What to do with hand made educational posters for primary school?

March 7, 2014 2:35 PM

I have spent several hundred hours over the last six months creating A2 charts (420X594mm). They are about 50 in total, covering topics taught in Maths in Primary School. They are displayed in the Maths room in my school and I'm proud of the fact that the children constantly refer to them during lessons. I have been told by colleagues and visitors that they are very appealing. Unlike the laminated, commercial posters on the market which are rather tacky, these hand-made posters capture the essence of upper primary topics in very digestible chunks. I would love these posters to have a wider audience. How do I do this? (more inside)

Having never dealt in anything commercial being a classroom assistant, I do not know where to begin. Apply for copyright? Go to educational fairs? Write to publishers? Can original hand made posters be reproduced to look like the original? Are they expensive to reproduce? I do not have money to spare, and I doubt whether I could get a cheap loan to cover this expense.

If it is unlikely for much money to be earned, I would still love these posters to make it to other schools' class-rooms. I would earn goodwill in local schools and feel proud that I have made a positive contribution to the learning of a generation of children. How do I pitch it without sounding arrogant? After all, I am going to tell the Maths teachers that my posters are better than those available commercially.

I am in the UK in case it's relevant.

posted by ashawill to Education (7 answers total)

You need a flatbed scanner, for one thing, to convert them into high-res PNGs. Everything else comes after that.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:48 PM on March 7, 2014

I personally am not a fan of the site, but I've seen posters on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Also, you don't have to compare them to any other product - just show them for what they are. That's not arrogant - that's marketing. I would probably get some professional mock-ups done and email educational publishers with pictures as a starting point.
posted by guster4lovers at 2:49 PM on March 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

You could look into selling it online via a site like one of these:
Zazzle/posters

ImageKind

You could consider doing a Kickstarter to help you fund this and develop it.

Also, consider this: Homeschooling parents are also teachers (though they have smaller classrooms) and some of them are big fans of alternative curriculum like good quality educational posters. Public school teachers are not necessarily your only audience.
posted by Michele in California at 3:00 PM on March 7, 2014

ESL teachers might be interested too. I taught at two schools in Korea that used everyday subjects (math, science, social studies, etc) to teach English. I would have loved something that wasn't horrible looking to either carry from class to class or have in a classroom (foreign teachers in Korea don't always have their own classrooms, they rotate to the Korean teachers' rooms).
posted by kathrynm at 3:13 PM on March 7, 2014

Best answer: ... where to begin. Apply for copyright?

Automatic right - via the Intellectual Property Office, UK
There is no official registration system for copyright in the United Kingdom (UK) and most other parts of the world. There are no forms to fill in and no fees to pay to get copyright protection.

So long as you have created and fixed, for example in writing, an original work that qualifies for copyright protection, that is it falls into one of the categories of material protected by copyright, you will have copyright protection without having to do anything to establish this. It is a requirement of various international conventions on copyright that copyright should be automatic with no need to register.

Can original hand made posters be reproduced to look like the original?
Yes. It all depends on the quality of the scan and the paper it's printed on.

Are they expensive to reproduce?
Obtaining high quality A2 scans could cost as much as £30 per scan and its the one area you do not want to cut quality. Go for the best dpi you can afford. Once you have scans, prints can range from £1.50 - £10 each* depending on quantity of total posters printed, how many different posters will be in each print-run, and what kind of paper you want them printed on.

*This service has 2000+ good reviews and an easy-to-compare pricing system. For example, 2 copies of all 50 posters will cost £1.5 each on 90gsm (thin, cheap) poster paper. The prices go up from there to £1.75 for 100gsm, £6.9 each for 170gsm and £8.5 for 190gsm photo quality reproductions. The first two are more for outdoor advertising (band concerts etc); the third pricing is suitable for businesses and schools etc (you) and the fourth is closer to art quality.

I do not have money to spare, and I doubt whether I could get a cheap loan to cover this expense.
MiC's suggestion of Kickstarter (or Uk equivalent), is a great idea. £2500 would cover scans and initial print run. Donation rewards would be the posters themselves, individually or sets, according to donation amount. Once you have the scans you can start selling them wherever and whenever using a print-on-demand service. That way, each poster can be printed to the quality desired by the customer. You can sell them online, or directly to schools, or via other teacher material markets. I recommend forgetting publishers; for this type of material they will take most of the profits and you'll have little control. You could probably do a better job of selling them online yourself anyway.

Good on you, and good luck!
posted by Kerasia at 5:04 PM on March 7, 2014 [4 favorites]

Memail me :-) I am a first grade teacher and I can use them/ share them with the school. If you mean in the for-profit sense, yeah, get them on TeachersPayTeachers. Make some Pinterest pins with the thumbnails. If they are well liked, they'll get bounced around a lot. Grade school teachers love Pinterest.
posted by mermily at 8:29 PM on March 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Nthing Teachers Pay Teachers. I buy a lot of stuff from there!
posted by LittleMy at 3:48 PM on March 8, 2014