via 21st Century Learning Initiative

A 21st Century education can only be achieved with 21st Century tools.

These tools have developed and evolved at an incredible rate over the last 30 years.  Not only has the rate been extremely fast, it has also been accelerating.  Technologies have come and gone:  from desktop to laptop to tablet; from floppy disk to Zip disk to flash drive, but the common theme has been how these technologies have been repurposed for use in education.

Currently, one issue that I've been running into in my school is the amount of paper we have been using.  The administration wants us to stop making so many copies, but the new "standards-based" reading curriculum we've been mandated to use is almost entirely paper-based.

via tpack.org

One solution I've put forward is to stop spending money on paper and start spending that money on getting my class a complete set of laptops or tablets.  While this is a bit of a pipe dream and the suggestion was made semi-jokingly, I have lately been thinking about how I could make my classroom virtually paper free.  These thoughts have been percolating for some time, but like the pace of technology, has been accelerating recently because of my Instructional Technology course through the University of Northern Iowa.  One specific reason for this acceleration has been our discussion of the TPACK model of technology integration.   Basically, the model expanded an earlier idea by Lee Shulman that stated that teachers needed to be not only knowledgeable in the content they taught, but also the pedagogy of how to teach that content. TPACK goes on to say that teachers need not only content and pedagogical knowledge, but also knowledge of technology and how to integrate that into the mix.

So, If I Had a Million Dollars, and bought my class a set of laptops or tablets, how could I go about reaching my dream of never touching a piece of notebook paper again?  Let's break it down by subject (and remember to look back on this in a few years and laugh about how dumb I was for using technologies that will surely be embarrassing by comparison).

English:  In many ways, this would be the easiest class to assimilate to a fully digital environment.  The reading series my district bought has all their stories available online, so I could simply put the sections I needed into a shared file storage space (maybe Google Drive, Dropbox, or even some sort of class blog).  This way, I could simply have kids open up the reading for the day whenever their turn to read came up.  I could also have them find articles to read, do plenty of writing/blogging/commenting through the web, and simply email me their completed work.  I don't see any reason why I couldn't go paper-free in English starting tomorrow if I had enough computer/tablet access for my class.

Science/Social Studies:  See English.  All the things that hold true for that subject fits here, with the added bonus of being able to find videos, maps, diagrams, and models on the web.  I'm sure my kids would be disappointed to never see my drawing of the United States on the whiteboard again, but the improved accuracy would surely aide their learning.  Again, there seems to be no apparent obstacles to going paper-free in science or social studies.

Math:  Math is where my dream is a little harder to imagine.  As a guy who spent the last 4 years as a math teacher, I know how hard it is to write math problems with normal office software products (speaking of repurposing).  Word, Excel, and Powerpoint have all tried hard, but none are as simple and efficient as simply writing out fractions, division problems, or geometric shapes.  I also worry about how kids would be able to show their thinking while first figuring out how to represent that thinking in a whole new language.  However, these problems can be minimized with a tablet and good stylus.  This is one place where I would prefer to give my kids tablets over laptops.  It also wouldn't break my heart to simply share a page of problems with my kids in our common storage space, have them return the document with only the answers, and hand in a page with their work shown.  I suppose I could handle each student burning through 2 notebooks over the course of a year.

Overall, I the more I think about the idea of removing paper from my classroom, the more feasible it seems.  The problem, as usual, is monetary.  However, if I could convince the decision makers in my district to invest in technology rather than paper and paper-based textbooks, I could conceivably be cost-neutral within a couple years.  I guess that makes for a natural part two...