…that is the question. I have flirted with this idea in the past but never really made the commitment. The thought is brought up in Richardson in chapter 5 or maybe that’s where I had the thought again. My first real experience with the labor pains of switching over to a paperless system came outside of education actually. I was working at an accounting firm and made the switch from summer receptionist fill-in to assistant office manager in charge of billing no district in suburban Philadelphia wanted to hire. That is a tough job market. Anyway, part of my responsibilities was to scan in years of back paper trail in terms of accounts receivable and payable. They had just purchased two new copiers with scanning capabilities that sent document straight to the company’s shared folder. Neat. Snooze. It’s a necessary evil when converting. What to do with all the old paper? Have the kid we don’t pay much stand at the copier all day. It made sense to head in that direction. The younger partners there were already completing their billing on their own in the system while the more seasoned accountants still required reams of paper to be print out for all their clients, handwriting the bills, and providing me with a daily exercise in interpreting chicken scratch. Paperless then popped up again in the first CFF course I took and again last spring when I took a class with a Family and Consumer Science teacher who turned her classroom paperless. It is somewhere I want to go. With everything I’ve learned in the past three days it seems much more possible, but is it really? I have to get over myself. I find it so much easier and actually quicker to grade writing by hand. Well, maybe I should write less on their writing. It would cut down on the time I take printing student work from Moodle. It’s so wasteful, but grading writing and I are pretty much frenemies. I act like we get along to everyone else, but behind her back, I’m spreading some pretty bad rumors. Going paperless would cut down on the time I spend in line at the copier, the copier that is out of order every other day. That would be a nice change. But what about the one or two students that do not have computers or internet access at home. High school is a delicate balance. I would hate to be the reason they hate it even more. Although, I do honestly find this frustrating and I know this is almost an unfair feeling for me of all people to have. How must those kids feel? But, I really do find this limiting. I can’t assign things to be done paperless if not everyone has the technology to make it work. Well, I guess I could. Will the one kid turning it in on paper being doing so with resentment? We’re moving into the newly built school after this coming school year. Maybe new school, new attitude?
There are some positives and negatives on going paperless, for sure. Some folks are very successful using eiher Moodle or Edmodo. The kids seem to like Edmodo much better than Moodle, if you're keeping track, because of the Social feel to it. But, turning in assignments and turning them BACK to the student is very easy in edmodo. If it's not easy, don't even try it.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Docs also makes the process of turning things in and you grading them very easy. I'll just betcha you could make it work, now.