Yesterday marked one year of paperless work in my classroom. The anniversary didn't come rushing in like some amazing New Year's celebration; it came as an afterthought as I was walking into my friendly neighborhood Kroger to buy dog food. It's not that I associate my classroom (or my students, for that matter) with my dogs; it's simply that the concept of being paper-free is now so mundane and ordinary that I rarely think about those first days when my students decided that this was a project they wanted to try.
When I started my Latin class yesterday, I asked the students if they new what day it was. And, of course, I got the obligatory "Wednesday the 25th....DUH!" from my sweet teenagers. My headmaster happened to cruise by my room (serendipitously)at the same moment I said, "Don't you know? Today marks the one year anniversary of the day we became paperless!" The room exploded with cheers...I felt like I had single-handedly won the Super Bowl. But that wasn't even the coolest part. What I realized at that moment was that they HAD. NO. IDEA. that it had been a year. What does that say about them and this project? Read on....
The seventh graders who began with me last year are now eighth graders who feel more comfortable using collaborative documents than most of the adults in my life. They are the same ones who, one year ago yesterday, had no idea what Zoho was or that Glogster existed. These were the same kids who would unknowingly print 9384756298347652834756 copies of one document simply because it didn't instantaneously fly off the printer, grow legs, and appear at their desks. I wanted to make them technologically self-sufficient and capable of solving their own paperless problems, and I think I did that.
What does the new year of my paper-free classroom hold? I'm not sure. But I think I want them to become curious about finding ways to get technology to work for them. I want them to introduce new tools to their teachers and become the kind of person who loves to find new stuff that will help them learn or stay organized. So that's what I'm going to do. The new year and new spring will most likely be a time of discovery and creation. I think that sounds fun and new enough to breathe life into the project.
