Teaching Paperless

Teachers use lots of paper. I am as guilty of it as anyone. I have a reading packet for my kids, helping track comprehension over the course of the week and recording new vocabulary words. I also have kids print out their current event summary, and their article each week. I've given them the option of emailing each, or writing down the URL to their article, but the majority opt to print.

This week I am doing my best to go paperless. How am I doing it, and what are the kids doing? Good questions. The kids are working on the question: Who was the best explorer (during the Age of Exploration)? The question requires kids to gather information, compare explorers, determine which information is most important, then evaluate that information to respond to the question. They'll take all of that information, and all of that work, and create a project that they will submit electronically. Beyond the writing, reading, social studies standards (not to mention critical thinking) I'm also focused on getting kids familiar with using our netbooks.

How am I going paperless? I decided that I would have 3 documents kids would be using (one of which they had from a week ago). The two that I would normally print are posted on our class wiki. Yesterday I had them save both documents in a particular way, user name then file name. As they do work they will type directly into the two planning sheets. When they complete the sheets, and their project, they will submit them through a dropbox. I have one set up on our network where kids can move files into the folder, and I can then evaluate them (with different color comments, then emailed back to them). I think it is a step in the right direction. More to come!