Paper more or paper less?
Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 07:16AM 
In response to my The Next Big Thing(s) post of December 20, 2016, library friend Laura Pearle, offered a rebuttal - Not paperless - paperMORE. In it, she argues:
The reality is that students don’t want to read on their screen (for longer pieces) or it’s cumbersome to access the document/information. Teachers, encouraged by their schools, post more and more because, hey, it’s online and they’re not printing. But that just moves the cost of paper and toner and time onto families and students.
She observes, as do many of us, that some students want hard copy of digital work and that slow response printing queues often lead to multiple copies being printed. Seen both of these myself.
What I really liked about Laura's post was that when we say paperless, we should be meaning less printing not no printing at all. The key to thinking about this transition lies in the words Laura uses in her post: "...many students want to see it in paper." Many, most, often are not every, all, or always - the paper-less transition is not a door slamming on one format in favor of a new format, but a movement which will occur over years.
I estimate that I am still only 90% paperless in both my professional and personal lives. Despite having first advocated for e-books over 20 years ago. (Can it really be that long?!) Larry Cuban just published a series of blog posts related to school reform ("The Myth of "Failed" School Reform", Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.) In the posts he observes that change happens according to different "clocks." The shift from printing on paper (some 600 years in use) to digital, is proceeding at a slower pace than what I had guessed. And probably on an analog clock, not digital!
But Laura, in my district, we are becoming paper - less.
Reader Comments (3)
My personal theory is that electronic copies of paper are more difficult to grade for many teachers, and that if a teacher uses the same or similar papers year after year, they simply need to make more copies.
I know that it takes more effort to place something on a school website for reading, and more time to grade even though I am pretty comfortable with editing tools.
Doug, I agree that it's a slow process. And, sadly, one that requires a lot of buy-in from teachers! We have a real sustainability initiative at Milton, but this year, first year using a print management system, we've actually seen an increase in printing by teachers. SMH.
Hi Kenn,
For some of this transition, I think we are looking at the old up-stream time cost for downstream cost savings conundrum. Once familiar with digital information handling (which indeed takes time to learn and practice), the eventual savings are incredible. Think of typing vs word processing and the ability to edit documents.
Doug
Hi Laura,
Our print manager had a little icon that showed the environmental impact of each print job. I thought that was clever!
Doug