Going Paperless Isn't About the (Lack of) Paper

There is both excitement and criticism around the paperless classroom movement. Both camps have good intentions, but neither is focused on the right thing. It isn't about paper, or the lack of paper. It is about what the tech makes possible when learners push themselves to get creative.

For my students and I, "paperless" was not a hard and fast rule. It didn't mean that anyone was forbidden from using paper. It just meant that we explored all possibilities, including paper, when determining the best route. Most of the time, we found the best learning experiences occurred when we were collaborating, producing, and sharing using paperless means.

What Does "Paperless" Really Mean?

Paperless means better questions (Grant Wiggins style).

Paperless means less textbook and more open education resources (OER).

Paperless means learning activities (not lessons).

At the MassCUE 2015 conference this week I had the opportunity to share this model with a room full of energetic educators. My session opened with an explanation of the three steps above and then brought participants through a few examples, including the student product examples.



The last 15 minutes of the session were an opportunity for participants to dive into this learning model themselves. In this case, they took on the task of my 9th grade history class and use blackout poetry to determine if the majority of American colonists agreed with Thomas Paine's viewpoint in Common Sense on the eve of the Revolutionary War. Here are the results.

Click here to see Dan's tweet.

Click here to see the Instagram post.

It was thrilling to see educators respond to this lesson with as much intrigue and curiosity as my 14 and 15 year old students. Many were frustrated with the time constraints and wanted to finish their blackout poems despite our session coming to an end. When learners want to keep learning on their own, good stuff is happening.

What it Feels Like in the Classroom

As part of some work I have done with Smarter Schools Project, a video was released the same day as the MassCUE session. In the video I describe the look and feel of my paperless classroom for my students and I. It's short (I promise) and really conveys why I believe in this approach to learning.




Describing the way learning happens in my classroom as "paperless" makes it sound clean.
It is loud and messy.

"Paperless" makes it sound prohibitive.
It is liberating.

"Paperless" is an accurate description, but it is only the beginning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Social Media Starter Tips

Image
Note: This post was recently  published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog . Chad Konecky interviewed me and wrote the post based on our discussion. Demonstrating and reinforcing common-sense social media engagement is important, especially when it comes to adolescents and teens. Kerry Gallagher, St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, is leading the Prep’s emphasis on developing best practices when using social media. “Mentoring healthy guidelines like ‘Think before you post,’ ‘be kind and respectful’ and ‘be mindful of who you friend’ are key, but we need to foster—and the boys need to hone—an even keener sense of their life online.” Interestingly, the challenges of building an online identity can become even more difficult if students and their parents choose not to use social media, explains Gallagher. Alternatively, when students do create an online presence, it can become an opportunity to learn how to act appropriately and with accountability....
Read more

Guest Post: Digital + Traditional = Teaching at Its Best

Image
Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...
Read more

Teaching 19th Century Ideologies with 21st Century Technologies

Image
Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century ...
Read more