(This is a long post. Apologies in advance!)I’m
very lucky with the contributions I receive for Primary Resources. Lots of emails full of resources make their way into my inbox each week and
I really do appreciate the time taken by the teachers who send them.
Not everything I’m sent appears on the site, though.
I thought I’d take a little time to explain why, especially in light of the fact that
I’ve been receiving an increasing number of contributions recently that I just can’t use.
A few years ago the only real reason that I didn’t include certain resources was because they were either of poor quality, contained lots of mistakes or I just didn’t think they were that useful. That’s not really a problem these days as in teachers are generally sending me good, well presented and relevant material.
Sometimes I get resources that are just too similar to the material that’s already on the site. There are only so many fraction walls, number cards or times tables displays that are different enough to be worth including.
On rare occasions I even get sent files that are already on the site. This is usually done by accident by an enthusiastic teacher who attaches an entire folders worth of material, forgetting that they downloaded some of those files from Primary Resources in the first place.
However, the most common reason that resources get rejected at the moment is because they infringe copyright. I’m often sent material that includes copyrighted text or pictures.
Sometimes it’s material that incorporates worksheets from published schemes. Other times it’s cloze activities based around copyrighted stories, factual texts or poems.
I’ve received lots of powerpoints recently where the contributing teacher has just copied and pasted entire blocks of text and images from a website into the presentation.
I’ve been sent art presentations that consist entirely of slides with pictures of artists work taken from websites or scanned from books or photocards. While you might get away using these with your own class, it’s not okay for you to share them with other teachers or for us to publish them on the Internet.
In general, when contributing worksheets and presentations to the site it’s best to make sure you’ve written the text yourself and the images come from public domain source. Clip art images are usually okay in the context that we’re using the files.
As it says on our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages:
“Is there any type of material you don't want?
We can't accept material that includes copyright material - for example: copyright photographs, scanned images from books or lengthy extracts from books. Please do not include copyrighted stories, poems and text. Contributors to the site must ensure that their material doesn't infringe anyone elses copyright. All material submitted must be the copyright of the contributor or the contributor must have permission to use the copyrighted material in their own work. We can not accept worksheets that are copied or adapted from those in commercial available schemes and books. It also not acceptable to copy and paste material (images or text!) from other websites or Internet resources into your own presentations without the permission of those sites.”
It’s important to point out that our contribution acceptance standards have changed over time.
Something I would’ve have accepted onto the site a few years ago, now won’t make it on for one of the reasons above. There’s actually some material on the site at the moment that wouldn’t have made it on under the new rules and these resources are gradually being removed or replaced.
On the other hand, there are lots of types of material that I wasn’t accepting in the past (like vocabulary displays and photographs of work) that I now include on the site. Primary education priorities have changed and teachers want different kinds of resources now than they did ten years ago.
I just want to finish this blog post by reiterating that
I really do appreciate every single contribution sent to the site. I’m always frustrated when I can’t include contributions, especially when it’s obvious that teachers have spent a lot of time putting the resources together.
At the moment I only email people if their work is included on the site. I don’t email them if I’ve decided not to use it. I’d be interested to hear if site users think this policy should be changed. Do you want to get a message saying
“Thanks for sending your contributions. Unfortunately, on this occasion we’ve decided not to include your resources on the site”? Would that put you off sending any more material in the future? Or is it more off-putting when you don’t hear anything at all?
Please feel free to let me know what you think on the
comments section below, in the
forums or by
email.
