How to contribute and what happens next
1. Upload your file
You upload one or more Powerpoint, Word, Excel, PDF, Flash or ZIP files with a brief description of the content and the courses it is relevant for. Uploading a file should take less than 3 minutes. Find out more about file formats or start uploading now.
2. We review your file
Your submission is then reviewed by our moderators to make sure it is acceptable and well formatted.
3. Our users trial your resource
Your resource then goes On Trial, so some of our most active users can try it and add their reviews.
4.Resource approved and ready to download on Teachable
Once approved any user can preview the file for free and then buy a full copy to share and modify (subject to copyright conditions). Files are subject to a set pricing scale.
What you get
Teachable’s Contributor Reward scheme gives you a share of all future download income. For every pay-for resource Approved by Teachable, you will receive 50% of all download income for that file (subject to reward conditions).
- EITHER get this reward back as credits to use on other resources on the site (either for your own use or for you school / department). Buying credits this way is very cheap, and you should get 1 extra download credit for every 3 times your file is downloaded.
- OR earn regular cash payments. You’ll have to earn at least £50 (US$100) before we can pay you. Payments are made by UK cheque or PayPal.
File formatting and copyright
How to format your file
Teachable.net has many types of resources to suit different teaching styles, class abilities and ICT equipment. We do not have a ‘house style’, but we do ask you to keep to some simple guidelines to ensure everyone can use your files.
General guidelines
1. MS Office Versions
We can accept both Powerpoint, Word and Excel 2007 versions (.pptx, .docx, .xlsx) and previous versions. To ensure best compatibility please save your files in ’97-2003 compatible’ version.
2. Use of images and diagrams
Most images and diagrams on websites are not royalty-free. Please make sure your image is royalty-free, and attribute the source if the image came from an academic / educational library (e.g. Source: http://…)
3. Use of English
Our resources are used by teachers around the world, so please try not to use regional slang or obscure abbreviations. If English is not your first language, you may find the online Guardian Style Guide useful.
Powerpoint guidelines.
1. Leaving space around the edge
Most projectors are not perfectly aligned, so make sure you leave lots of blank space around the edge of the slide to enable everyone to read the text. Leaving adequate space around the text also makes it easier to read. If you’ve run out of space on a slide you probably need to start a new one.
2. Font size
For an A4 slide/ page, please make sure all the fonts are more than 20 point. Titles should be larger that 36 point. For documents designed to be printed, we would recommend more than 12 point text.
3. Introducing one point at a time
The rule of thumb is that each new item presented should take no more than 7 seconds to read. If you want to introduce lots of points on one slide please animate them to come in one-by-one. On the other hand, don’t make the teacher have to click too many times – having up to six elements that appear in sequence on a page is probably enough.
4. High contrast backgrounds
Generally we prefer plain colour backgrounds that are highly contrasted to the text (white on navy blue or dark red on white). If you want to introduce more colour, do it by putting images next to the text, not behind the text.
5. Limit the use of distracting animations
Some transitions (from slide to slide) or animations of particular text or diagrams are useful to emphasise a point; constant emphasis just distracts from the message. Likewise sound effects such as typewriter noises for every paragraph or screeching brakes on each transition are very annoying. Please also avoid using the ‘random transition’ feature as it makes for unpredictable and distracting presentations.
Fitting in with our file categories
We certainly don’t want to limit your creativity, but we think that a lot of teaching resources fall into a number of core categories. We would encourage you to include a few different types of file with each resource, but try to be clear about the intended use for your file:
Starter / Introduction
These are designed to introduce a new topic and should be limited in their scope and the number of new ideas introduced. Since starters are designed to engage the class they should be especially graphical, stimulating and preferably with some interactivity (mini-quiz etc). Less text is often better, as the teacher will be talking through it anyway.
Class Activity
The meat of a lesson; something that the teacher can run through with the whole class. It might lead the pupils through an offline / practical activity, or rely solely on information on the screen or on paper in front of the class. Please pay special attention to the logical flow of these kind of presentations / worksheets.
Individual learning
These files are designed for the pupils to go through on their own. Most commonly they are worksheets, but other videos and Powerpoints can also be customised to make them suitable for viewing without a teacher. Generally these files need more explanatory text to make them useful.
Revision
Likely to be denser with facts and ideas and designed specifically to re-cap a topic. As with individual learning files, they may need more explanatory text.
Quiz
Something specifically designed to get feedback from the class. Multiple choice works well in Powerpoint, and you can display the answers back on the screen by using the ‘trigger’ feature within the Custom Animation menu. Click here for a demonstration and template file. Alternatively some contributors have created quizzes structured on popular TV quiz shows.
Copyright conditions for your contributed files
You retain the copyright of the files you submit, but you are granting Teachable a permanent, royalty-free licence to distribute the content online. Once our members have paid for the resource they can share it among other teachers and pupils within their school only, as well as modifying it for their own class. We interpret this license to mean that the resource can also be uploaded to the schools’ own Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), but not posted publicly to any website. The key condition is that every time the resource is copied (on paper or digitally) it must be attributed to Teachable.net (and through the Teachable.net link to the contributor).
You have the right to publish the same material elsewhere, but we would ask that you do not make the same files freely available if you want them to sell on Teachable.
What are acceptable resources
Teachable has high standards, so we can only accept the resources that are relevant to the UK curriculum and are nicely presented. We may modify them to fit our formatting standards. We can’t accept every resource, but if we think there are some good concepts or diagrams included we will do our best to suggest a different way in which it could be submitted. In general we don’t want you to submit anything:
- Directly copying other resources on this site (taking element of a resource and adding to it is fine, as long as it’s a distinct improvement and uses no more than 50% of the original)
- Simply cut and pasted from a freely available website – unless you’re adding substantially to it
- In any way offensive or defamatory (obviously), but see our terms and conditions if you’re unsure!
- Which requires specialist third-party software to use – all of our files can be viewed with freely available Acrobat, Open Office or Flash software
- Badly worded, formatted or thought through – we’re willing to help polish the resources, but we can’t do all the thinking for you
Perhaps the best way to find what we mean is to browse the resources already on the site.
The Teachability rating system
So people can find the best resources quickly we use a star rating system (***** = excellent, down to * = poor). If your resource is highly rated (and has been downloaded many times previously) it will get more attention, leading to more downloads, and a bigger reward for you … so try your best!
Previewing files
Any user can screen-shot of the files, but this is severely restricted in terms of copyright and also usability – with a large watermark across it. Preview images are not indended for sharing or classroom use, and Teachable retains full copyright of the material in these preview files.
Contributor Reward Conditions
- Reward is only earned on pay-for files (where a credit must be redeemed). If, for whatever reason, your file is made available for free, we will not owe you for downloads for that file.
- Payments are made on demand, subject to a minimum payout of £50. You claim your rewards by logging in to Teachable and clicking the ‘Pay me £x’ button.
- Your 50% share will vary depending on the income for the site. As a guidelines, on 15th October 2011 this was £0.60 (60 pence) for every time a download credit is used for your file. This payment may fall if the proportion of paying users to Teachable.net falls, or we need to give away more free promotional credits.
- We reserve the right to suspend payments to contributors if they are in breach of our terms and conditions.
Publicity
We will attribute the resources to you (unless you want to remain anonymous) so that appreciative users can find more of your work. You can also provide a link to your own website or school website it you would like more publicity, but we do not disclose any further personal information about you.
