Hi everyone! This week I discovered Edutopia.org. Now I have heard of Edutopia before, but now as an Edu Tech student I can relate more to the content and understand how important digital literacy is. I am now obsessed with their blogs, teaching materials and strategies and video. As I was scrolling through the blogs, I came across Ben Johnson’s post called “Paper and Pencil Curriculum: How Much Do You Rely on It?” He reminded how depended schools are on paper and revealed how much money could be saved if schools went paperless. It is definitely a topic worth thinking about. How much paper do you use in a day? What are some paperless activities do you do with you students? Do you think is it possible to have a paperless school? Read the blog post and let me know what you think!
You should all check out the Edutopia.org website if have not before and create an account!
This is something that bothers me times ten in the district I am currently placed in. I see students AND TEACHERS printing doubles, triples, multiple copies of things and then recycling them. How much money is wasted on the paper and the costly ink? Then I hear teachers talking about how they think there should be more color printers. There is one color printer in each school and its strategically located so admins can see what is being printed and whom is doing the printing. I would love to see this district attempt to be at least a little greener when it comes to paper waste. Great post!!
ReplyDeleteNice Post Stephanie. I've thought about this topic before too. It would be great to see schools not use paper, or at least cut down on the amount used. It would save money for them on paper costs, ink costs, and help the environment. However, being a Math major I find it difficult to think of paperless activities for daily procedures. I think Math is a subject where you really have to write everything out to understand it and to just fool around with problems. It is difficult to do advanced math on a computer. Symbols and spacing are always a problem on the computer. I think it is more time consuming as well. I do feel that other subjects can cut down on paper usage. For example, I think English classes can use computers to read handouts instead of printing them and to type instead of write.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the resource Edutopia.org seems to be a relevant source for what we all hope will be a revolution in modern education. I think the post was really referring to how we teach versus how we should teach. To me paper was just the culprit of an education system that tells students what to know and what is out there. Think of the example he used of his grandson. On paper he could have read about what engineers do. He could have even gone to the engineering firms website and read about what they do. The real learning took place when he was there at the firm looking at plans and looking at finished products. How can we make education relevant, exciting and inspiring. How do we help students find their passions and interests? I think what Ben meant was that this is very hard to do on paper. Just my opinion. And yes, math is hard enough. Math without paper is impossible. The money saved from a paper free district might save a few jobs too.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Stephanie, for your post and link. I appreciate you raising this question that is important for all of us to consider. As a middle school French teacher I am utterly guilty of making TONS of copies and I wonder how I can change this practice. In language as in math, as Anthony points out - one has to manipulate symbols to learn. One thing that I do in the classroom is pass out individual erasable white boards. It gives students the opportunity to try out how to phrase something and it has the added benefit of giving me a glace from across the room to assess how the students are doing. Yes, I believe there are small measures we can take to reduce paper waste but until each student has a computer at his or her desk I can't imagine how it could be done without paper. As for the example of the boy, Gideon, visiting an engineering consulting firm - certainly the field trip is an enriching experience but the learning that truly takes places is more likely when Gideon begins to articulate what he learned. Until students all have computers, this will more likely be done on paper.
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