The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
2 Alarming TpT Product Tech Trends to Get Ahead Of!
The educational technology landscape is shifting dramatically, and two alarming trends are reshaping how teachers can use TPT resources in their classrooms. If you've invested time creating digital materials or incorporating QR codes into your teaching resources, these changes could significantly impact your product's usability and your TPT sales.
The first major shift involves statewide cell phone bans, with Texas leading this movement and other states following suit. While many teachers welcome this change for classroom management, it creates a challenge for resource creators who've built convenience features requiring personal devices. When teachers see QR codes in product previews, they might immediately dismiss resources as unusable in their technology-restricted environments, even when these features are merely optional enhancements. As a seller, it's crucial to clearly label these elements as supplementary and provide alternative access methods to maintain your market reach.
Perhaps more concerning is the growing divide between "Google schools" and "Microsoft schools." This isn't simply about platform preference – it's increasingly a compliance requirement tied to student data protection and district insurance policies. Teachers at Microsoft schools may be explicitly prohibited from allowing students to access Google-based resources, regardless of educational value. Similarly, Google Chromebook users often encounter compatibility issues with Microsoft files. This technological segregation means that creating resources exclusively for one ecosystem could inadvertently alienate half your potential market.
The TPT marketplace has never truly offered "set it and forget it" passive income, but these technological shifts make regular updates more essential than ever. By creating dual versions of digital resources and clearly labeling technological components as optional, you can protect your market position and demonstrate your commitment to serving all teachers. While adapting requires additional effort, it also creates opportunities as older, inflexible resources become obsolete. How are you experiencing these changes in your classroom or TPT business? I'd love to hear your thoughts and strategies for navigating this evolving landscape.
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Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, pay Teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started it. If you create TPT resources that utilize any kind of technology, then today's episode is for you, because there are two alarming trends happening in education right now that could absolutely impact your TPT sales in a bad way.
Speaker 1:We all know technology changes fast. I mean, when you think about the technological advances that we've had in the last 10, 15, 20 years, it's staggering, honestly, and the same is true in education. What's trendy in the TPT or the teaching world today can tank tomorrow, but not for the reasons that you might think. I remember when I first started incorporating technology in my TPT resources. It was really early on and it was QR codes, and a lot of people were saying back then which this was probably 2016, maybe 2017, qr codes are just a fad. They're a thing. They're not going to be here for very long, and I honestly kind of thought that that was going to be true. And then here we are almost 10 years later, we're still using QR codes to scan in at the Chick-fil-A drive-thru and pay our tabs at the restaurant. So QR codes definitely were not a fad, and if we do look back on them as a fad, it would definitely be a long lasting one because they've been around for a long time, and so QR codes were one of the first things that I started putting into my TPT resources and slowly but surely we started to run into issues. Now this is not on one of the lists of alarming trends. I just kind of want to demonstrate what a slow progression can do to your TPT business as trends and technology changes.
Speaker 1:One of the first things I started seeing with my QR codes was that a lot of district internet filters started to get a lot stronger. When the students would scan the QR code, it didn't recognize the website or the web address that the QR code was coming from or that the image was coming from whenever the image popped up on their screen and it was blocking the image, which was making it difficult for students to use it. I had to start finding a workaround for that pretty early on and going through and updating QR codes, paying for a service, all kinds of stuff. This wasn't the end of the world, because these products were selling very, very well at the time. However, over the last few years, a lot of things have changed, and the school year in particular.
