Paperless at Inservice

Going paperless isn't just for the classroom; there are many unnecessary reams lost during professional development inservices as well.

The intricacies of this are interesting. It's as though we need paper because "we never know when we'll need this information again", and then it fills up our impossible-to-quickly-access file cabinets, never to be seen again. Or, because "we need paper to jot notes on". And then 80% of the people throw away the sheet at the end of the presentation anyways.

I've done away with the one-sheet outline of the words I say during my presentation, and I never did go to the ultimate waste, the power-point slides printed out, with room for notes. Instead, I give my viewers three links. One, the link of my presentation at Slideshare.net. Two, the link of my Delicious resources for the presentation. And three, my email.

For example, during my IAAE presentation, I gave them this Delicious link, which has in it all the resources I used for the "efficacy of online learning" research I conducted. And, below is the presentation, which is available at Slideshare.

Online Learning for Iowa's Learners At-Risk

View more presentations from Evan Abbey.

For those that haven't used it, Slideshare is a very easy-to-use program. Create a free account, and then click a button to upload your Power Point, Open Office, or Keynote presentation. To get the full effect (with transitions), you can make the presentation available for download (you'll see I still need to work on my web-safe fonts in my presentation). Overall, this tool is excellent for teachers when students miss class the day of a presentation.

And, there's this thought from Will Richardson:

At the end of a presentation a few days ago with a couple of hundred pen and paper note taking attendees (and the odd laptop user sprinkled here and there) I answered a question about “What do we do now?” by saying “Well, first off, it’s a shame that the collective experience of the people in this room is about to walk off in two hundred different directions without any way to share and reflect on the thinking they’ve been doing all day. Next year, no paper.”

Very well said. Is the point of presentations to be the end-all document, or to facilitate future discussion? I know what the Iowa Professional Development Model would say.

Going Green - Rivarlry Style

Always glad to see my alma mater in the news for good reasons (not that there are any bad ones that I can think of).

From the Sunday Des Moines Register:

The longtime rivalry between Luther College and Wartburg College has taken a turn for the greener.

Pranksters traditionally make 75-mile road trips between Decorah and Waverly to dress campus statues in opposition colors. Now they have been joined by eco-conscious students in a month-long competition to see which school can conserve more energy and lower campus utility bills.

Strategies have included shorter showers, turned-off lights and unplugged cell phone chargers.

Well done, Norse (and Knights)! Dowling and Valley will be next, mark my words.

Going Paperless and Budget Reductions

It is the season for budget cutbacks in K-12 education, and one thing I have noticed is the obligatory "brainstorming" sessions on ways to cut expenses not involving staffing reductions. Which, might be very effective at identifying wasteful areas, but probably won't do much to balance the budget shortfall. In K-12 institutions, generally around 85% of a budget is staffing.

And during these sessions, there are common suggestions. Turn off the lights. Use email to parents instead of spending on postage. And, try going paperless in the classroom.

There are two problems I see with this. First, the assumption is that there will be 100% implementation (everybody will turn out the lights precisely at 3:30, and voila! We'll save xx amount!). There won't be. You can't budget for energy savings just because a new policy has been instituted. Only after a year of looking at the effect of the policy on the operations of the school can you re-budget.

The second problem is this requires a pedagogical shift... which is a good thing. But, that assumes teachers are shifting their pedagogy. Which, again, takes time, not the least of which is to fully look at why this is good teaching. That pedagogy shift can not be predicated by a budget shortfall... it won't work.

My advice is to keep that in mind and inject a sense of realism in these sessions. Going paperless = good. But, you can't budget it.

Google Docs 11: Features with an Impact

We've been looking at Google Docs in the Heartland Area Curriculum Network meetings recently. For those that missed my presentations, a synopsis of them (how Google Docs works, its advantages and disadvantages, and how you can use it in the classroom) can be found on our 21st century learning skills page.

Here are 11 ways I see Google Docs having an immediate impact in your district, along with the features that make them possible:

1. Since they are collaborative (you can share them, more than one person can work at a time), group projects no longer become 4 people fooling around while one types in all the content.
2. The commenting feature allows students to peer review a fellow student's work, highlighting the text they want to comment on, and then providing a space to write the comment. Writing teachers will wonder how they taught without it.
   
