Five years ago, the marvellous online community that is Team
English came into being, sustained first by the hashtag, then by the @Team_English1
account run selflessly by Nikki and Becky, and most recently grown by the
meet-ups and national conferences. The kindness, discussion and professional
challenge that goes on in our little corner of edu-Twitter has been a source of
inspiration and support for literally thousands of English teachers both at
home and overseas.
Fundamental to this network has been free sharing for the
good of all whether that be ideas, expertise, time or resources. As many of us have
found again and again, what you give you receive back in abundance.
We have Dropboxed schemes of work. We have emailed PowerPoints.
We have posted whole boxes of set texts we no longer need. We have listened to
one another’s concerns. We have improved resources and sent back the second
version. We have traded thoughts. We have proofread. We have offered advice. We
have built on ideas. We have developed trust and very real friendships.
I firmly believe that the moment you monetise that collaboration
– no matter how nominal the amount or the reasons behind it – one of our core
values is lost.
It is therefore with real sadness that I have heard LitDrive
is planning to introduce a fee for its use.
The resources uploaded to date and the teachers who have
committed themselves as unpaid Regional Advisors have done so on the premise
that this a free hosting platform set up for the good of all in Team English. Now
those teachers are left with the decision whether to pull their resources and
support from the site or accept that those who want to access them will be
charged.
I fully appreciate the emotional and financial investment
Kat has made in Litdrive. Her drive and determination to make it a success is
impressive and the purpose of this blog is certainly not to cause upset. However,
having raised my concerns privately over many months I think it is right to
provide a counterpoint to her own blog and messages on the subject.
Susan Strachan @SusanSEnglish has shared with me the email
she has sent to resign her position with LitDrive. I am posting it here with
her permission.
Dear Kat &
LitDrive Team,
It is with regret that
I am resigning as Regional Adviser for LitDrive. I have many reasons for making
this decision, which I will outline below and I wish you well with LitDrive,
but feel I cannot in good conscience continue as a representative of the
organisation.
The first and probably
most important reason is that the core value of being a free at point of access
resource bank for teachers to help and share in workload has changed and while
I agree that £5 per member is a nominal fee, the hundreds of teachers who spend
hours and hours on creating resources and sharing them, currently do so for
free and have been able to do this successfully without having a site that
charges for the hosting of their* resources.
I fundamentally
disagree with teachers paying for resources and, while I understand you are
encouraging this payment as a fee that departments pay, a majority of the funds
will be from teachers’ own pockets. This goes against my principles and the
reasons that I have for sharing. While, £5 is a drop in the ocean at this time,
my concern is that there has been much marketing and launching of the service
that LitDrive provides as free and as such charging goes against the plethora
of marketing and promotions that saw the unprecedented growth of the service in
the first place.
If the core value of
charging can change from being free in a matter of months to a nominal fee,
there is no reason that I can see for the nominal fee being increased over time
and becoming a much more expensive charge. If teachers choose to contribute
voluntarily that is up to them, but charging means that an exclusivity is being
created meaning that many teachers will be unable to access the resources that hundreds
of teachers would have previously happily shared without asking for a
penny.
Furthermore, there is
a concern over their* resources being wholly belonging to individuals. If I
take an idea from something I have seen on Twitter or on a Facebook forum and
adapt it, does it truly belong to me? Or, should I consider it the intellectual
property of the original source? For this reason, I don’t believe I should be
allowing a charge to happen for resources that don’t wholly belong to me or
that have been inspired by others thought processes.
Another thought would
be whether I should allow profit to be gained from resources that I produce in
the course of my job, which I am already paid for. If I sell resources or allow
a hosting site to charge for the access to these resources, then is this a form
of deceit? I have already been paid to produce these resources.
As well as this, there
is the moral conundrum, I feel that teachers should be pulling each other up
and supporting each other in the already difficult conditions that we work and
by creating another paid for site to share resources, this is creating another
way of not supporting each other, but instead creating a division between those
who use and can access Lit Drive and those who don’t and can’t or won’t.
The blog post that I,
along with several members of Team English shared https://susansenglish.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/why-i-love-tes-education-resources-an-open-expression-of-concern outlines
concerns about paid for resources and I see little difference in the TES
charging and LitDrive charging.
The #teamenglish ethos
of sharing appeals to my sense of collaboration, helping and supporting other
teachers and while I understand that LitDrive will be non-profit, there will be
an element of profit and someone will be paid a charity wage to run the
organisation, therefore someone will be profiting from the hard work of
hundreds of teachers.
Therefore, for the
above reasons I will be withdrawing as a Regional Adviser and would like my
resources to be taken off the site and my membership closed.
I’m happy to discuss
further, but this hasn’t been an easy decision to make and fundamentally it
goes against my own principles but does not mean that others need to feel the
same way.
Regards,
Susan Strachan @SusanSEnglish
What a powerful blog and email!
ReplyDeleteAs a NQT, I have found Lit Drive (and its predecessor Team English) to be invaluable in my learning journey. Re-training at my age (50) has been immensely tough and I have found keeping up with younger, more energetic colleagues pretty challenging at times. Creating resources from scratch has been a nightmare for me, and, although a few of my colleagues have shared some of theirs with me, I have still found it enormously difficult to keep up.
Twitter and Lit Drive have been sources of inspiration and salvation in equal measure, getting me out of some pretty deep holes at times.
I vaguely remember a request for voluntary monetary contributions when Lit Drive went live and I obliged out of my own pocket (whilst earning next to naff all) because I was so grateful for all the help I had received. This new nominal charge is potentially the start of a slippery slope whereby further charges may be applied for other services or to cover additional costs.
I also remember several people commenting about how unfair it was that some unscrupulous individuals were stealing resources and selling them on TES and other websites. Where will it all end?
Numerous individual colleagues from across the country have freely shared their expertise (Matt Lynch, Stuart Pryke and Grainne Hallahan to name but three) all at no cost to flailing buffoon like myself; for that, I will be eternally grateful. I do that this is the end of something very special and could make sharing a thing of the past.
What a sad day.