Tag: ecology

earth day

Go Paperless for Earth Day

paperlessEarth Day is April 22nd. Someone in your school, maybe the parent group, will raise the question of WHY NOT a paperless classroom? Everyone will nod their heads, agree this is a revolutionary idea, and move on when Earth Day passes.

Really, though: There are benefits to adopting web-based alternatives to paper:

  • it’s easy to collaborate when everything’s online
  • nothing gets soda dripped on it or eaten by the dog
  • students can easily collaborate without requiring parent time and gas fumes
  • teachers can answer questions in a timely manner
  • teachers can provide feedback on projects that students respond to and resubmit
  • student work is easy to copy, backup, and share as needed

To kickstart your paperless digital classroom requires a modicum of preparation. Take a few weekends this summer to set up a class blog and class website and get comfortable with the digital side of your school. This may include:

  • Google Apps for Education and/or Google Classroom–this serves as a basic digital portfolio for students, a collaborative tool with classmates, the teacher’s inbox and her tool for returning graded and analyzed student work.
  • an LMS like Edmodo, Otus, or MyBigCampus–these often include an interactive gradebook, parent inclusion devices, a student discussion forum, polls, a way to collect and share resources, a class calendar, and access across a variety of digital devices.
  • digital portfolios for students–this can be accomplished with whatever LMS you use, Google Apps, Google Classroom, or even Dropbox

Three pieces that you especially want to look for:

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book review

Weekend Website #77: Blackle

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Blackle.com is a search engine. It’s pretty much like Google–in fact, it’s run by Google–but you notice right away you’re not at Google.com or Yahoo or any other search engine you’ve every used. Why?

The background is black.

That itty bitty change in surfing saves energy. In fact, Blackle had saved 2,440,165.420 Watt hours as of the hour I checked. (more…)