An elite Edufire library

How about a central virtual library, where Edufire will maintain elite course materials, practice work outs, which will be open to paid students, available to them during the period of their studentship, and downloadable or un- downloadable at the choice of the contributor or the tutor. If a central library isn’t feasible, at least a group can have its own library, with the group founder as the librarian, in which case the library will be open to only members of the group. The gist of the idea is that it is an exclusive club and not a free-for-all town hall. It will be easy to imagine that a freebie will beget more eyeball hits but my gut feeling is that it may not happen here

I like this idea! Another way that it could be done is to charge a small amount for each download. EduFire could keep a 15% commission on those too.

I think Marco said the discussion about letting tutors sell their stuff is in the works.

@Agnes, I am 100% behind the idea of selling it here on edufire and giving them a 15% cut for use of their infrastructure if they don’t ask for exclusive rights to the material.

Sounds like a good idea — glad that discussion is in the works.

You’re right, I remember (vaguely, darn short term memory!) a thread in that line. Can’t remember if it was a “library” or something else. Was it class materials? I agree, and I think that goes with eduFire’s spirit, content is the tutor or author’s property.

I would love to have a library here on EduFire! This is a very great idea, and it would be a great place to go and look at some other teacher’s materials and lesson plans. Also, I do like the idea of paying it and EduFire getting 15% of the cut. Very good! :)

WOW!!!! What a fabulous idea Narendran!!! I do love it.

I’m working on another project, entitled ‘Project Ao’ http://edufire.com/forums/2-tutor-talk/topics/6890?page=1#posts-59512

Why I mention this is the code I would be using for it it could harness and area where tutors can create a section and store these materials in with the ability to restrict access to students.

I.e they either need a code or you can track them yourself on the platform and add-them. Of course this plan is separate from edufire and you are probably looking for something more integrated but when it’s up (we are aiming for Mid-November launch) it may be of use. ^_

Fantastic idea and however you and edufire go about it I wish you the best of luck ^_

Just thought I would mention it is now possible to sell materials through drop.io …. you can set a fee for any number of visits to a ‘drop’ or for a time period ….

Before rushing to sell class materials it would be very useful to determine a Terms of Use Agreement between the participants.

Imagine cruising the internet and stumbling upon your class materials being used for someone elses classes given on eduFire or another online tutoring site.

Just something to consider…. remember we do live in a digital age.

good point Ron :-)

Ron, yes, it is a good point. Yet many of us already have class materials out in places that are less safe and less controlled (as well as being scattered across the internet). If one does want to control access to materials, the options I know of include Drop.io, Google Sites, and Schoology. (There are options to sell elsewhere, like TeachersPayTeachers.)

I believe one can set up a classroom with controlled access to materials on Schoology, but wouldn’t it be nice to bring to eduFire…. and wouldn’t it be nice to have both free and paid materials available at a site where one actually teaches? I think it would be good if both the company and the individual teachers could benfit monetarilly.

You are correct about that aspect Karen. I have a lot of material I use in my class presentations online, and I attempt to keep them as safe as possible. For instance, part of my How2Wow class held Saturday contained a power point presentation that showed step by step instructions on how to do certain things in HTML. I decided to post a pdf file on the eduFire documents section as opposed to the power point presentation itself to try to minimize the possibility of someone stealing the presentation and using it for their own.

However, if one chooses to pay for the materials then this is something that would definitely need to be addressed. What rights are they purchasing? This is a very important question to consider if one expects to eventually earn an income from online teaching.

Note: For those who attended the class last week please know the podcast report will be posted this weekend. Unfortunately I am on Jury Duty this week and limited to when I can use the internet.

Oh, don’t those things come in at such inconvenient times? About a month ago I was an alternate and wondered if I would give a class in the courts blue room.

Jury Duty!! Ugh! I can’t seem to wrap my head around judging someone based on what someone other than myself witnessed. Thankfully I have been excused due to this viewpoint… I guess they just don’t want someone who is going to stop or slow the wheels of “justice” with questions better left to a philosophical debate :-)
As for the intellectual property issue.. The thing I have seen the “Big Boys and Girls” do is to make any thing that they put out branded in such a way that if it gets used by someone else it is just more advertising for them. For example.. I saw an ebook that was a giveaway to students of a particular class that was created in such a way that this person’s contact and website information was throughout the text and embeded as a watermark on the pages themselves. It would have been simpler to create brand new material rather than try to use theirs if someone wanted to plagiarize. By the same token the material was so good that people used it and gave credit which sent traffic and probably clients who wanted to get the material at the source rather than second -hand.
Seemed like a win -win… However it means that we have to have our ducks in a row so that if something gets used the people have someplace to land and maybe buy!

Let me clarify that when I mooted the idea of a Library, I never imagined that it would trade materials for a price. My single aim was to rope in more interested students, who would have to become paying students, either Superpass or one to one, may be the Edufire library for the Superpass guys and Group library for private students.

Selling online material is a different ball game and I would not like to be in it. You sell it once and you will find it in Rapid share the next day. That is why I want to make it an elite one and the content will be so extra-ordinary that you should drive the students to plead for it through Super pass. With 1138 tutors on hand, will it not be possible to generate one article per tutor, the quality of which is going to be his mouth piece. The article need not be course material. Let it be some important point of the subject, enough to make students have a peek into it and then get hooked.

I suggest we keep the idea of selling materials off the burner, lest we get into a quagmire.

Yes, a central library or other such place where I can place materials to be purchased for a small fee would be great. I have instructional powerpoints that could be downloaded as .pdf files. pdf. are important in that they are reeeeally hard to convert back to powerpoints and so we could ensure that someone else would not try to reuse them to teach his class. Anyway, I would like to use edufire to do this otherwise I will have to use teacher2teacher.com to hock my wares.

A library is a repository of information and a shop sells information. Maybe what you mean is for tutors to provide a ‘window display’? And some window displays are captivating and tempt you inside, whereas others are so boring that you walk on by. I would venture that some tutors already excel at window displays and demonstrate that skill when they announce their classes on the forums. I think they probably have pretty full classes.