The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Day Six

After about 5 days of getting used to the switch, I'm starting to get back into the normal routine of material that I had planned to cover. If you want to do this, don't expect it to just happen. You have to teach the kids how to troubleshoot their machines, try new applications, organize usernames and passwords, make the transition form classroom to home...and that's just the tip of it. I even have to get myself into a new routine, starting with making an online list of tasks I have to complete, like remembering to grade the 7th grade handout that is so quietly sitting in my Google docs. There aren't stacks of papers to remind me that stuff needs grading.

I've had to figure out ways to label rubrics and return that information to individuals, ways to distribute forms that can be filled out individually...and all of this going into it with a pretty darn good learning curve already.

Today after my 6th paperless day, I had my 7th graders ponder the good and the bad of the entire experience:

The Good:


•"I like being able to finally keep up with the teacher as she talks; I can’t write fast. That, and I love computers, so this has been generally great."
•"The coolest part of this experiment will be when I fix my phone so I might be able to do my homework on my phone. Plus the no books part. It my be sometime in the near future when I don't have to kill my back with a backpack."
•"I like it because I don’t have to bring home all of the papers."
•"It educates students about how to use computers and is much faster than writing."
•"I like learning to share Google documents."
•"I like not having a piece of paper to keep up with."
•"I love computers and I am really good at them too. I also love to type."
•"We have gone a whole week with being paperless and its much easier to organize."


The Bad


•"Trying to do my homework when sometimes or many times when I don’t have access to a computer"
•"Dealing with a computer that's not a Mac (my parents have PCs)."
•"Waiting for web pages to load"
•"Having to remember whether to use Safari or Firefox on certain things."
•"Having to wait for my sister to get off of the computer so that I can do my homework."


The Ugly:

I caught myself forcing kids to use Evernote. It was an utter flop. All the sudden I realized that I had reverted back to my alter ego (the school marm), imposing my way on them. Note to self: Expose kids to several options, then let them choose the best way to keep up with their stuff.