I was going through my google reader and reading all of the blogs I am keeping tabs on. I found an interesting entry about a school going paperless for a whole day on earth day. This is such a great contribution and a wonderful idea! But what are the teachers going to do for the day with their students then? Well they could watch an educational video, or do powerpoint presentations. They could also use their technology on this day. Technology can be very useful and paperless! Students can collaborate with one another using google docs, or they could look up research for a paper. These are just a couple of ideas, teachers could also do a review day and make a jeopardy powerpoint to help review! I feel as if going paperless in your classroom is a wonderful to be forced to use different technologies to assist you in your teaching! I feel as though students need a break from doing the same old thing over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I think routines are also very important, but it is nice to shake things up every now and then! So why not help out our environment by not using any paper on earth day? I think as teachers we do not realize how much paper we use and have our students use every day. This could be challenging, but we are intelligent people, we can definitely come up with one lesson plan where we do not have to use paper! What do you think about this?
Are you following this blog? http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThis teacher's classroom is completely paperless! I think the idea is so cool, but I feel that I would want all of my students to have a laptop or something before I did that. I haven't read a lot into her blog, so I'm not sure how she does it, but it is a cool idea. I don't like to think of myself as a tree-hugger, but maybe that is just what I am. Anything that helps our environment, I am all for!
Paperless for a day is an improvement, especially when I see all of the paper thrown away in the classrooms that I have observed. I have seen a lot of the, 'if you are finished, you may write or draw' (primarily in after school programs, not in classrooms), but students don't hold onto these extension/time-filler activities. An activity that is paperless is a good idea, but I wonder if we can foster classrooms where students don't waste paper; classrooms where paper is recycled and used efficiently.
ReplyDeleteThanks for joining the movement! I wanted to let you know that I started a Google Doc to gather ideas for alternatives to using paper. There are many ideas here. Feel free to add more. http://cot.ag/bLqH1L
ReplyDeleteI also have a blog post explaining how I came up with the idea. http://ping.fm/MZbwE
Thanks for your support!
Steve Katz
http://teachwithvideo.com