How one question led to another...

eliciabullock81
Jul 7
5 min read

One of the things I enjoy most about writing is that I rarely end up writing the article I thought I was going to write.

This post is a good example.

A few weeks ago, I found myself thinking about Creative Commons licensing. Teachers spend countless hours designing lessons, creating presentations, building assessments, and refining activities. Much of that work represents years of classroom experience, iteration, and reflection. Yet many of us never think about what happens to those resources once we've created them.

Should we be protecting our intellectual property? Should we be sharing it? Should we be doing both?

I thought this post was going to be about why more teachers should add a Creative Commons license to the resources they share.

Instead, it became something quite different.

This isn't the article I intended to write. It's the story of how one question led to another, and how a simple curiosity about Creative Commons became a much bigger reflection on teacher time, open education, AI, and the future of educational resource sharing.

The thinking process. Create using ChatGPT.

It Started with Creative Commons

The first question I found myself asking was whether teachers should feel obligated to give their work away at all.

Like many educators, I've created resources that I've shared freely with colleagues. I've also spent hundreds of hours creating resources that I've chosen to sell. I don't think those two ideas are contradictory. Creating high-quality curriculum takes an enormous amount of time, and I don't think teachers should feel guilty for wanting to be compensated for that work.

At the same time, some of the most valuable resources I've ever used have been freely shared by generous educators who simply wanted to help others. Open Educational Resources have saved me time, introduced me to new ideas, and connected me with teaching approaches I might never have discovered on my own.

So which is it?

Should teachers share their best work openly, or should they sell it?

The OECD Made Me Stop and Think

As I started reading more about Creative Commons and open educational resources, I expected to find articles about copyright and licensing. Instead, I found myself reading about something else entirely: teacher time.

One of the first articles I came across was the OECD report Making the Most of Teachers' Time. It opens with a simple but powerful statement:

"Teachers' time is a critical resource for education systems and a key input for student learning."

That sentence stopped me. I spend a lot of time thinking about respecting teachers' time. As an educational technology coach, much of my work revolves around helping teachers reduce unnecessary workload and spend more time focusing on learning. Yet I had never connected that idea to the resources teachers create and share.

If teacher time is one of education's most valuable resources, shouldn't we think carefully about how we reduce unnecessary duplication?

That question led me somewhere unexpected.

Is it one or the other?

The next article I read was a thoughtful blog post titled The Gap Between Open and Closed: OER vs. Teachers Pay Teachers. What I appreciated most was that it didn't frame the conversation as a battle between "good" and "bad." Instead, it acknowledged something I suspect many teachers feel. We value open education. We also understand why teachers choose to sell the resources they've spent countless hours creating.

That felt much closer to my own thinking.

I don't think teachers should feel guilty for selling their expertise.

I also don't think we should underestimate the incredible generosity of educators who openly share their work.

Perhaps those ideas aren't in conflict after all.

Maybe We're Asking the Wrong Question

The third article I came across, published in the Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education journal, explored how early-career teachers use Teachers Pay Teachers. While reading it, one particular challenge stood out to me. Finding high-quality resources isn't always easy. Especially for novice teachers. That made me realize I had been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the biggest challenge isn't whether resources are free or paid.

Maybe it's helping teachers find the right resource in the first place.

Anyone who has searched for teaching materials knows the feeling. You spend an hour scrolling through dozens of lessons that almost fit your needs. Some are excellent. Others look promising but provide very little information. As teachers, we're often making decisions with incomplete information.

What If the Problem Is Discovery?

As an educational technology coach, I spend a lot of time thinking about systems. If teacher time is one of our most valuable resources, then helping teachers discover high-quality resources efficiently might be just as important as creating more resources.

That was the moment my thinking shifted again.

What if educational resources carried richer information that helped teachers decide whether they were the right fit?

Imagine if every resource included information such as:

prerequisite knowledge
estimated teaching time
differentiation strategies
accessibility and UDL supports
technology requirements
assessment type
curriculum standards
classroom-tested reflections
how AI was used in creating the resource

None of these pieces of information determine whether a resource is "good." Together, however, they help teachers decide whether it is the right resource for their students and their context.

The idea of AI transparency particularly caught my attention. Not because I think AI-generated resources are inherently better or worse, but because transparency builds trust.

We're increasingly asking students to acknowledge when and how they use AI. Perhaps educators should model that same practice by explaining how AI contributed to the resources they create.

What Would a Better System Look Like?

Then other questions appeared. Why do we search Teachers Pay Teachers separately from Open Educational Resources? Why are district repositories, university collections, personal websites, and commercial marketplaces all separate islands? What if teachers could search across all of them?

What if AI could help identify resources that matched our curriculum, our learners, our available technology, and our teaching goals, regardless of whether those resources were free, paid, or openly licensed? At that point, I realized I was no longer writing about Creative Commons.

I was thinking about something much bigger.

I was thinking about how we value teacher expertise, how we respect teachers' time, and how we might design a better ecosystem for sharing educational resources.

One Question Led to Another

I started this post wanting to write about Creative Commons.

I finished it wondering how we might redesign the entire ecosystem of educational resources.

I'm still not sure where I stand on every part of this conversation.

I still believe teachers deserve to be recognized for the expertise and time they invest in creating great learning experiences.

I also believe education becomes stronger when great ideas are shared.

Perhaps the future isn't about choosing between open and commercial resources.

Perhaps it's about designing better systems that allow both to thrive.

I'm not sure where that thinking will lead next.

But I have a feeling this conversation isn't finished.

AI Transparency

In the spirit of the ideas discussed in this post, I wanted to be transparent about how it was created.

This article began with a simple question about Creative Commons licensing. As I researched and my thinking evolved, I used ChatGPT as a thought partner to focus my thinking, questions and writing. The opinions, reflections, and conclusions in this post are my own, but AI helped me connect those ideas into a coherent narrative.

I find it fitting that a post which ultimately became partly about AI transparency also provided an opportunity to practice it.