Added: Dec. 17, 2009. - I have recently been made aware that some people/sites have been stealing other people’s material and claiming it as their own. This post in no way endorses such behavior and I find it contemptible that someone would take something offered freely and then claim it as their own to gain cash or fame. This post was posted in a playful spirit and clearly states that credit should be given where credit is do. -
As Chris Rock once said on Jay Leno, “Jay, sometimes I just like to steal things.“ C’mon, admit it. You do too 
Actually, this is probably the best advice my TEFL instructor ever gave me. Steal everything. Steal ideas from other teachers, observe their classes, go online and use anything you can find. Maybe you’ve only been teaching two months, but there are teachers at your school and on the net that have possibly even decades of experience. They will have good ideas.
If you see a good lesson, use it in your class. Take a look at it. Use it like a template. What makes it work? Why is it good? Can you use a similar lesson to teach other things? Most likely, with a little tweaking, you can use the same type of lesson to teach a number of different points.
Why make your life difficult? Others have already done your job for you and they have probably done it better. Stop agonizing over how to teach the present perfect. Instead, ask your fellow teachers and check online. In this climate of sharing, everyone is willing to help.
Of course, if you do steal someone else’s ideas it’s always good form to give credit where credit is do.
Here are three of my favorite stolen lessons:
This is a lesson the famous Chris Westergaard demoed for me and some other trainees on our TEFL course. It can be adapted to work with both low level and high level classes and always gets great results. It is part of my lessons for a rainy day or cover folder.
This lesson was stolen from the onestopenglish lesson share here. I used basically the same format, but instead of yoga, we’re doing line dancing, which is more fun and you don‘t have to get on the dirty floor. The focus is still on imperatives, body parts, and following instructions.
A lesson stolen from the British Council lesson share. This one can be found here. I think this is a great lesson, but I thought to myself, “wouldn’t real advertisements be more interesting?”. So I went online, found a bunch of ads, some interesting advertisement pics to go with them, and the best commercials on YouTube. Do the lesson in the same way, but just replaced with more authentic texts.
So get out there and have fun stealing whatever you can find.
December 15th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Some of my favourite activities were also taken from the onestopenglish lesson share. One was called ‘The Ark’, another ‘Amnesty’. Can’t find them anymore, probably because they were downloaded when using onestop was free of charge.
December 16th, 2009 at 9:00 am
As an ELT materials author, I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one, Nick.
Take inspiration from other people’s ideas, by all means, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.
The phrase “with a little tweaking” suggests wholesale borrowing rather than deriving inspiration, and could well venture into territory that many authors would consider to be plagiarism.
I would doubt that most people who write ELT materials make much money from them (I certainly don’t!), but by the same token, what money they do make helps put food on the table and pay the bills.
I share practically all the materials that I create for free for non-commercial use, but (and it’s a very big _but_) I don’t permit people to adapt and remix them.
What would happen if people started “stealing” my materials wholesale is that I’d have to stop sharing them and charge for them instead.
I would imagine most online publishing sites who provide free teaching materials are in the same boat. They rely on the small amount of revenue generated by visitors to subsidise the cost of running the site and the time and effort it takes to produce the materials (i.e, time when they would otherwise be out earning money teaching or lecturing).
Feel free to use my materials in your lessons, by all means; that’s what they are there for. Feel free to tweak them for your own personal use, also. Steal them, & you kill the golden goose.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Thanks for the other side of the story. Since I don’t really consider myself a materials author I didn’t look at things from this perspective.
I’m just using steal in playful sense here, not in the sense that you actually should steal them. I think that is probably clear from the gist of the post. Like I said, give credit where credit is do. If I use onestopenglish in class, they and any other teachers watching see the logo and might stop by. The same goes for crediting my inspiration for the lessons I gave. If you come across my site you will see the links to the original authors as well.
Perhaps you’re right, the phrase “a little tweaking” does suggest only superficial changes to the material to make it your own and it really wouldn’t be in that case. What do you think about the lessons I provided compared to the originals?
I’m not sure you can claim rights on ideas though, can you? I don’t think you’re suggesting that though. I guess I’m just thinking of the lessons I provided as an example, but they took the same idea or format and used completely new material and added or took away something.
Thanks a bunch for providing all that free stuff. I wouldn’t want to see it turn into a pay site and I hope I’m not giving that impression here.
December 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Thanks for your reply, Nick.
First of all, I do appreciate that you are just using steal in a playful sense here; however, as bloggers, we write for a global audience and I’m not sure that the penny on that one will drop with everyone. From what I gather, some cultures don’t pay an awful lot of heed to the notion of copyright.
I’m not sure you can claim rights on ideas in the broader sense, either; at least in the context we’re talking about. I think it depends whether or not the idea was common currency in the first place and how far removed from the original idea the end result is.
I agree that the lessons you’ve provided are different to the originals, but then again, I didn’t write the originals and I’ve no idea how much effort or originality went into producing them. I think the only person who can call whether or not they are far enough removed from the original to amount to something different altogether, is the person who wrote the original materials.
