Even if the server crashes or corrupts, every school I know has backups. security: Digital files aren’t lost to floods or fires.Anecdotal experiences (no studies yet on this topic) indicate that teachers who file digitally rather than in paper file folders lose fewer documents. If it’s not there, most of the time, a universal search on the school server will find the document. Instead, they access the digital file folder. Teachers no longer find themselves frantically searching for misfiled records or the approvals required before a field trip. increased organization: All those permission slips, AUPs, and exams can be curated into a digital file folder that is backed up automatically and never lost (“never” being a fungible sort of word).Yes, digital files do get lost but that’s a story for another time. No copying, stapling, sorting, or losing templates. An increasingly-popular alternative is to upload a document to the computer, server, or cloud and push it out electronically. saves time: Every teacher knows how much time they spend copying, stapling, sorting, and then searching for lost documents.The results? Among schools who push digital over paper, most report that only about 5% of their usual amount of paper ends up in the trash. Schools who replace paper with a digital distribution of newsletters, announcements, homework, and anything else possible may not increase recycling but do dramatically reduce the amount of paper they use. We want them to be recycled but studies show that despite best efforts, about half of used paper isn’t. reduced waste: Most of those tons of paper end up in the trash.Who would argue about investing these vast savings in faculty salaries, student services, or reduced tuitions? the high cost of printing: Yale University noted that “Every 2.5 minutes, a ream of paper was ordered.” No surprise that schools who go paperless experience huge savings in the cost of buying and repairing printers as well as the investment in all the fancy printing papers required for newsletters, class projects, announcements, and more.Now, beyond the moral and ethical persuasiveness of a paperless classroom, there is compelling evidence that the time is right to eliminate paper from the classroom:

Every year, a prodigious number of lesson plans center around dwindling rainforests, the shrinking world forests, and the ever-growing waste associated with paper. Mitigating the use of paper has long been a goal for schools. Environmental Protection Agency, paper typically found in a school or office environments such as copier paper, computer printouts, and notepads, comprise the largest category. Websites–for teachers to build websitesĮach year, the world produces more than 300 million tons of paper.

Should schools go paperless