The Government held out a vision of the paperless school yesterday when it unveiled plans to put all the subjects in the national curriculum online from September next year.

The Government held out a vision of the paperless school yesterday when it unveiled plans to put online all the subjects in the national curriculum from next September.

The Education minister Baroness Ashton of Upholland, speaking at the launch of the £200m scheme, said she believed “computers will eventually replace these” as she held up a pen and a piece of paper. Under the scheme, the Government is earmarking £50m for schools to buy their own online teaching materials.

The BBC is spending £150m over the next five years so that a wide range of subjects can be taught online and teachers can tap into already prepared lesson plans to reduce the amount of time spent on marking and preparation. Lady Ashton said the drive was likely to lead “eventually” to a computer on every school desk. Lady Ashton and Lord Puttnam, the chairman of the General Teaching Council, the new professional body set up for teachers, predicted 10 or 20 years might be needed for the revolution in the classroom to be completed.

But Lady Ashton added: “This will transform teaching and learning in a way that it has not been since the Victorian times.” Lord Puttnam said a Victorian surgeon would not recognise or be able to work in a modern hospital were he to arrive back on Earth today, but a classroom would still look the same if a teacher were to do likewise.

Both said the changes would not mean books or teachers becoming obsolete but would form an additional and crucial aid to learning. The new curriculum would also allow pupils to choose from a broader range of studies including minority languages such as Latin and Japanese.

Yesterday’s announcement is part of a £1.5bn drive that has seen 96 per cent of primary schools and 99 per cent of secondary schools linked to the internet. Pupils would be able to do much learning online and tap into expert teaching.

Doug Brown, of the National Grid for Learning, which oversees online learning materials, said some schools had already widened A-level studies since using online teaching materials. He said: “Schools are offering subjects like economics and psychology, which they couldn’t have done before because they couldn’t justify the teaching staff. They use video conferencing links to learn with other schools and then bring specialists into the classroom.”

High school students in Emily Straub’s junior American literature class will go “paperless” this semester, using computers to get assignments, read some text and listen to audio.

Straub said she’s been allowing her students to use their own computers to do work at home for the past two years. A recently approved $19,180 grant from the Gahanna-Jefferson Education Foundation will help her effort this year by purchasing 26 Dell laptop computers for the students to use at school.

“This is something I started about three years ago,” Straub said. “About 95 percent of the American literature class already is available online.”

Straub said the students also would be able to borrow the laptops to take home.

“They seem to respond very favorably to it,” she said of the paperless aspect. “School can be so social. Sometimes home can be a better work environment.”

Straub said students in a paperless classroom could work at their own pace and that she sometimes gets more work out of them if they are writing words on a computer, as opposed to writing on a piece of paper. She said over the past few years, students writing in journals would produce maybe 200 words, whereas those typing on computers were more likely to write 500 to 1,000 words, “not even thinking about it.”

She said it’s a different time and students learn differently because “that’s how they communicate.”

“They like to have things at their fingertips,” she said.

Students will spend two to three days a week working on computers in the classroom. The other days they will work on class notes or collaborative projects. Straub said all of their worksheets and other resources could be accessed online, such as information about authors like Edgar Allen Poe, for example.

Though much of the learning will be via the computer screen, Gayatri said, students will continue to have hard copies of books to read.

One of her main challenges in starting the program is to make sure the students know they cannot use “chat speak” or texting terminology. She said they still must maintain proper grammar and word usage even if they are typing their papers on a computer instead of writing on paper.

“We have to teach them how to be online learners,” she said. “We have to teach kids how to be proficient online users.”

The concept of the paperless classroom is one the district is embracing.

Assistant Superintendent Mark White told the Gahanna-Jefferson school board in December that the district is interested in promoting what he calls 21st-century skills and learning in the district’s proposed new building: Clark Hall.

Clark Hall will be built at Hamilton Road and Granville Street, where a Kroger store once stood. It is being touted as the first of its kind, a school-owned building with 50,000 square feet of educational space on the second and third floors and retail space on the first floor.

The district held a groundbreaking ceremony for Clark Hall on Nov. 19, and the building is expected to be built and open by fall 2011.

White said the new building would incorporate new ways of learning, with more open spaces, more natural light and some furniture, where students could sit and work on a laptop.

As part of the Clark Hall project, White said, the district is working with two computer companies to seek help in funding computer systems for the new building. He said he and other district officials would travel to Austin, Texas, to meet with Dell officials and then to California to meet with Apple representatives about the project.

White said both companies have expressed interest in working with the district.

The trips are being funded with teacher-training funds.

“A lot of this (project) is going to be self-paced, the way learning at Clark Hall will be,” Straub said. “That’s the way online learning works: It’s self-paced so you can spend as much time or as little time as you want.”

Straub’s experiments will help provide data to support the district’s idea of a paperless building through surveys and other data she will collect this school year, she said. She said she is conducting student surveys throughout the rest of the school year and that she’ll compare the students’ work with that of a control class that will continue to learn via traditional methods.

Straub is using the computers in two of her English classes, with a total of 48 students. She said in her report to the foundation that the students in the classes represent a diverse mix of students, with “different academic abilities, race and socio-economic levels.”

Straub said the experiment also would help better prepare the students for their college experiences.

“The big thing now, if we don’t embrace this, is, we’re not preparing our kids for college,” she said. “So many colleges are going online. We have to embrace it now. If not, we are not preparing our kids for the next step in the educational process.”

She said she’s excited to start the project, perhaps getting the computers as early as mid-January.

“I think it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be good to get the kids excited,” she said.

The Classroom of Tomorrow, Today

Technological innovations are bringing a new set of learning tools and new standards to K-12 schools across the country

By Douglas MacMillan

As students settle into the new school year, they’re being greeted by a host of machines and technologies that are revolutionizing the way teachers teach and pupils learn. Chalkboards are being replaced by giant interactive screens, kids are taking virtual field trips to far-flung locales via video conferencing, and they’re trading their Trapper Keepers Hanuman for iBooks.

The following list provides a glimpse of 10 of the biggest high-tech classroom breakthroughs. Prices listed give a general idea of costs-though in almost all cases schools, districts, or whole states are able to negotiate package deals that involve lower prices on a per-student or per-classroom basis.

Read the story

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via News.com

Nightmarish thoughts of lugging your school bag that weighed almost a ton are finally exorcised. The Vail Unified School District, Arizona, will return to the state’s first wireless and all-laptop high school. Pen and paper are scrapped in favor of electronic and online articles.

To go about implementing this plan, the Empire High School will loan out $850.00 laptops to students for the duration of the entire school year, targeting an eventual increase to 750. According to The Associated Press, a set of textbooks will set one back between $500.00 to $600.00.

According to Mark Schneiderman, “e-schools” are rare due to cost, insecurity, ignorance, and institutional issues that come in the way of an all-wireless classroom. It has been observed that a new environment like this will likely spur the students to do better than their counterparts at non-laptop schools.

Helping schools become efficient through software innovations.

Technology is changing constantly and is a critical component of education management.

Education institutions have become increasingly aware of ways to save energy, protect the environment and reduce their carbon footprint. Moreover, the U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to sustainable building design and construction, has witnessed a huge increase in the number of schools interested in going green. Lighting a classroom, shipping and creating products, fueling buses and photocopying paper all contribute to a school’s carbon footprint.

Many schools are committing to use technology to help them create a “paperless office.” New administrative software can significantly reduce a school’s carbon footprint. A paperless office is environmentally friendly, saves time and money, and improves day-to-day efficiency.

Where to start

By working smarter to make computers work harder, an education institution can significantly reduce the amount of paper it uses. The average school would save about 5,000 sheets of paper (or one box at about $45) per user each year. Maximizing the use of an administrative software program can help eliminate paper, storage, postage, ink and numerous other supplies.

To begin the process, start analyzing the efficiencies that finance-management software can deliver. Many applications can automate a number of manual administrative processes and eliminate redundancies in staff responsibilities. Software often is customizable to meet specific report requirements and create user-specific security access. Look for capabilities that enable users to budget, monitor and control finances effectively. Search for software with a range of features such as managing grant reporting, controlling the creation of financial reports, and creating a budget from requisitions.

By working on only one database for finance, payroll and personnel, human resources can be accomplished quickly and seamlessly. Look for user-profile records that enable the system to be tailored to a school’s specific requirements. Features such as multiple payroll cycles for regular, recurring and one-time additional pay components can process salaried and unit-paid employees in a single payroll run. Automatic leave accrual and attendance tracking is another great feature that monitors absence trends for employees.

Using software that incorporates accounting, budgeting and payroll eliminates redundant input. Look for features such as auditing trails of all transactions, comprehensive reporting capabilities, budget-creation tools, and the ability to process W-2s and 1099s. Handling such sensitive information, a software application should have security capabilities that enable users’ access to be dictated by their logon information. In turn, staff members can gain access to only the applications, menus, programs and functions appropriate for their position.

Converting documents into PDF files is another way to initiate the paperless process. Start by scanning files from accounting, finance and human resources. Scanned images and PDFs then can be stored in the software’s database and attached to specific records. E-mailing electronic PDFs rather than sending documents by mail can save hundreds of hours in time and dollars in postage. Storing reports as PDF images also can make them easier to find and retrieve.

Saving resources

Managing documents in a traditional paper environment can be time-consuming. It tends to pull staff away from projects and occupies their time with less important tasks such as searching through files, looking for lost documents, faxing, copying and mailing. If it takes five minutes to retrieve or replace a paper file, and if one employee works with 10 paper files a day, about 216 hours a year are spent searching through files — an equivalent to five weeks of work time. If the employee is paid $20 an hour, you can instantly cut a cost of $4,320 a year. And, what about the cost of paper folders that are misfiled or lost?

You have certainly heard of paperless offices but a paperless home school?

Don’t just go paperless in the workplace! If you happen to home school you have the unique opportunity to be as environmentally friendly as you like. While other parents are being required to buy their child’s weight in notebooks and supplies you can create a virtually paperless home school environment, depending on the age of your child.

Are you intrigued? We have been doing this for several years in my home and it works very well. Not only do we save money but there are fewer reams of paper to buy, and less trash to throw away, shred, recycle or otherwise deal with. There are different techniques for each learning level but here are some of the things we are doing at our house.

Paperless Home School in the Early Elementary Years

It is a simple thing to go paperless in the early years of home schooling. Younger children, up to about age ten, can have difficulty with abstract things and do very well when they can use all of their senses to help them learn. Here are some tips for these early grades.

Home School Language Arts

If you have home schooled very long you may have heard about the Charlotte Mason method. One of the basic techniques used requires the parent to read a story or chapter and then have young children narrate, or “tell back” what they have heard. It not only helps them with concentration, memory, and language skills, but by repeating classic literature they learn grammar and sentence structure by “ear” so to speak.

I happen to think it helps with linguistics as well, but I can’t prove it. My husband and I are both linguists so our children may come by languages naturally.

Writing skills can be accomplished at this early age by using a finger in a cookie sheet of cornmeal. This is especially good for boys whose fine motor skills often develop later than girls. The texture of the cornmeal and the process of making the letters with a finger helps your child remember the shape and look of the letter. If he is just learning to read have him make the sound as he writes the letter. Keep the cornmeal in a specially marked, sealed container with a bay leaf or two and it will last a long time. Once a child knows his letters and can make them in sand or cornmeal then an old fashioned hand held chalkboard or a white board is the next step. Words can be written on the board, and later whole sentences and quotes can be copied. You will have to continue to buy chalk or erasable markers but it tends to last longer than paper does. Bonus? It is way more fun!

Home School Math

Don’t freak out over home school math. You use it every day and so does your child. Playing with measuring cups and water (or more cornmeal) will help teach measurement and fractions. If you have a clock in your house that is not digital, then it is easy to learn to tell time.

Counting? Have him count real objects; the steps to his room, the number of blue cars that he sees on the way to the store, how many red legos he can put into a box. Writing those numbers can be accomplished in the same way as writing letters.

Learning to do math facts is easy when you use beans or counters to create the problems. If you are using the cornmeal, for example, just write the fact in the cornmeal. Place counters next to each number in the fact. Your child will be able to touch and see the concrete form of the problem while associating it with the abstract. All without one piece of paper being used.

Flash cards are another excellent, reusable tool for teaching math. They should be used in conjunction with other techniques. Flash cards can be made out of anything, including scrap paper, and can teach anything. You can put clock faces, addition, fractions, or algebraic equations on flash cards with great results. Sometimes I slip in a picture of a cookie or a special treat just to keep things fun.

Home School Geography

One of my favorite geography activities for almost any age is making maps and marking the cities, rivers, and important lakes. While many parents may print off blank map copies I prefer my cookie sheet and a rolling pin. Take your favorite rolled cookie recipe and have your children, with your help as necessary, cut out the shape of the country you are studying. Bake the dough until it is firm and golden and let it cool. Now, use frosting and decorating tips, colored sugar, candy or whatever you like to mark cities, capitols, rivers, and lakes. This is a great family activity.

Give you child the opportunity to spend time out of doors, observing rivers, lakes, and other landforms. One of the biggest benefits of home-schooling is the ability to give your children life experiences and not just academics.

Home School Science

Science is not an area that we go paperless because I like the kids to keep nature notebooks to record the things they see outside. These may be filled with drawings, descriptions, or photographs of the insects, wildlife, and wildflowers they see. There may be drawings of oddly shaped cloud formations, or a fossil we found in the creek, or even a pressed flower or leaf. This is where I spend most of my paper budget, nature notebooks and art papers. Of course you can make your own notebook from scrap paper.

And that is why I can only claim to be almost paperless.

Of Course, the Proof Is in the Pudding, Right?

Allowing our children to scrounge materials to build forts, work with the livestock, and spend time observing nature from the top of a tree has given them something that tests and reports could never give them. They love nature because they experience it every day.

I know. You don’t know me and I could just be saying all of this. What experience do I bring? How do I know it works over the long term? We have eight children and we have home schooled since 1989. We have two adult children that have graduated and gone on to successful lives. Our seventeen year old is starting his sophomore year at the local community college. The paperless home school works just fine, from toddler to l teen. It gets a little trickier as your child moves toward high school but it can be done. More about that next time.

Paper is only required for the diploma, not the education.

Mengapa Kita Harus Menghemat Kertas?

Setiap Proses produksi kertas memerlukan bahan kimia, air dan energi dalam jumlah besar dan tentusaja bahan baku, yang pada umumnya berasal dari kayu . Diperlukan 1 batang pohon usia 5 tahun untuk memproduksi 1 rim kertas. Limbah yang dihasilkan dari proses produksi kertas juga sangat besar, baik secara kuantitatif dalam bentuk cair, gas, dan padat, maupun secara kualitatif. Agar limbah ini tidak mencemari lingkungan, maka diperlukan teknologi tinggi dan energi untuk mem-prosesnya.

Prubahan gaya hidup serta penyesuaian akan perkembangan jaman menyebabkan penggunaan kertas terus meningkat, baik kertas untuk kebutuhan tulis/cetak, maupun untuk kebutuhan sanitasi, makanan/minuman dan penunjang gaya hidup lainnya. Peningkatan kebutuhan kertas tentunya diiringi dengan peningkatan kebutuhan akan bahan baku dan bahan tambahan lainnya. Konsekwnsinya adalah terjadi peningkatan limbah dari proses produksi kertas dan peningkatan jumlah kertas bekas.

Untuk memenuhi kebutuhan kertas nasional yang sekitar 5,6 juta ton/tahun diperlukan bahan baku kayu dalam jumlah besar yang mahal dan tidak dapat tercukupi dari Hutan Tanaman Industri (HTI) Indonesia, ironisnya kita lihat di sekeliling kita betapa banyaknya kertas yang ada di sekitar kita : dokumen, kemasan produk yang berlebihan, koran, majalah, brosur/leaflet/katalog produk, surat-surat, produk-produk sekali pakai, dan lain-lain. Padahal dengan memakai kertas bekas sebagai bahan baku kertas baru, sejumlah pohon, bahan kimia, air dan energi dapat dikurangi penggunaannya.

Jika kita tidak mulai memperbaiki pola konsumsi kertas sejak saatini, maka akan terjadi kebiasaan dan ketergantungan untukselalu menggunakan kertas dalam jumlah besar. Hal ini tentunya akan memberikan tekanan secara terus menerus kepada bumi kita dan memberi dampak yang kurang menguntungkan bagi lingkungan.

Jika sebuah organisasi terdiri dari 100 orang dapat menghemat 3 lembar kertas setiap hari, maka dalam setahun ada 156 batang pohon yang dapat diselamatkan.

Lalu Apa Yang Dapat Kita Lakukan?

3R : Reduce-Reuse-Recycle!

Mengurangi penggunaan kertas:

• Manfaatkan teknologi surat elektronik (e-mail)/fasilitas pesan singkat telepon genggam (sms)/telepon untuk undangan/pesan/informasi yang bersifat informal;
• Jika memungkinkan gunakan produk yang lebih bertahan lama daripada produk kertas misalnya gunakan sapu tangan/handuk kecil daripada kertas tisu, gunakan popok kain daripada popok sekali pakai, piring porselin/keramik daripada piring kertas/kotak kue untuk menyajikan makanan kecil;
• Jangan ambil/ menerima brosur/leaflet jika tidak diperlukan, atau kembalikan jika sudah dibaca dan isinya sudah dipahami.

Menggunakan Kembali produk kertas selama mungkin :

• Gunakan kertas tulis/fotokopi pada kedua sisinya;
• perlakukan kertas bekas/kertas kado bekas/amplop bekas dengan baik sehingga bisa diginakan kembali;
• Gunakan kertas sisa buku tulis untuk membuat tulis baru/notes;
• Sumbangkan/jual majalah, koran, buku pelajaran dan buku cerita yang masih layak guna;

Mendaur Ulang kertas, yaitu menggunakan produk tersebut setelah berubah bentuk.

• Kumpulkan kertas bekas yang tidak dapat disumbangkan (misalnya surat, tiketparkir/tol, bon belanja dll) untuk dibuat daur ulang.

Cara Membuat Kertas Daur Ulang

1. Kumpulkan limbah semua jenis kertas, kecuali kertas mengilat (seperti kertas sampul majalah), kemudian pilah menurut jenisnya: HVS bekas, kertas koran atau majalah.
2. Gunting atau sobek menjadi potongan-potongan kecil. Rendam kertas putih dalam air selama 3 hari, ganti air setiap hari. Sedangkan kertas berwarna harus direbus 2-3 jam dan rendam dalam air hangat, cuci bersih air rendaman jika sudah kotor terkena tinta. Perbandingan kertas dengan air 1:1
3. Peran kertas yang telah direndam dan buat menjadi kapalan-kapalan bulat, lalu haluskan dengan blender yang biasakn digunakan untuk membuat juice. Tambah air dengan perbandingan 1:1 dan lem satu sendok makan sehingga berbentuk bubur. bisa juga ditambah pewarna alami (kunyit atau temulawak untuk warna kuning; daun jati muda untuk warna keunguan; daun suji, daun singkong atau daun pepaya untuk warna hijau; arang atau daun pisang kering untuk warna hitam, buah galinggem untuk warna merah dan air daun teh, tembakau untuk warna coklat) Caranya, campur bahan pewarna ke dalam adonan kertas, air dan lem diamkan beberapa saat hingga warna meresap dan menyatu
4. Masukkan bubur kertas ke dalam ember lebar, dengan ketinggian yang dapat membuat cetakan (sreen/kasa nyamuk/jaring-jaring bentos berbingkai kayu berukuran sesuai keinginan folio/quarto atau A4) terndam. Rendam cetakan ke dalam bubur kertas, angkat cetakan sehingga ada lapisan tipis bubur kertas dan tiriskan agar air berkurang dan tempelkan pada papan tripleks berlapis kain ukuran 120×220 cm atau sesuai kebutuhan. Keringkan dengan menganginkan di tempat yang teduh agar warna tidak pudar
5. Agar permukaan kertas halus, kertas daur ulang diseterika ketika hampir kering dengan melapisi kain tipis agar tidak terlalu panas

Tips:

• Kertas HVS bekas warna putih seberat 2 kg dapat menghasilkan bubur kertas sekitar 40 liter yang dapat dibuat 200-300 lembarkertas daur  ulang ukuran kuarto
• Perbandingan untuk pewarna alam untuk 6 liter bubur kertas dibutuhkan 100 gram kunyit/temulawak untuk menghasilkan warna kuning atau 25-50lembar daun untuk menghasilkan warna hijau
• Walaupun kertas daur ulang ini banyak digunakan untuk kertas seni, namun harus diingat bahwa kegiatan daur ulang kertas ini bertujuan untuk memelihara lingkungan. Jadi jangan gunakan bahan tambahan (zat pewarna aktif, lem formaldehyde, pemutih, hiasan dari hayati laut, bunga edelweis dll) yang justru mencemari dan merusak lingkungan

Apa Yang Harus Diperhatikan Jika Kita Akan menggunakan Kertas?

1. Perimbangkan sekali lagi apakah memang kita betu-betul perlu untuk menggunakan kertas. Jika memang diperlukan kertas, pertimbangkan apakah dapat digunakan kertas bekas.
2. Jika harus menggunakan kertas baru, upayakan agar menggunakan kertas daur ulang  atau kertas yang lebih ramah lingkungan  dan gunakan sehemat mungkin. Jika kertas akan digunakan untuk menulis/mencetak, pertimbangkan lagi naskah yang akan dicetak, apakah memang benar-benar perlu untuk dicetak, apakah kalimat dan besar huruf sudah cukup efisien sehingga tidak akan memboroskan kertas. Untuk certak/fotokopi gunakan kertas yang mempunyai logo Ekolabel.
3. Setelah menggunakan kertas/produk kertas, perlakukan kertas tersebut dengan baik sehingga dapat bertahan lebih lama. Kotak kue, piring kertas, gelas kertas jika belum rusak/kotor -walaupun tertulis untuk produk sekali pakai- tentunya tidak perlu dibuang bukan? Bersihkan dan simpan di tempat yang bersih atau gunakan untuk keperluan lain.

Banyak hal dapat kita lakukan untuk menghemat kertas. Hargai alam, pikirkan bagaimana keputusan kita akan berdampak terhadap lingkungan dan kita akan terbiasa untuk selalu berlaku bijak dalam menggunakan kertas.

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