I do think you have to be careful creating derivative works in situations where materials are copyrighted. Simply giving credit might not be enough to keep some people happy. I’d personally be inclined to run anything based on copyrighted materials past the original author first, before doing anything with it.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I’ve given your views some thought. I’ve decided I’m going to respond in the spirit of Hoffman’s book. Too often these days things are copyrighted and owned. While I respect the work and money that goes into creating something, I don’t agree with the idea that, once it’s released into the public domain, it is yours and yours alone. I don’t want the idea to spread that the only reason we do something is so that we can make money off of it. I prefer the idea of sharing and the anarchic tendency to move away from capitalism and consumerism.
Will some people abuse our generosity and steal our material? Sure. It’s the name of the game. However, there are just as many people, more in my opinion, that will respect the time and effort committed to the creation of something and give recognition and respect where it is do. I’m sure Abbie was criticized by the authors who got very little money from all the books their publishing house sold, but we didn’t see authors start living on the street.
I definitely respect your opinion, but I think your fears are probably unfounded here. The post is meant to be playful rather than serious and I think most people will pick up on that. For the few that don’t, they’re only a drop in the pond.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I respect your opinion too, Nick, & hope you’re right.
Think we’ll just have to agree to differ on this one.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Ach, it’s a very difficult one and I’m both sides…
What you’ve suggested above in your post is, in my mind, seems fine: a wee bit of tweaking here and there, teaching others how to adapt and do more authentic work with any static material BUT… and it’s a big BUT, you do have to be careful – it’s one thing to tweak someone’s ideas and build a new concept for your personal classes, it’s another thing to blog about them…
As you did above, linking or referencing is absolutely, absolutely vital and respectful. (By the way, I did a blog lesson based on one of Ken Wilson’s ideas too so yes, it can be done, however I also went to great pains to make sure that he was attributed correctly and that anyone reading that post would understand that they should buy his book if they’d like more of ‘same’).
There is a very real danger in that so many people walk into bloggin’ /online work with no clue – actually many come in thinking “lemme see what I can get from being online in the shortest amount of time, not at all what I can give to my community…” (it’s horrid but it’s true, you’ll see in time what I mean).
Anyway, through the last six months we’ve also seen a number of copycat website/blogs popping up, unfortunately, and not just copycatting ELT stuff – one post was when someone blatantly took an article from a popular HR blog, adapted it slightly in order to advertise TEFL jobs… The post was removed when some of us told him this was not kosher… / one of the bloggers threatened to report his blog to the blog it was stolen from.
Work, energy, creativity has to be respected otherwise those who are hardworking, energetic, are prolific givers and extreme creators will simply not share at all anymore.
Like Sue I create materials but in my case (apart from freelance work for publishers), I also sell materials through a website (yup, sell) and these are both trademarked and copyrighted.
The thing that a lot of people don’t really get (which is why Sean Banville ends up with people stealing his stuff so often) is that no, if someone comes up with an original idea it wasn’t a brainstorm moment, head on over to a computer, slap something together in 5, then put it online – years and years went into the development.
But now it’s online… that any old sundry should come along and think hey! way, cool, I’ll make money out of this… I guess it boils down to ethics.
Developing good professional materials takes absolutely FOREVER –
I award and am amazed by people who make all their work available for free – I have a blog where I do this (the ideas there are all creative commons) however I distinctly chose the pay-for-it option on my main artistic work because I want to be very clear that not only do I respect my time, creativity and the absolutely amazing effectiveness of said materials (LOL) but… honestly, even though I charge pennies, I really want to make sure that the end-user understands that and treats it with the respect it deserves.
Anyhooo… I better get on with my work, nice chatting to you again.
Take care,
Karenne
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Hey Karenne, in a side coversation with Sue, I’ve only recently become aware of this problem, which is why I added the disclaimer above. I guess it does surprise me that people actually take others’ stuff and then try to sell it as their own.
I guess for me, I don’t worry much about the stuff I post. It’s there for the taking. However, I have had no problems yet with people blatantly copying my stuff and claiming it as their own. I’m quite sure I’d feel right pissed off if someone did that. Especially if they did it to turn a profit.
You’re right about the time it takes to create stuff. A lot of these lessons I have online now simply existed as templates on my computer before. Sometimes I spend more time prepping the lesson to make it accessible to everyone than I do actually writing the post.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I hear that
– that’s why I have so many posts in the “pipeline” it’s funny, I guess, my students are the guinea pigs on anything I write and then I go back to the drawing board: edit, take into a new group, edit, edit, take into a new group, finish off… and then someone else’s students get the polished stuff!
Good that they’re patient!
K
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hahaha. That’s so funny. Same exact thing here. What’s really frustrating is when I don’t have a class to test on, like that Why Aren’t You Laughing lesson. I haven’t had an Int or above class since I made it and so was never able to try it out in the class before posting. I kept sitting on it, but no luck. I’m giving myself a TOEFL class next week for a change of pace. Maybe I’ll give it a virgin run with them.