How a Paperless Classroom Will Revolutionize Your Teaching
Going paperless in the classroom has gained a lot of traction recently. It’s no surprise really. Paperless schools are better for the environment, and their integration of technology into learning appeals to a young generation of pupils.
There are plenty of articles out there that explain the advantages to a paperless school, usually focusing on increased student happiness and productivity. One thing that gets overlooked, however, is the positive impact that going paperless has on teachers.
Go into any staffroom in any school and ask the teachers what their biggest complaint is. You’ll likely hear a variation on this answer: “I spend too much time on paperwork and not enough time actually teaching.”
In the past couple of decades, teaching has become something of a bureaucratic nightmare. That’s bad for the profession, bad for teachers’ morale, and bad for education in general.
“a paperless classroom allows you to focus on the thing you’re paid to do: teach.”
Now, we’re not claiming that paperless schools are the magic solution to all of this. Changes need to happen at a policy level to completely alleviate the burden of bureaucracy from our educators. But, paperless classrooms do help. That’s because going paperless in the classroom makes things more efficient. It streamlines many of teaching’s day-to-day processes and frees up hours in the day. In short, a paperless classroom allows you to focus on the thing you’re paid to do: teach. Here’s how.
1. It makes resources available instantly
If you’re a teacher, you’re probably very familiar with this scenario. You find a great resource in the library that you want to use in class. But, there aren’t 30 copies of that resource in the library. As a result, you have to make 30 copies to give to your students.
Cue an hour of standing by the photocopier, assembling 30 copies of a 40-page chapter… followed by a half-hour of stapling… followed by another half-hour of un-stapling when you realize some of the pages are in the wrong order.
Inevitably, at least one of your students will lose that resource, so two weeks later, you’ll be stood by the photocopier again, repeating that process.
With a paperless classroom, needless hours spent in the company of the photocopier are a thing of the past. Sharing a resource is simple. You drag and drop the document into a shared folder and, hey presto, that resource is instantly available to all of your students. It’s impossible for them to lose it, they can never claim they didn’t get it, and it is accessible whenever they need it.
2. It is cutting down feedback time
When you think about it, the established system for paper marking is incredibly inefficient. Students are required to bring their work to class on a given day, The teacher then takes that pile of papers to their office or home, marks them, writes their comments by hand and then brings that pile of papers back to the classroom once the marking is done.
In the interim, there’s a lot that can go wrong. The student might forget to bring their work in on the hand-in day, not be able to print their work out, or indeed, forget that they were supposed to do it in the first place. Papers get lost in transit between the classroom and the office and there’s the risk of the dreaded coffee spillage during the actual marking process. Then, if a student is absent on the day the papers are handed back, they’re delayed in getting that grade, and the chance of that essay disappearing into a sea of paperwork intensifies.
With a paperless classroom, though, things are completely different. All printing is taken out of the equation. Students simply ping over their document on the due date and it’s with you instantly. Heck, with the ability to automate essay-due-date reminders to all of your students, they’ve got no excuse about forgetting deadlines. You don’t need to carry a stack of papers home, reducing the risk of missing work to zero, and all of your feedback is typed and easy to read. Even better, students receive that feedback the moment it is finished.
“what used to take hours can be done in minutes.”
3. It allows you to reuse materials
As a teacher, you’re probably used to the process of refining a curriculum year-on-year. And, that mention of “refining a curriculum” has probably left you with a sense of dread; visions of a summer vacation spent huddled over your desk assembling module handbooks, resources, and presentation slides.
Traditionally, refining a curriculum was a herculean effort. Materials needed to be updated, sources needed to be rediscovered, handouts in their hundreds needed to be printed and cataloged. But, with a paperless system, those tasks are reduced to the simple click of a button; what used to take hours can be done in minutes.
Because your curriculum stays in the cloud, you can access it whenever you want. If you need to change the syllabus, update handouts, or amend resources, it’s as simple as opening a document, typing out those changes and hitting save. Carryover of materials from semester to semester is now a breeze.
A paperless curriculum isn’t just great for reusability; it allows you improve your curriculum on the go. Say you find a better resource for conveying information to your students. Rather than hastily making copies of it before class, you simply swap it out with the resource already in your shared folder. Your students get a richer learning experience with minimal additional effort for you.
Going paperless has many advantages, not just for your students, but also for you and your workload. If the bureaucratic nightmare of modern teaching is bringing you down, perhaps it’s time to give it a try.
About GoodNotes:
We believe that teachers should be able to focus on what they do best: educating the next generation of our society. Our app GoodNotes is used by teachers and lecturers worldwide. It allows you to save and annotate documents in a single place, right on your iPad — say for grading exams or papers your students wrote.
Further, you can use GoodNotes as a digital whiteboard and the presentation mode hides everything but the blank page from your audience. You’ll stay in control. You can download GoodNotes from the App Store for iPad and iPhone. Below, we link to several other interesting, and inspiring articles that will help you to get the best out of GoodNotes for teaching in a paperless classroom.
