Thinking about sharing your resources on TES?

I uploaded some free resources on TES, back in 2012 and I only started selling resources through TES a couple of years ago. Since then, I have become one of their most popular authors and one of their top sellers.

Back in September, I was asked to attend the first TES live Authors Train Authors event in Sheffield as their opening speaker to talk about how to use the TES tools and give new authors who want to start selling or sharing their resources on TES, some tips I have learnt along the way. It went well and the authors that attended enjoyed it and said they found it very useful; so I was again asked in January to repeat my talk in London at another live event.

This week I have once again traveled back to Sheffield to help them host their first live Author Train Authors webinar so more people from around the world, that could not make it to the live events, could still take part.

I was really nervous about what sorts of questions people might ask but everybody that watched was really positive and asked some great questions. I hope those that attended enjoyed it and for those that are interested in selling or sharing resources on TES, you can catch the webinar here.

I talked about creating titles and descriptions to help your resources get found, how to create bundles and run your own sales and also how to create cover and preview images that really work but thought I would just cover a couple of extra, but important points here:

What can you share?

If you are a teacher who would like to start sharing your resources either for free or charging for them, please bear in mind who owns the resources you create. If you are working at a school, the school legally owns the copyright on any resource you create as part of your job so it is important that you ask permission from the head teacher. Most head teachers are happy to give you permission as long as you promise not to include any images of the school or anyone associated with the school and you do not bring the schools reputation into question. This applies even if you create the resource after school on your home computer. If you are planning on using the resources in your own classroom then you do not have the right to sell them without permission as they are deemed as being part of your role and owned by the school.

The best way to not fall into this trap it to either:

Ask permission from your head teacher and get their permission in writing (a simple email will suffice as long as you don't delete it).
Only make resources that you will not be using in your own classroom (even at a later date) and you can not get around this by simply changing the odd word, they would need to be substantially different to anything you use in your own classroom.

Using images

Many teachers take the odd image from the internet that is used in the safety of their own classroom. Whilst that is not strictly legal, because it is only shown in their own classroom then it is not something that the original owner of the material usually bothers about.

However, the moment that resource is shared publicly, they do take notice. You need to be really careful when using any content that was created by somebody else, that you are sharing with others outside your own school.

Please go through the resource and check you have permission to use all the images, text, GIFs, memes, diagrams, songs, lyrics and videos. This includes exam board logos, past exam questions and text from textbooks. Ask the original owner for permission and they may give certain stipulations such as an acknowledgement but you can not assume that by including an acknowledgment you have permission. You need to ask. I know of authors who have faced huge fines for breaching copyright law, it is not something you can take lightly.

You can get copyright free resources from some websites but still be careful and check the license first as some images may give commercial use without an acknowledgement, some require the acknowledgment etc.

Here are some popular websites you can search for copyright free images but remember to check the license of each individual image and don't make any assumptions: