Teachers.Net…One Teacher’s Dream!

Couldn't find a picture of Tony, but here is a picture of Bob Reap
Tony Bott is a teacher, founded, co-owner, and advertising executive of Teachers.Net, an online support organization for teachers. Teachers.Net provides a one-stop shop for all of teachers’ needs including information, resources and networking.
Founded back in 1996, Teachers Net was the idea of Tony Bott who envisioned a site that would emancipate teachers from their isolated islands and build an active virtual network that would support a community of teachers in sharing and enhancing their professional knowledge. He wanted to create a site that would allow teachers to harness their collective knowledge and benefit from teacher driven content and dynamics. Through his enthusiasm and vision, he was able to convince his roommate’s friend, Bob, to see the benefits of building the site. Although Bob Reap had little knowledge of computers and programming, his highly educated mind in advertising and law enabled him to teach himself webpage programming and Perl scripting. From there, everything started to fall into place and, with the help of some funding and a lot of volunteer work, Teachers.Net became real. After creating the initial website, Tony went on to study the benefits of virtual teacher communities as part of his doctoral dissertation at UCLA providing Tony with evidence of how virtual communities could influence teacher growth and development.
Consequently, this site’s services include 4500 + lesson plans from all levels of education from early childhood to high school, most curriculum areas, and provides extensive networking affordances, including blogging, e-mail discussions through “mailrings”, live and archived chatrooms, online seminar meeting rooms, and discussion boards. Teachers.Net offers it all and it is free to teachers. Originally deriving its funding from “principal contributors” and endless volunteer hours from Tony and his buddy Bob Reap, the site now relies on onsite advertising whether from big companies like Pearson and Starbucks to classifieds posted by teachers or school districts for jobs and other teacher related services or products.
Currently, TopTenLinks.com lists Teachers.Net in its top 3 links in education. Although not in first place, the two leading sites are unlikely to compete directly with Teachers.Net as they offer very different affordances and are more likely to appeal to parents. Now that Teachers.Net has grown to servicing over 150,000 teachers, Tony has many co-directors including Bob Reap and many teachers that provide their own expertise and contributions to the site. Despite the fact that both Bob and Tony appear to have quit their day jobs to run Teachers.Net, it is unclear if the venture has formed a board or group of advisors.
Personal Reflections:
Overall, a single teacher created a website that is probably the number one site for networking teachers within UK, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. They have been up and running since 1996 (ancient in terms of online sites) and have recruited an excellent group of supporters and advertisers. Although, I think they may be trying to do too much on their site with on-site hosting of all the affordances including their dream to host video. Likely, they would be better served to farm some of these affordances out, especially with the advent of cloud computing and district servers that would allow teachers to host content for free thereby allowing the site to simply host links instead. They are not as glossy and visual as some education sites and often provide too much text for one page. They also focus on reaching a global market rather than specific states that have different needs and curriculum standards. Overall, a great site but needs to sync with the next generation called Web 2.0.
Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
karonw 8:54 pm on June 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great post! I am pretty amazed how Bob Reap taught himself to program. I agree, sometimes it is about the quality of the features not the quantity like you said they could have just hosted links but I guess they wanted to have all the ownership in their site?
Karon
mackenzie 12:35 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Karon,
Thanks, I agree that quality is more important than quantity, especially when you want to keep visitors coming back to your site. With Web 2.0, collaboration software has reached a new pinnacle of affordances that is a crime not to leverage. For our 522 Visual-Intensive Project we are going to leverage the affordance of social mind mapping to show just how far these V-I collaborative tools have come and what kind of learning they afford including synchronous online collaboration. Its a shame to try to make websites into closed systems like many LMS sites….take this class for instance.
Cheers, Steve
Denise 2:40 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
HI Steve,
I am interested that you don’t see a place for closed systems. I think it depends on what one is trying to achieve in learning. But love to hear oyur thoughts.
Denise
gillian 9:36 am on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey Steve,
A very comprehensive post. I must say that I have adapted a lesson plan or two from teachers.net (I love the free stuff), but never really thought about its origins. I agree with you that the site is much too busy and may need some restructuring rather than simply taking an adhoc approach to updating.
mackenzie 11:39 am on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Gillian,
Its interesting to hear that you have used Teachers.Net in the past. I was amazed at the number of lessons but worried that some teachers may find it difficult to find relevant resources to an area of interest considering the clunky search engine. As part of my final project, I am proposing a site that is similar but leverages web 2.0 affordances and targets a more locallized community such as BC teachers. Considering the pain points of this venture, I think there may be a market need for a better type of collaborative website that provides additional opportunities for engagement.
Cheers, Steve
gillian 7:48 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Steve,
Sounds like a great idea for a final project idea and sounds like you are well equipped to accomplish it. Janet’s idea below for provincially specific curriculum spaces would be a really good organizational method for the site.
gillian
janetb 12:26 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi. I think a version of this site for localized communities is a great idea. If one could click on BC or Alberta (or whatever area) it would make it easier to collaborate with teachers in your area and to share resources specific to local curriculum/ideas. Plus it would make managing resources easier as each area would have a great deal in common.
Janet
mackenzie 12:47 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Janet, you highlight some important advantages. It’s great to have such valuable input! I am hoping to set up a power point presentation for my colleagues in the next month to get more input…a form of research development. I will also share my link here in case anyone else is interested in adding some opinions or concerns for the venture. With a computer programmer for a brother and a research & development/marketer for my best friend, I think I may stand a chance to create this site in the near future.
I hope that this venture idea will be able to showcase the many affordances that a more open site could offer.
Cheers, Steve
Dennis Pratt 6:36 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I have also used Teachers.Net for the odd science and math lesson plan or worksheet for junior high school students. I found it easy to navigate and find what I was looking for. The front page has been updated since I used it last and I agree that it looks very busy but that is how many of these sites can afford to run, through advertising, especially targeted advertising.
Dennis
ping 9:53 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing this. It’s a wonderful website. I like their “sample problems”, so easy to understand and to use. I’m also curious of your Web2.0 version in the near future. Please remember to share us when you start it. If you can somehow increase the utilization of graphics and reduce texts as possible, maybe my daughter could use it despite of language difference ? !
Ping