3. The revision history lets a teacher look at who has made revisions and changes, making it easier to assess participation and allowing for a teacher to formatively pinpoint how to best help the group in their task.
4. Since they are web-based, students can work on them at home without worrying about compatibility and dragging around a USB stick.
5. No web access at home? The quick import-export feature lets you save it at school as a .doc, .xls, or .ppt and take it home manually. Plus, it allows for generic formats if a student doesn't have Microsoft applications.
6. Students in elementary classes need an easy-to-use tool that lets them a) see how a spreadsheet works, b) see the relationship between chart data and graph data, and c) be able to manipulate the data and apply it to their own studies. Google Docs Spreadsheet is just that tool, free and available.
7. The presentation tool gives the tired classroom activity of students making a powerpoint a new spin: Being online, their presentation is easily accessible to those outside the classroom. The potential for authentic work just became easier... you can create a gallery of presentations on a website to share your learning with the world.
8. Better yet, the collaborative nature of Google Docs means more than just sharing. You can work jointly on a presentation with someone in a different state or country.
9. The easy-to-use form builder allows students to create their own forms, generate data from participants, and show the data graphically. Conducting social science experiments becomes a cinch. Hey, what are the favorite TV shows of students nowadays, anyways?
10. Faculty can benefit too. I'm envisioning jointly crafted interdisciplinary lesson plans, budgets maintained by multiple activity sponsors, prior-knowledge pre-assessment via forms by professional development coordinators, just to name a few things.
11. And... you'll save a mint on paper with all this online collaboration.
    

4 Challenges of going paperless

Asked recently by a teacher on what were some of the toughest challenges to going paperless:

1. First problem I had was that short worksheets were out. You know, worksheets where you would circle the verb, or do a quick matching exercise. I could create them on the computer, but the time it took to create those, then the time to get on the computers (even in a digital classroom), then the extra time to do the exercise electronically (it is much quicker circling with a pencil)... it made it not worth it. Which meant...

2. Having to develop deeper, more rigorous work. Yes, it is where we need to go in education, but that doesn't make it easy. Making the identification of verbs a rigorous, authentic, quadrant D activity wracks your creative brain. But perhaps the biggest change for me...

3. A big change in the way you give student feedback. Admittedly, some teachers teachers don't use written feedback on student work, but for those that do, it becomes a lot harder in a paperless environment. Circling and arrows are tough to do in a Microsoft Word file (time to break out your drawing tools). Google Docs made this easier for me, but it was still different. Feedback isn't the only difference...

4. Tests don't work. Well, there are online quizmakers you can use, and they worked okay. But, for most educators, the way they create tests are not the way you should create tests online. Tests online have the advantage of built in feedback or dynamic functionality (a different question based on which answer you gave previously). This was hard for me to shift my thinking, as it is for many educators making the jump.

Call For Action: Going Green in the Classroom

When I was a teacher, I had a digital classroom-style curriculum. Every student had a computer. We took as much time discussing online as we did discussing in class. And most content was gathered through student discovery and sharing through the web as opposed to teacher instruction. I modeled this based on what my experience told me was the way students preferred to learn, through a discovery model enriched with the collaborative, productive technology.

There was one powerful thing with this digital classrom that I wouldn't have thought possibly in my wildest dreams. The class came up with an original social awareness project and created a high amount of class unity. We did this by going paperless.

Let me start by saying this was not easy and wasn't 100% successful. Especially for me, the photocopy-addicted louse that I was. Suffice it to say, I love materials. Lots of handouts that give graphic organizers or differentiated assignments. Handouts to help students manage time or work for visual learners. Handouts to make obscure concepts like theme and style become more concrete. And while students in general like the bevy of resources at their disposal, they did kid me about killing too many trees.

It was in one class that a student suggested that we go paperless. And after the appropriate amount of "Betcha can't do it Mr. Abbey!", we as a class decided to go paperless. No printouts. All assignments would be made as word documents or pdf's and put online. Students would not be allowed to print off drafts for their essays... they all had to be done, edited, and submitted electronically. Resources for our research projects would be kept on the computer. Tests would be done online. You get the drift.

For the most part, we were successful. I did note some students who printed things out outside of class at first, and there were times where I printed out an email to read it (one of my telltale signs I'm a digital immigrant). But, there was a sense of pride among the students in the class that we were doing something truly green. We coupled it with a look at the Daniel Quinn book Ishmael and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and experimented with keeping the classroom lights off. The fun part of the assignment was the challenge for the students, and therefore the sense of actual accomplishment when they were finished. This was the mythical "Quadrant D" activity that the rigor/relevance framework calls for.

My challenge is for schools to take the initiative and go paperless. At least, in some segments of the school. Do a cost analysis of what ink and paper cost you, and then try investing that in computers. It not only saves money and environmental resources, but also is cutting edge and addresses digital natives. It requires teachers to be creative, to not depend on the photocopy master. It requires us to focus on current event resources... what is happening in the news today that supports the curriculum. It moves us from static learning (filling in a worksheet with pre-determined "correct" answers) to dynamic learning (collaborating and creating meaning with others digitally).

What are your thoughts?