Teachers Pay Teachers is not the only Game in Town

by | Nov 14, 2020 | Educator's Blog

“Amped Up Learning”

I just discovered another website that sells teacher lessons! It’s called Amped Up Learning. Started by two history teachers, Mat Parker and Gregg Williams, 3 years ago in Mansfield, Texas, it began with their own search for more engaging lessons to teach their history classes. Mat and Gregg developed a board game called Freck! which they have since expanded into several versions, and now includes other content areas. They began their website selling their Freck! history game, and 2 years ago, decided to expand their website to include other downloadable lessons.

A More Personal Touch

Gregg and Mat wanted to be a bit different than Teachers Pay Teachers, and focus more on high quality content. They also chose to make it free for their teacher authors! Unlike TPT, Amped up Learning does not favor more established teachers over new teacher authors. Let’s face it, as new authors on TPT, our products tend to become “buried” in the thousands of lessons available. In order to bring buyers to our store, we need to pay more for promotions that bring our lessons to the top of the feed. All authors at Amped Up Learning have their products promoted on social media and the Amped Up Learning Pinterest page.

Rapidly Growing Company

Compared to to the nearly 3 million resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers, Amped Up currently has 17,000+ products. They have nearly 400 teacher authors compared to nearly 200,000 on TPT. However, they are growing rapidly. The site has grown 500% just since 2018/2019. Amped Up teacher lessons are vetted for quality, making their available lessons a more reliable option. They also offer 20% back for store credit on any item you leave a review for. Lessons are similarly priced to TPT, as teachers who have stores on both sites, must price their products the same.

Teacher Merchandise and Gift Cards

What is cool about Amped Up Learning is that they also sell teacher merchandise; T-shirts, facemasks, stickers and decals. The website includes several blogposts about issues that teachers are interested in: “Homeschooling”, “New Year, New Rules” “Use Movement to Engage Your High School Students”, and more. And like TPT, they offer gift certificates you can pass out to your teacher friends and colleagues as holiday gifts.

Gregg Williams, one of the co-founders of Amped Up Learning, reached out to me personally after seeing my Thanksgiving Integer Slide Game posted on Facebook. I will soon be opening my own store on their site. So, if you want to check out another source for teacher lessons, go to Ampeduplearning.com and see what they have to offer.

I’m so excited to start a new venture with this company and see where it takes me!