Dive Brief:

• Lesson-sharing sites for teachers have become a powerful tool for sharing and finding materials tied to new standards, but they also offer tricky new questions about intellectual property and commercial use.
• Some companies offer teachers far more control over the material they upload, while others retain the right to modify or even sell educators' works.
• The rise of lesson-sharing sites has also raised the question of whether teachers actually own the material they create, as there remains legal confusion over whether districts or teachers own work created in a district's classrooms.

Dive Insight:

For teachers looking to build recognition, it’s worth making sure that the work is actually theirs by doing it outside of the classroom and not for their own purposes. At the other end, teachers and districts looking to use material from a lesson-sharing site should also tread carefully. If it is uploaded under a certain kind of license, it may forbid commercial use of the material. That might mean a teacher could use it in their classroom without trouble, but if a district contracted with a provider to use that lesson, it would be a violation of the creator’s rights. 

The biggest takeaway, according to Education Week? “Read the fine print.”

Recommended Reading

Education Week: Lesson-Sharing Sites Raise Issues of Ownership, Use