Who owns your lesson plans?
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 02:05PM 
In the NYTimes article, "Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions," Winnie Hu details a niche market I'd not thought much about. (Thanks to Ernie Cox on AASLForum for the pointer to this.) Have you as a great teacher created a great lesson plan or teaching materials? Sell them online to other teachers.
I am not quite sure how to feel about this. Our profession seems to be one that shares freely and openly by nature, but has no qualms about buying text books or other teaching resources from commercial vendors. It's easy to say that those materials created during one's off-hours should be owned by the author, but since when has teaching been a 9-5 job? Are good teaching materials created in the performance one's job owned by the school or by the individual - regardless of when they are created? (Technology has made both the creation and distribution of excellent teacher-made materials indistinguishable from commercial products, as well.)
Post-secondary institutions seem to have dealt with this matter in contracts and agreements. Maybe K-12 teaching contracts need to openly address the issue as well.
I have always made materials and tools I've written in the course of my job freely available online, but neither have I worried much about including them along with support materials in books and articles I've sold. I've lost no sleep over this.
Have we all become entrepreneurs in this long-tail economy?
Reader Comments (13)
Doug, it's pretty clear from a copyright perspective that lesson plans created FOR work must be considered "work for hire" and subject to district copyright. If you're creating lesson plans for an area that you're not teaching in (e.g. language arts teacher creating for math or for a diff grade level than the one you teach), then that's OK.
Blog entry here:
http://www.mguhlin.org/2009/08/work-for-hire.html
Thoughts on an old conversation?
Warm regards,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org
http://mguhlin.org
What in tarnation does "from a copyright perspective" mean?
Maybe it's time to stop pretending that we're professionals. Aside from the inane ownership issues with schools, it's bad form, bad manners, bad something to sell lesson plans.
We are teachers, not lesson planners. In medicine, we shared ideas. We worked together. We do the same in teaching at my school.
Under this kind of reasoning, I could get slapped with a suit from my board for sharing ideas on my blog. Funny how folks get their knickers in a knot once money is involved,
When faced with the ridiculous, best tact is to ignore it. Discussing nonsense just lends it credence.
My two cents anyway.
Actually, Miguel is correct, but Doyle is right. Ignoring the whole issue is the only sane strategy.
My district is currently asking the question of who owns the material created by teachers? This has become particularly salient as we move to using Blackboard/Moodle for the majority of our classes...and we use these systems with a collection of other school districts. Can school districts trade, sell, share materials developed in our consortium? For that matter, can I place a Creative Commons license on my material and post them on my website? If my district owns the material I develop (because I'm being dully compensated for my time), can they - should they - post a CC license on the material?
While I realize some may argue that these arguments are abstract from reality, I still think they're good questions to ask. Part of the reason I think this is because I believe that education is starting a radical shift in the delivery of its instruction. The future will involve much more choice (for example, my district offers a health class - a course required by the state - online. We have private school students wanting to take the class and transfer the requirement over to their home school). How will the money work in this situation? Will some be compensated for their ability to teach well? Will others be compensated for developing excellent materials?
HI Miguel,
Like so many current copyright issues, I don't know that there is an iota of case law surrounding this - just opinion. While I respect Carol Simpson's views, she really always takes the very, very safest harbor when I think we should be pushing the boundaries.
You think a public school is going to sue it's own faculty members for selling lesson plans? Come on!
Doug
Hi Michael,
"In medicine we share ideas..."? Have you costed non-generic prescriptions lately?
Professionals sell their services ... period. I think the question here is can one sell them to multiple organizations or individuals at the same time.
And what fun is ignoring an issue??? ;-)
Thanks for the comment,
Doug
Hi Tom,
Why ignore it? You think it will go away if you don't look at it?
Doug
Hi Zach,
Great points. My guess is that this issue will need to addressed by teacher contract language sooner rather than later.
Thanks for commenting,
Doug
The idea that this is some vague unexplored part of copyright law, or somehow bound to what is fair for teachers based on their broader role is ridiculous. The law is very clear cut and applies across every job. If you create something as part of your job, it belongs to your employer. If you create a lesson for use as part of your job as a teacher, technically, it belongs to your district.
There might be a little wiggle room if the district hasn't asserted this right over a long period of time -- if it knowingly allowed teachers to, say, sell their lesson plans.
But generally, this is really easy. Who owns what a teacher puts on the Moodle -- their employer! Can their employer sell it? YES! Can the teacher put it under Creative Commons? Technically, NO (this is one of the problems with CC licensing, actually, you can't tell if the person saying it is CC actually has the authority to do so). Can the employer CC license it without the author's permission? YES.
I would add that the Doug generally seems to think about copyright as something that applies to individual creators, the yoeman author, songwriter, etc., as it were. This entire frame is misleading in the contemporary context. Huge swaths of cultural work is the property of corporations, i.e., almost everything someone is paid to create.
Dear Doug,
We're not talking about selling our services to the "consumers" (as much as I hate that word). We're talking about sharing tools with others within our profession. I've no problem collecting a salary for doing what I do. I do have a problem charging a fellow teacher for sharing tools and advice. Um, "double period," if that aids my case.
As far as "medicine" goes (there must be a fire sale on quotation marks), I forgot my audience. Within the field, "medicine" means the practitioners. We share tools and ideas. We have hours of informal consultations. Not all--some would charge their own mother for advice on how to remove a Band-Aid. And Big Pharm is Big Pharm.
As far as the "ignore it," again, I was aparently too obtuse. Blame the pig flu. I should have been more clear. Those of us who still share professional tools and ideas with each other, call it a guild, should continue to sdo what we do and ignore the siren call of the dollars.
I wish the NY Times had titled this article, "Buying Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions." instead.
@Tom, What if a teacher uses CC Share and Share-Alike material in their plans? Under that license the lesson plans cannot be copyrighted and must also be licensed CC.
Hi Carl,
Plenty of questions to go around on this one. I am guessing we will be seeing more teacher contracts that weigh in on this!
Doug
This is a really interesting conversation. I learned long ago (at a school law seminar) that the school district does "own" the copyright of all work done as an employee of the district. But I recall an addendum to that - that work produced for public schools is a matter of public record and is in the public domain. I honestly can't remember the source of this bit of wisdom. Have other people heard this, too? If so, can you tell me the source? It makes sense to me in a way that it becomes public domain, and is how I think about sharing documents or lessons created in our schools - I share them.
Hi Jean,
I think I remember hearing something similar about public school created materials being a part of the public domain. It certainly makes sense, since the public has already paid for them once - in the form of the salary of the school employee who wrote the materials.
US Government works automatically go into the public domain:
"For example: U.S. copyright law, 17 U.S.C. ยง 105, releases all works created by the U.S. government into the public domain." Wikipedia
Doug
What disturbed me about the NYT article is the focus on ownership and entitlement to proceeds. When do we consider a model that is in the best interest of the students? If a district owns and sits on excellent user-created lesson content, it benefits no one. If we make this content freely available and easily discoverable by educators, they can improve instructional quality. If the teachers have incentive to share, it becomes a win-win all around. I blogged about it here http://blog.sharedschool.com/?p=279.
Hi Cliff,
My thought is that if carried your gauge "what is in the best interest of students" to its extreme, we would make grocery stores, health care, housing and about everything else non-profit as well.
Another way to look at this is that if teachers make profit on great lesson plans, there will be incentives to create even MORE great lessons that will benefit students.
Interesting question, though, and I can see a number of sides. Enjoyed your blog post!
All the best,
Doug