Watering, Weeding, Wisdom

K12 Online Conference 2009 offers a plethora of priceless sessions to promote practical implementation of technological processes, naturally, from the Leading the Change strand, I selected Jason Neiffer’s offering, Probing the Prospect of Paperless Pedagogy. Jason, a social studies teacher at Capital High School in Montana, teaches three World Cultures, AP Euro and Journalism (school paperless newspaper) and offers technology instruction to state school systems. Methodically, he outline the purposes and goals of paperless teaching, he offers the tools he’s experimenting with and a tour of his classes, successes and challenges he’s encountered.

It took about 40 minutes to absorb the 20 minute seminar because I paused and replayed the points I missed, was puzzled by or liked so well I wanted to hear again. (I got a cup of coffee and visited the loo too, but that’s probably TMI.)  Can’t do that at a live conference without being booed or asked to leave. Judging by the motivation/encouragement gained and the new stuff I learned, the session worthwhile.

The three core tools Jason uses to save forests, reduce the paper shuffle and prepare his learners for future academic environments are a blog, Moodle and RSS feeds. To these he adds liberal doses of You & Teacher Tube, Bubbless, Google Maps, and X Timeline. He then converts documents to PDFs, uploads them to Slideshow or Scribed and embeds them in his blog, thus his out of date and less than satisfactory textbook is supplemented or supplanted by engaging and personalized methods and materials. Our school supports these same core tools , making this adaptable for my classroom.

A few concerns, some universal and some situationally specific, which may bring the tough days and deflated expectations Jason alludes to:

• 2 weeks at the beginning of year/semester to introduce students to Moodle, RSS feeds and navigating his Blog- do you know any teacher on the planet (technology instructors not withstanding) who can amputate two weeks of curriculum time?
• access- not all students have high speed internet access and a computer readily available. Our school and public library hours are not liberal enough.
• pacing-the perpetual dilemma of keeping the students of both ends of the exceptional children spectrum and everyone in between engaged.
  

On the plus side:

• forests are spared-the end of the year paper toss is minimized.
• absences and conflicts with school events become a non issue- assignment calendars, instructional resources, informal and formal assessments are perennially present for student and parent perusal.
• increased student responsibility and accountability- no more “didn’t know what the homework was” or “I did turn that paper in on time.”
• improved engagement- although Mr. Nieffer couldn’t substantiate this claim with data, he observed more student discussion, productivity, and participation.

After probing the possibility of paperless pedagogy, it’s possible and probable that I will port these practices to my professional plans, keeping in the fore front of effort, the presenter’s powerful point:

“I want the power to make mistakes with my students and not let the sweet stench of failure stop me from trying new methods, tools, or lessons in the future.”