Paperless

Next week our school is trying an experiment. In Honor of Earth Day the photo copy machines are being shut down, for the week, and everyone is being asked to try and go paperless.

There have been statistics shared regarding how many copies have been made, both as a school and individually, this year. The rationale has been presented. Now the challenge is nearly upon us.

If this were asked of you, what would you do?

There seem to be two approaches at our school. One is to give this challenge a try while the other is trying to get everything copied ahead of time.

Three cheers to those who give it a try. I gave it a try a few years ago and now I run a nearly paperless class.

There are two instances that I still rely on paper.

If I know I am going to have a substitute I might give them a back up plan since not everyone is as comfortable with the technology we use in my room. For example, during our persuasive writing unit there were two pieces of student writing we were using as mentor texts to look at the craft of persuasion writing. I was traveling for a conference so instead of having them only available as Google Docs I printed them out.

I also have a paper, self-evaluation rubric I have the students fill out a couple of times each quarter. This amounts to 1/3 of a page, per student, per quarter. I tried to do this electronically, but inevitably the internet would go down when I needed access to the documentation. I have found that giving in to this one, small paper task has huge advantages, so I continue. Next week is only week two of the quarter and I won’t need it anyway.

What about you? Could you do it, at least for a week?