Speaker 1:There has been a really big shift in educational space when it comes to cell phones. Alarming trend number one is cell phone bans. Now, I know this is not necessarily in and of itself an alarming trend and a lot of teachers, I think, are probably really excited to see cell phones banned in the classroom and certainly this has been district policy in many places for years. But the state of Texas has banned cell phones in the classroom, and I think I've heard some other states have done the same thing as well. So this isn't just like a few random school districts here and there. This is an entire massive state where, if you're like me, the vast majority of my sales come from Texas where students no longer have access to their personal device, which means if you're utilizing something like a QR code or you're relying on any kind of technology that would involve a student using their cell phone or their personal device, then you need to know that you're going to want to make some changes or modifications to those resources so they can continue to be relevant or useful to a huge group of teachers who have students who no longer have access to their devices. Now I know that students can use, say, a Chromebook or a school-issued iPad to scan a QR code or to access technology, but a lot of times these QR codes for example in my resources are on a printable worksheet, so it might be a printable worksheet and then on the worksheet they can scan it. And there's an option for video directions. Or there's an option for digital dice in case the teacher doesn't have physical dice for every single student, or for the, in case a teacher doesn't have, like physical dice for students to play with and they could use the dice from their phone, things like that, things to make the resource simpler, easier for the teacher. However, even though I have currently left those options on there because I feel like if I were a teacher I would still want that to be an option that was available to me I am a little bit worried that just seeing a QR code on a resource might be enough to turn a teacher away when they're looking at a preview for a product, because if they see that it has a QR code on there they're going to be thinking about like the hassle and they may not understand that that QR code is not an integral part of the resource, that it's just something that is optional for students, and they might pass it up thinking like, well, we don't have devices, I don't have a way for students to scan those, we're just going to skip it.
Speaker 1:And I really do think over the last several months because this is new in the state of Texas and new to some other states as well, from what I've heard that this has impacted my sales because I have a lot of convenience codes on my products, so a lot of products that have something on the page for the student's convenience or for the teacher's convenience, so that the teacher doesn't have to project it, the student can scan it and they can see it themselves, versus the teacher projecting it on the overhead projector. And I am really afraid that this is going to be a nightmare to update. Just something to keep in mind as you're creating resources If you're creating something with convenience codes, like convenience QR codes, or you're creating a resource that allows students to use their device, that at the very least, when you're creating it. You might want to think about adding to your preview something like optional QR code or optional this, something that lets the teacher know that it's not necessary. They don't have to use the QR code, they don't have to be able to scan it with their personal device, or whatever it may be. It may not be a QR code. They don't have to be able to scan it with their personal device or whatever it may be. It may not be a QR code. It may be something different. If your resource relies on a student being able to have access for their device, then you're probably going to want to figure out a workaround for that, because really wiping out a huge market of buyers because there are a lot of buyers who simply their students can't have a personal device in their classroom You're potentially alienating yourself from teachers who aren't going to take the time to really dig into your resource to figure out if it could work for them. They're just going to see a QR code, or they're going to see a piece of technology, or they're going to see something like a student device and instead of that being a plus for them, like it might have been a while back, it's now going to be a turnoff for them because they can't use it.
Speaker 1:Alarming trend number two and this is the one that I kind of just want to like this is a lot Google schools versus Microsoft schools. Now, I will tell you that I am not even going to pretend to fully understand everything that's going on here, but I noticed this kind of starting last year and then this year it's just been like on a whole other level. Last year, we were having people ask us, like I teach at a Microsoft school or I teach at a Google school, could I use this digital product? And I was confused, honestly. I was like what do you mean? Because when I was in the classroom which was through 2019, I'm not gonna say there's no such thing, that's not true. I didn't have any kind of experience with Google School or Microsoft School, and if we were Google School or Microsoft, I had no freaking clue. So my students were able to use Google Sheets, they were able to use PowerPoints, like we use everything. There was like there wasn't even a question, like we used whatever technology we had, we used it. So when people first started asking this question, particularly when teachers were asking this, they were like we have a Microsoft school. So is this compatible with Microsoft or is it Google? And I was like you can still use Google even if your school is Microsoft Like I truly just did not understand. And then some really incredible TPT sellers who are still in the classroom kind of helped enlighten me and open my eyes to how big this situation actually is. So here's what, from my understanding, seems to be happening Districts take out an insurance policy against protecting student data and things like that because they're issuing devices.
Speaker 1:Students are having access to devices at school and so they have to take out an insurance policy to protect them from being sued for any leak in private student data. Right, part of what they have to do for this this is my understanding. Again, this is not gospel, this is like the Lauren version of it is that they have to meet certain criteria, so they have to either be in Microsoft school or a Google school, meaning that their students will have Google logins or they will have Microsoft logins In order to use, like, a Google Sheets activity. For a student to use a Google Sheets activity, they have to have a Google account. They have to be logged into their Google account, but the school district, if they're a Microsoft school cannot allow the students, per their insurance policy, to log into a Google account for liability reasons, because they're trying to protect student privacy, student data, all that kind of stuff. So the Microsoft teachers, microsoft schools, are being told, like your students cannot use Google products. So they can't use Google sheets, they can't use Google slides, they can't use any of those Google products. They cannot do it. It's liability.
