Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Do We Really Need Paper?

After reading this article, Get Off Paper, I realized how much I agree with this. What a magnificent idea! I love the idea of a presenter telling the school that paper is not allowed. I hope more and more administrators will join this trend.

I am going to do a presentation on PBwiki in January and was asked to have enough materials for 50 people. I know that I usually like to get handouts in some sessions so that I can look over it again when I get home. Or sometimes if I find the presenter boring, I just have to read the handout and I don’t really engage in the discussion. Then I get home and life gets in the way and sometimes I don’t ever look at these papers again.

Now I wondered what I could do that keeps people from having the same dilemma as I have experienced. What better way than to share a link with them to get all the information online? I really like not having all the papers to shuffle around and pack up when I have to leave. I also realize that many times these papers get put on the shelf to look at later, and I never look at them again. Or the links that the presenters give are on these papers, so I do not get to actually look at those links if I’ve lost or “filed” these papers. For my presentation, I plan to show the link to my pbwiki page “Create, Connect, Collaborate” and hope that people will visit this page and add their own information. I hope that they will be able to access the information as they need it instead of being force fed the information.

I think if teachers can access the information that they need when they need it, they will be more successful when trying new things. Having to shuffle papers and hunt for links to information can be frustrating when trying something new. Keep your fingers crossed that my presentation will be useful and motivating for some.

Original image: 'ASDA Notebook - Red Wiro Bound' http://www.flickr.com/photos/55672723@N00/143995198by: Michael Randall

2 comments:

Clix said...

If all of my students could purchase laptops and thumb drives, I'd love to go paperless. But as long as they lose their materials and need to borrow from friends and/or borrow from me, I'm going to continue to use disposable materials.

I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.

loonyhiker said...

Clix: I agree with you about our students needing the paper stuff but I think for professional development, we should be moving to a more paperless world.