8 April, 2009: TSL Education announces over one million monthly downloads[1] and over 12 million resources shared on the TES Connect online community since its launch in August 2008. The TES Connect site has achieved a 500 per cent growth in resource downloads and continues to change the lives of teachers and their pupils with millions of resources being shared every month through online collaboration.
The resource section of www.tes.co.uk is home to a vast library of teaching materials all created and uploaded by teachers from the TES community. With separate subject channels for every type of teacher from nursery through to post-16, there are all kinds of classroom materials including lesson plans, videos, PowerPoint presentations, games, puzzles, quizzes, worksheets and tutorials.
This incredible performance has seen resource visitor numbers grow at an annual rate of 540% since the launch, exceeding the most ambitious targets. This sets a new benchmark for user generated content and online collaborative tools within the education community.
The launch has enabled TES Connect to become the world’s largest online professional network in any vertical market with over 700,000 registered users and more than 1.3 million monthly visitors[2].
Edward Griffith, Head of TES Connect comments: “All teachers have a passion for sharing knowledge, not just with their pupils but increasingly amongst themselves too. We are on the verge of a revolution in education; by giving teachers the tools to do this I genuinely believe teachers will achieve even more remarkable results. We now have the technology to help teachers teach and make their lives easier which ultimately has an important impact on the quality of our children’s education.”
TES Connect celebrates the skills, energy and creativity of teachers; it helps promote best practices, stimulates creation and sharing of the most creative teaching resources, and helps the whole teaching community share their best ideas, no matter what their discipline or where they teach.
At its heart, TES Connect draws its inspiration from other content networks like Flickr, professional networks like LinkedIn and the best of B2B editorial; it’s a revolution for teachers, and for the way they teach. Never before has a suite of social networking technology and resource sharing tools been tailored and deployed to a profession with such success. Many of the site’s functions: profiles, friend lists, private messaging, content sharing, social tools are tried and tested elsewhere but, within TES Connect, each and every one of them has been adapted for education.
TES Connect offers a revolution for pupils too. With its continued growth and success, many more will be taught the most interesting lessons, created by the very best teachers – regardless of where they live or go to school.
