Amazon made quite a buzz with its recent release of Inspire, the new online marketplace for lesson plans, curriculum, and other resources (click here for early access). Forbes predicts that Amazon Inspire will give the company a stronghold in the growing digital education industry, despite being a free platform, since it’s expected to “give a boost to other products that are key to the growth prospects of other Amazon businesses.” Lisa Nielsen asks in a recent post, “What does this mean for the more than 2 million teachers who are already paying other teachers for this type of content on the popular Teachers Pay Teachers website?” Should teachers now give away their materials for free, or should corporations pay teachers for quality content that they can offer through services like Inspire? As schools gear up for the DOE’s Go Open initiative, it will be an interesting debate.