Speaker 1:On the flip side of that, google schools are assuming they have Chromebooks, so whenever they try to open this is my understanding they try to open a Microsoft, like a PowerPoint or whatever. It's going to open in Google Slides or Google Sheets. It's going to. It's going to open different, so that resource may no longer work. It may have worked as a Microsoft product, it may have worked as a PowerPoint, but it may not work in Google Slides. Or it may have worked as an Excel spreadsheet activity, but it doesn't work in Google Sheets. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:And teachers are being warned like very, very sternly against this. Like you cannot do this. This will put us in a bind, kind of thing. For legal reasons, you can't do this. So this is what you need to know If you're creating digital resources. I strongly encourage you to create two versions if possible. So create a PowerPoint version, create a Google Slides version or, at the very least, if you create in Google Sheets, go ahead and create an Excel version. It's a lot, but I think that this is going to make your products a lot more marketable long-term, because if this is how the insurance policies are being written, if this is how this is being told to teachers, I don't really see any work around this for teachers.
Speaker 1:We were working collaboratively with a bunch of other sellers and there were digital products of all kinds in a product that we were selling and they were asking how many were Microsoft, how many were Google? And that's when we realized how big of an issue that this is, that it's not something that is isolated anymore, and maybe some teachers are finding workarounds, maybe some districts are not as strict about this, but this does seem to be a growing issue in the teaching industry and one that you absolutely need to be aware of, because if you're creating a whole lot of Google Sheets products, you could be alienating all of your Microsoft schools because they can't use your resource. But you could make a few tweaks and changes and create an Excel version of it and include it. So they know, hey, there's a PowerPoint version and in a Google Slides version, or there's an Excel version and there's a Google Sheets version, so that they're covered, no matter what type of policy their district has.
Speaker 1:So here are a couple of final takeaways. First, technology is not something to write off. This does not mean that you just need to stick to creating printable resources, because I think, alongside of these trends, what we see is a lot of teachers really want the convenience of having self-checking resources, self-grading resources. They really want to have that convenience. But it's just a lot more difficult for us to make sure that students and teachers have access, or ease of access, to utilizing that technology that's going to make it self-grading, self-checking, engaging and interactive. So it doesn't mean digital resources are off the table and it certainly doesn't mean that you can't have conveniences built into your printable resources or printable products. It just means that we need to be really smart and we need to be aware of some of the challenges that teachers are facing across the US and probably across the world right now with some of these new policies in education.
Speaker 1:This is also a really good reminder to us that creating a TPT product is never like one and done Like you never are going to create something and then it'd be good forever. Even if you have this mindset or this mentality of I'm going to create a resource one time and it's going to make me money for the next 20 years. Unfortunately, that's really not how it works and it's one of the reasons why income is not passive, like a lot of people say. It is. Even the best resources, the most well-made resources, will have to be updated at some point, or they will become irrelevant or they'll just stop making you money, because tech is going to change, the teaching industry is changing all the time, standards are changing and, honestly, it's one of the great things about our business is that, yeah, while it makes it not passive, it also kind of helps cut through a lot of these resources that have been on TPT for years and years and have perhaps dominated some of those top spaces. They're beginning to become more and more irrelevant as some of those older sellers stop updating those resources.
Speaker 1:So this can help create new spaces for you in the TPT industry and I say we're not going to get upset about it. I'm a little bummed when I think about the number of resources that have QR codes built into them, but it's okay. We just have to remember that this is something that's constantly evolving, something that's constantly changing and, like any good curriculum or any good resource, it's going to have to be updated from time to time to make sure that is meeting current best practices, current best standards and current educational trends. If you've noticed some tech trends inside the classroom or even in the TPT space, I would love to hear about them below. If you have some firsthand experience with either cell phones being banned or being a Google or Microsoft school, we would love to hear about it. Drop a comment down below and tell us all about it. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'm going to see you right back here next week.