to earn revenue.

Edmodo Spotlight

Edmodo is a social learning network, connecting teachers, students and parents in a free and secure environment. You can share, review, collect, discuss, and find material for teaching students. Edmodo spotlight acts as a marketplace for publishers and teachers to create and share teaching material. You need to be part of the network to access these.

Learning Registry

A small group of consumer advocates set up this website in 2018 for capturing, connecting, and sharing data-based information to help customers make an informed choice/purchase. A team of expert reviewers also joined them to find out which products and services are the best to spend money on, also why it is so. This is an open information website for everyone.

OER Commons

OER is the acronym for Open Educational Resources. These materials are available for teaching, learning, and research to everyone. These are licensed in a way that everyone, including you and I, can have free and unlimited permission to use it. These are generally governed by 5Rs: Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute. The original authors/organizations have little or no copyrights on these resources. The premise is that everyone has the right to quality education.

Share my Lesson

 AFT (Amerian Federation for Teachers) and TES Global created Share my Lesson in 2012. This award-winning site brings together teachers, educators, students, educational partners, parents, etc., intending to provide high quality and effective lessons. Share my lesson provides access to high caliber teaching materials at no cost. Creative common licenses are issued for resources and member data is kept private by the site.

Teachers pay Teachers: In a nutshell

Teachers Pay Teachers: In a nutshell

Teachers Pay Teachers is a niche marketplace. It provides education-related materials. The site was founded for teachers to share and exchange information. It is one of the most popular destinations for teaching materials. 

But remember, Teachers Pay Teachers is not an online “job”. It is simply put an entrepreneurship venture where you get to sell you wares (materials) via a third party (Teachers pay Teachers), who take a commission from you. Though it has to be pointed out, there are lots of free resources as well. 

It’s an opportunity to get some secondary income on the side, with the option of investing in yourself, and creating it into a full-time online business… and further creating passive income. 

There are no second thoughts; Teachers Pay Teacher is a great opportunity for the right person. If you want to use your creative class materials to make some extra money, you can register and start selling.

On the other hand, those with a spirit to establish something their own can leverage the Teachers Pay Teachers marketplace as well. It will require a lot of planning, research, and strategizing, but as a teacher may be learning is your thing. Have you prepared?

The most appealing thing here, is that the opportunity is available, the question is what do you make of it? You can think of this as a hobby and sell original content you’ have already created for the classroom or you can take the full plunge.

This will not be the easiest process, but you can perform better with a background in online marketing and research about the gaps in the market, then you might create something extraordinary.

As so far, how much you make from this venture, will be dependent on your approach.

So, happy teaching and Happy Selling!!!

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