American Fed. of Teachers Joins Privatization Bandwagon with British Corp Disguised as "Sharing".

[HiPointDem]

Teachers Work for Free, Corporation Has Perpetual Rights to Their Work.


AFT is jumping into the online lesson plan business with a collaboration with British firm TSL Education...The smart-ass wing of the ed policy world wants to know, what happened to buy American?

http://www.eduwonk.com/2012/06/aft-joins-the-privitization-bandwagon.html

Note: TSL Education Ltd. is owned by a private equity firm, Charterhouse Capital Partners, led by Gordon Bonnyman, #14 on "Kent's Richest 50" list.

Charterhouse Capital began as part of HSBC (Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) until it was spun off in 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charterhouse_Capital_Partners

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC


More seriously, the fine print here may be the more substantial delineation between these different sites. The terms of use for this new service, Share My Lesson, are interesting. Ironically, the terms of use of the AFT venture appear to be the least favorable to teachers of the major lesson sharing services operating today. They read in part:

With respect to all Content you post on the Service, you grant SML a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sub-licensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed. With respect to all Content you post to the Service, you hereby waive any moral rights you have in the Content. You agree to perform all further acts necessary to perfect any of the above rights granted by you to SML, including the execution of deeds and documents, at our request.

SML does not acquire any title or ownership rights in the Content that you submit and/or make available. After you submit, post, email, display, transmit or otherwise make available any such Content, you continue to retain any such rights that you may have in such Content, subject to the rights, licenses and privileges granted herein.

http://www.eduwonk.com/2012/06/aft-joins-the-privitization-bandwagon.html


Sharemylesson.com is modeled on tesconnect.com, a Web site created by TSL in Britain. TSL, which generates its revenues by selling teacher recruitment ads in its Times Educational Supplement and Times Higher Education magazines, started the Web site four years ago and has since amassed two million registered users in 197 countries.

Both TSL and the union have invested cash and staff time worth about $10 million combined in the American site. Louise Rogers, TSL’s chief executive, said that although the company would eventually want to make money from sharemylesson.com, teachers would always have free access to the material created by other teachers, as well as content from other partners including Sesame Workshop; WETA, the public television and radio station in Washington; and Student Achievement Partners, one of the architects of the common core standards that 45 states have agreed to adopt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/teachers-union-to-open-lesson-sharing-web-site.html?_r=1


Interestingly, WA State pension funds are invested in this venture, which leads me to suspect there's a Gates connection.

This must be the new business model: peons do the work for free, corporations tweak it & sell it.

[HiPointDem]

1. kicking this for the folks coming home from work.

[Reader Rabbit]

2. This is disheartening in so many ways.

I thought AFT actually represented their members, unlike NEA. Appears now that both of them are sellouts.

[HiPointDem]

3. yes, disheartening. imo the only way the teachers are going to hold onto anything is to follow the

lead of the chicago teachers.