I have watched the movie Reality Bites several times - and one scene that popped in to my head this past week was when Lalaina (Winona Rider) is coming home from a job interview where she was asked to define the word irony and she stumbled over her words and was not able to fully explain the meaning of the word. When she got home, she asked Troy (Ethan Hawke) if he could define irony and he said (without hesitation), "It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning". And in some way that is how I am feeling during this first week of the school year.
I knew when the school year started that this was not going to be my typical year. I knew that I would be leaving the classroom in just a few weeks so that I could work with some awesome teachers that were on special assignment in ed tech. But I had already set my goals for the year (see them here) - and one of them was to try and be paperless...or at least use a lot less paper this year.
So since I am not going to be teaching the entire year (if you want to know why read this) there was a big room change during the first week of school. My room was taken by another chemistry teacher, and I ended up moving to a different room in a different pod. So where does the irony come in you ask? I was moved to the closest room to the copy room! There are teachers who would love to have this room - steps away from three copy machines. My resolution of not using paper makes the location of my room somewhat worthless. We are one week in to the school year and I have not used 1 sheet of paper yet - our AP Environmental Science teacher has used over 1,000 sheets! So while I am doing my best to be paperless, at least my new room allows me to see many teachers each day :)
Great post Ryan. I am presenting to teachers today a session on Power Moves with Google Drive and one of the things I am talking about is going paperless. As secondary teachers we think nothing of going through a couple of reams of paper - imagine the money we could save. Money that could be put to more tech. Your post is timely and I will share it with these teachers.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
I agree with Rae, the timing of this post is perfect. I hope to find out why teachers don't share more digitally soon. It seems to me it's just easier. I am missing something for sure because so many teachers are printing reams of important documents to share out. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteFirst, awesome movie reference, +1 for that alone! :)
ReplyDeleteI love the positive spin you put on this, both with seeing more teachers everyday and how you've really worked on not using paper. In my own sixth grade classroom, last year, we worked really hard not to use a ton of paper, but in many cases, I didn't have options to be paperless. With this year's group, we'll be 1 to 1, which will give even more chances to save paper, yet, I all ready see district assessments that require it.
All in all, much of what we "can" do can be done with little or no paper, yet, much of what we "have to" do requires a tree. Would that be ironic in itself? :)
Great post!
Just hang a sign on the door to the copy room that says, "All the machines are down. Please see Ryan for paperless options."
ReplyDeleteLOL, one of the best replies I've seen to a blog post in a long time. Thanks for making me laugh at the end of a long day. I love it!
DeleteAlso, Ryan, keep up the great work. Blaze the trail my friend.