Saving Money on Teaching Materials Books and Software Part 1

Our budgets as teachers are very limited, so for me at least it is important to make every penny stretch as far as it can. Over the last year I have manages to save thousands of dollars on my purchases. I'm going to give you a few examples of how I saved money on some of my purchases, and hopefully you can use similar strategies to save money.

• Use academic software dealers. I advertise two dealers on this blog and they can save you a significant amount of money on professional software. For example Adobe Creativity Suite retails for $1200 and on Academic Super Store it is $390. You do need to provide proof that you are either a student or teacher, but it is well worth the hassle. Even better I found that Adobe has a philanthropy arm that provides it's software at even a greater discount. This requires that you write a grant and you are limited to one suite, or four individual products. Our school received the Adobe Premium Production Suite for $140, the Academic version is $700 and the retail version is $2100. Information can be found at https://adobeprograms.giftsinkind.org
  
• Look on eBay and Amazon. When you find a great product in one of those educational catalogs, or you see an infomercial on TV and think that it would be valuable take the time to shop around. I like to use manipulatives in my math instruction and I was looking at getting some reproducible books from ETA Cuisenaire. Because I teach Special Education k-6 I needed a full set for all grade levels. It was well over $500, but I noticed that they also had a cd-rom with all of the content so I could just print worksheets directly to my printer and it was only $200. Wow I can save $300 and I don't have to mess with the books and making copies what a bargain. Well I didn't jump to make the purchase, because I always check eBay, and Amazon. EBay did not have it, but Amazon did. It was on sale at Amazon for a whopping $24.95, For that price I was sure it couldn't be the same thing, but for $25 it was worth the risk, and it paid of. I saved $175 on this one product, and more than $475 of what I original intended to purchase.
  

Continued Tomorrow…