Going Paperless

On the last day of school, I spoke with my vice-principal, Mr. King about the idea of our high school going paperless next year. By going paperless, I said, we could foster a learning space where students, teachers and administrators could share in the creation of a diverse, scholastic archive of student work that would include essay writing, research projects, collaborative works and multimedia projects. We would also help students to better understand and build those ever so important personal learning networks that everyone is cheering about now.

I told him that when teachers and administrators go paperless, when we think digital, when we think green, we help students to create an easily accessible and transparent record of their scholastic productivity over a given period of time. I told him that even the most organized and meticulous teachers in our building would have a hard time finding a specific report of a particular student from five years ago. It's just too much paper to keep up with. On the other hand, if we start now to digitize all student work through blogging, wikis, twitter, FaceBook, podcast and YouTube, then that work would be instantly accessible for decades!

I suggested to my vice-principal that it might be a good idea if our students, teachers and administrators were required to use an online office suite like Google Docs or ZOHO for all school related business - papers, reports, projects, memos, announcements, e-mail, surveys, slideshows and more. I told him that If we could agree, as a school, on a single delivery method for works shared between students, staff and administrators, at the very least, we could avoid the mad rush of students frantically trying to prepare and print final projects and other reports ten minutes before the start of their next class. I must have heard "can you print this for me?" a hundred times during the last two weeks of school. (I haven't seen an Ami Pro or Word Perfect document file since 1995)

The good news here is that Mr. King agreed with me. He agreed that we need a single delivery method for students to get work to teachers and for teachers to share work back with their students. He was quite receptive and open to the idea of using blogs, wikis and podcasts to create and share work. But even better than that, he liked the meta idea of our school going totally paperless next year.

I'll keep you posted.

On that same note, here is a link to an outstanding blogger who, too realizes the enormous potential of going paperless.

H Songhai
6/30/09

Share video over the web with twitvid.io

Okay, so I'm not Denzel Washington, I promise, I'll stick to blogging. But you've gotta check out twitvid.io what a cool way to share video over your twitter network. CORRECTION: In the above video I incorrectly referred to Air France flight 474 as flight 477. The correct flight number is 474.

H Songhai
6/2/09

iPaper and Scribd: Toward a Paperless Classroom

When I first started blogging in 2005 I made a pledge to myself and to my students that our class would operate as a 100 percent paperless classroom. 2008 marks my fourth consecutive year of operating a totally paperless classroom. There are a number of reasons why I don't use paper: paper is too expensive, most students do not value paper, papers are messy, papers are hard to keep up with, students lose papers, teachers lose papers, papers get dirty, papers rip, papers drop and fall out of order and so on and so on and so on... Those are just a few of the reasons why I don't use paper.

Most of my colleagues use paper - paper memos, paper projects, paper handouts, paper tests, paper worksheets, paper quizzes, paper essays. I know this because I man the primary computer lab at my school and daily, a dozen or more students come to the lab needing to print essays, reports, 20 page web sites, college applications and the obligatory poster board pictures. I don't have a printer in my classroom, but there is a printer down the hall where I can send print jobs for students who must have paper.

I always ask those students who are paper dependent if their instructors will accept an Email submission in lieu of a printed paper. A handful of my colleagues are open to receiving assignments via Email, but the majority of the students at my school, despite their expertise using MySpace and Face Book, do not have Email accounts and/or do not know how to send an Email with an attachment.

In all fairness, it's easy for me to talk about the benefits of going paperless - I have twenty computers in my classroom. My colleagues have only one. I've heard talk that more computers are coming, but until then, what's a teacher to do?

One solution might be to start using Scribd. Scribd is another one of those free and amazing Web 2.0 tools that make document sharing as easy as pointing and clicking.
Users can explore thousands of documents on the Scribd web site and submit and share their original work in a matter of minutes.

Below is an example of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. The iPaper was authored by Andrew Churches and added to Scribd by Darren Kuropatwa.

Blooms Digital Taxonomy v2.12

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Teaching Education andrew churches blooms taxonomy

Smart and practical web tools like Scribd make the idea of a paperless classroom a very plausible endeavor. Users can upload a variety of document files that they create as well as read the thousands of beautifully created documents that others have submitted to Scribd.
















If students, teachers and administrators are looking for an alternative to paper, then Scribd is, without a doubt one of the best ways to create professional looking documents and deliver those documents to a global audience with ease.

H Songhai
12/14/08