Lets talk about free

I want to talk about something I feel like is Taboo in the EdTech space, paying for an app. It really irritates me when teachers want to find a free alternative to a good product. Yes, I am biased as now I sell apps. However, I try to let my users create items for free and they just need to pay if they want to use it more. I think that is a fair proposition. I also try to gauge the amount of time I am saving teachers relative to the cost.

Yes, I understand that as teachers your budgets are stretched thin. My wife and I were both teachers for many years and always spent tons of our own money on our supplies, classrooms, and students. And that doesn't make it right! It is terrible that the state of public education in America is such that it is not valued enough to be properly funded. There are tons of issues of inequity that I can't address in a blog post or even comprehend from everyone's perspective.

But here is my food for thought. How long are you taking to find that free tool? How much time does it take for you to find the 5 free tools that will do what 1 paid tool will do? If the time value isn't giving you the ROI (return on investment, not the Republic of Ireland) that you need, it is worth it for you to use the free tools.

What happens when that free tool doesn't exist anymore though because they ran out of funding? Or worse, how are they making money from your data?

Here is a great example from the amazing John Stevens (I hope you don't mind me using your tweet in my blog!). John has amazing resources that he puts out there for the world to share, using his time and creating amazing value for other educators. I think the creator culture is progressing and will disrupt education over the course of the next 5 years. It has to. I know I will support John. I plan on incorporating some support routes and want to share how I do it to empower other educators to create their brand as well in this age of Teaching in the Gig Economy (more coming on that in the near future)!

As I get #wyrmath back to a functional website, I am reminded of how much we take “free website” for granted as teachers.

I am trying my best to keep WYR up and may need to move to a donation-based system. The site should be active and shenanigan-free tomorrow#mtbos #iteachmath

— John Stevens (@Jstevens009) September 18, 2019

I know...I skipped a day (actually 2, I backdated that Impostor Syndrome post...). It is really my own accountability and its my blog...so tough :)