As a teacher I've looked into TpT in the past, but as an end-user it has rarely saved me any time or effort. At best, documents could provide fresh ideas - but document discoverability + adaptability feel severely inadequate.<p>What the success of this site does speak to is an underlaying desire by educators to have a shared resource for the rapid creation/adaptation/implementation of curriculum materials.<p>Teaching still remains a craft-based occupation and experienced educators naturally want to individually create their own curriculum materials; however, I believe this has less to do with the inherent inadequacy of shared documents then it is the cumbersome nature of adapting someone else's documents to your purposes. A strong teacher creates their curriculum documents based on the specific needs/interests of their students (not the ones down the hall, or the ones from last year) so even with the 'best' lesson materials they will need the documents to remain flexible.<p>Yes - a Word .doc does this to a point, but even fighting the oddities of formatting can be a sufficient enough time-suck to abandon the document and begin from scratch. The document format should instead be a combination of structural curricular patterns (sharable + driving discoverability through the assigned utility of a given pattern [e.g. discussion pattern for groups of four]) + instructor assigned style guide (largely automated in application based on instructors previous style/formatting decisions). I couldn't care less about your font/color choices (which may conflict with customs in my classroom) - but I do care about the underlaying utility of your {activity, introduction, guide, etc.}.<p>If it doesn't save me time (in doing something I'm already capable of) or empower me to do something (I'm not otherwise able to do), then what's the point?