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I've wrestled with the the idea of a paperless classroom for quite a while now. Obviously, that is a big change from what we now use, and I don't think it's right for everyone.
For the little ones, I'm concerned about all those tactile experiences they're supposed to be having with real paper, real pencils, real crayons, etc. I don't know if I'll ever think it's healthy for our elementary schools to go paperless. However, I can certainly get on board with junior highs, high schools, and colleges going paperless.
I think about all the things I ask of my students during one school year and try to come up with digital alternatives. The majority of digital alternatives I come up with cost money in licensing fees and whatnot. For instance, if I wanted every student to have his/her personal Glogster site, my school would need to foot the bill for that. And if my school had to purchase licenses for every student at every site I wanted to use...well, that might get a little pricey. But if students aren't buying supplies anymore, maybe schools could have students pitch in for their own licensing fees, instead. Just a thought.
One of my main concerns about a paperless school is making sure that students have access to everything they need. I'm not sure about other school districts, but the past two that I've been in have had internet blocks set up all over the place. I understand that we want to keep our students safe -- believe me, I'm on board with that! -- but at what point are going to give students the freedom to make good and bad choices with technology? Just as I talk about on my philosophy page, I believe that if we teach students from a very young age about what is digitally appropriate vs. inappropriate, most kids will begin to make the right decisions online. (There will always be a few little rascals who want to test the waters, but don't we have those few in every situation?)
These past two paragraphs lead me to believe that schools' biggest hurdles in making themselves a paperless environment are money and legal issues.
In any case, there's no doubt that every student would need to have an e-mail address that's for school use only. I was reading one of Cool Cat Teacher's blogs, and she mentioned that it's much-less hassle to request that students have school e-mail addresses because then the students' professional and social lives don't get mixed up. (There are lots of other blessings that come with giving students a school-only e-mail address, but I'll address those in a later post.) I've had an e-mail address with just about every free host available, and I feel that Google mail is one that students should have at school. I say this because I know several schools that use this client already for their faculty, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to use it for the students, as well. AND I am really enjoying exploring all the possibilities of Google's add-ons. If students and teachers all have access to the Google documents created by the students... imagine the collaboration!
And after that's established, we start adding in all these different websites I've talked about on this blog so far. We put our syllabus on a Glog and ask our students to tell us about themselves using Prezi presentations. We get students to create YouTube videos and podcasts to display on the classroom website. We ask students to write via blogs. To display work on parent/teacher conference night or open house night, we scan in documents (or take pictures of them), and use Animoto to create a create and enjoyable slideshow of images. We share documents between teachers and students using Dropbox's public folders and/or LiveBinder. The more I think about a paperless classroom, the more convinced I am that we can do this! Sure, it may take a little extra effort at first. But the ability to share them quickly and easily among members of the school, members of the community, and world-wide friends is priceless!
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