Shared commitment will ensure continued access to free resources on Share My Lesson, while providing teachers with new opportunities through TES Global’s online marketplace
The American Federation of Teachers and TES Global, which co-developed Share My Lesson, a free online collection of lesson plans and other educational resources, announced today that they are entering a new phase of their successful partnership. All Share My Lesson resources will remain free to upload and download.
Launched in July 2012, www.sharemylesson.com has become the largest digital resource for free lesson plans and other classroom materials in the United States. The site now has 307,000 resources, including nearly 28,000 lessons tagged as aligned to the Common Core State Standards. More than 775,000 educators and others have registered to use the online materials, and there have been 9.1 million downloads.
This summer, TES will work with the AFT and support the transition to a new Share My Lesson resources platform, which will be owned and operated exclusively by the AFT. The new www.sharemylesson.com will continue to provide free, high-quality instructional materials and will expand the breadth and depth of content for parents, prospective teachers, higher education educators and others.
In response to requests from educators, TES plans to launch a new and complementary online marketplace this academic year for U.S. teachers. The marketplace, which will enable teachers to buy and sell classroom content, will be an additional option for current TES users in the U.S. and will allow members to tap into a fast-growing global community of more than 7 million teachers.
TES and Share My Lesson will continue to partner through co-developed marketing programs and will facilitate users’ access to each other’s sites.
“We recognized that the needs of educators and parents are rapidly changing, and together AFT and TES can best serve those needs with two different platforms. Share My Lesson will increase free content and distribution of lesson plans, learning activities, and units of instruction to support educators and parents who need them,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten.
“Our union’s partnership with a for-profit corporation was mutually beneficial and accomplished the goals we had for providing teacher-proven resources to U.S. teachers,” she said, adding that the AFT is setting up its own in-house infrastructure and ultimately will run Share My Lesson on its own. The AFT’s goals include making the site easier to navigate, providing more and better up-to-date resources, and giving teachers the ability to communicate with each other about their work.
Rob Grimshaw, CEO of TES Global, agreed that the partnership has been valuable.
“Our partnership with the AFT has taught our team a great deal about the pressures and challenges facing teachers in the U.S. and how to best serve them as a commercial company. We’re excited about extending our commitment, by providing teachers more choices and a dynamic, new marketplace for their content,” Grimshaw said.
For more information:
Janet Bass, AFT
+1 (0) 202-879-4554
jbass@aft.org
Tom Glover, TES Global
+44 (0) 7469 154144/ +44 (0) 203 1943317
tom.glover@tesglobal.com
About the AFT
The American Federation of Teachers is a union of 1.6 million professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
About TES Global
TES Global is a fast growing and global digital education company. Our mission is to help improve performance and standards in education by both supporting the world’s teachers with a portfolio of tailored digital services and providing the world’s most respected higher education data and analysis. It is home to the world’s largest online community of teachers, with 7 million registered users, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. For more information, visit www.tesglobal.com.