Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Welcome to the Paperless MSJ Project!

Welcome to our forum! Like Athena springing forth from Zeus's head, this forum is the brainchild (though not as literal) of a series of e-mails beginning with Paul Kellermann's link to a paperless classroom at John Carroll. You can read that teacher's blog here: http://www.teachpaperless.com. I thought it might be an interesting idea to see what interested parties at MSJ do. What parts of your class are paperless? Are there technological means by which you can see yourself using fewer reams of paper? What are the obstacles, technological or aestethically, to going paperless?

I can't wait to see where this goes. Our last discussion on this topic was thought-provoking, to say the least.

David

5 comments:

  1. I think most of my push toward "paperless" work has been more of a means to help students and teachers work together much more seamlessly.

    One attempt has been the faculty wiki https://msjfaculty.wikispaces.com/FACULTYCONNECT. I would like to do more with that in the second quarter with all of you.

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  2. My use of blogs and wikis greatly reduces my amount of paper that I use and the students use.

    In fact, about the only thing I have on paper are tests and research papers (and I am looking to find ways to move them to fully digital as well, that's where we are lacking in technology, I think).

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  3. I appreciate any move which helps streamline communication. Going digital is obviously the way society is moving. However, I have come to realize that there is a small percentage of students who do not have ready access to the internet and live in situations that are not as consistent as we might assume. These students come from lower middle incomes and are challenged to keep pace with their more comfortable classmates. We need to keep progressing with society, but remeber who all our constituents are.

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  4. Jody, I agree with you about the constituents. I think one of the only ways this paperless trend will work is when we have the grant money or ability to issue laptops or some specific technology to every incoming freshman. I know in this economy it probably won't happen, but I wonder if there would be a huge fuss if tuition was raised $500 (if that) but every student received a laptop. I think a step like that is one we'd have to take to ever incorporate streamlining across the board. Of course, then we'll have issues such as "I left my battery at home" or "Someone stole my laptop." Still, it would solve the problem of the haves and the have nots to some extent.

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  5. I think we could certainly allow for students to get laptops. I requested (and hopefully will get) a small class set of netbooks (like the one I have) so that we can do things in class. Some of those run under $300. And while not as powerful as a full size laptop, they are small, have basic word processing and presentation software, and wireless connectivity to the internet.

    Certainly, money is an issue now days, but when you are paying thousands to attend our school, what's $300 over the course of 4 years?

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