New Technology Leads To Paperless Classrooms

Pens And Paper May Become A Tool Of The Past In Some Gentry Classrooms

Gentry High School teacher Patrick Lanford works on a netbook computer at his desk on Sept. 27. Students use similar netbooks to complete all their work assignments online.
Gentry High School teacher Patrick Lanford works on a netbook computer at his desk on Sept. 27. Students use similar netbooks to complete all their work assignments online.

— No longer will students in one classroom at Gentry High School be able to blame a pet for eating a homework assignment. Why? Because the classroom is going paperless and students are completing their work in the clouds.

With the school district’s new focus on technology, Patrick Lanford — who teaches psychology, sociology, civics, Spanish I, Spanish II and yearbook — decided to move his students deeper into the new age of technology by going paperless and also green in his classroom.

“My paperless classroom is still a work in progress, and will be for the next few months,” Lanford

said. “Our netbooks just arrived, and we are learning how to best utilize them in class. But the devices are already changing how the students do their assignments.”

Lanford said that some of the goals of the paperless classroom include teaching students how to use Google Drive and Gmail to increase student creativity and collaboration. With Google accounts created specifically for student use in his classes, Lanford is teaching his classes how to use document sharing to create a project-oriented learning environment and to create a more businesslike mindset regarding school assignments.

“We want students to be more efficient and learn that managing information is itself a necessary tool for future success,” Lanford said.

All of Lanford’s students are currently submitting assignments electronically rather than on pa- per. Depending on the nature of the assignment, students will use a specific application in their Google Drive account to complete it.

In the cloud

That means homework is done in the cloud — on a remote Google server — which can be accessed by both students and their teacher, with user name and password, from any computer, any place.

“There are huge advantages to going paperless,” Lanford said. “First, by using cloud storage, students no longer have to worry about losing their assignments. Moreover, they can access them from any computer 24/7 and work on them from home. Second, it allows teachers to review and make comments and corrections before students submit a final copy. Third, students can work together in real time on the same document.

“By collaborating on the same project, students stay more engaged in the task at hand, and thereby become more productive. Trends in education come and go, but in the case of the paperless classroom, I think it will eventually be the new paradigm,” Lanford said. “Technology has a way of forcing itself on a society, whether you want it to or not. It’s no longer

viable to ignore these changes. Like everything else, it can have its pros and cons. In terms of education, I think that the pros far outweigh the cons, and I’m glad to see our district is being proactive and purchasing new equipment so as to integrate these new ideas. Other districts (and students) across the state aren’t as fortunate.”

Students like it

And the students like it, too, Lanford said. It’s helping them to learn new technol- ogy and to stay organized, he said.

“This is a wonderful new thing that will help me in many of my classes now and in the future,” said 10th grade student James Groh. “This could even help me because I always used to lose my work, but now I don’t have to worry about it. It keeps me very organized.”

“I believe this is an advantage to an extent,” said 10th grade student Taylor Butler. “Students can go anywhere with Internet access and get on their email to see the assignments from the class instead of having to wait until the next day. A student can also store his or her documents in a specific class folder instead of having to keep up with a stack of papers.”

Lanford said there are other online services and applications besides Google Docs that teachers can use.

“Again, it all depends on the particular nature of the class and assignment and matching it with a service that best accomplishes that task. I’m a big advocate of Google, though. Their ser- vices are really impressive and user friendly,” Lanford said.

Lanford praised the Gentry School District’s Information Technology Department for doing a good job at creating an email system for students. Since the student email accounts are created through the district, they have restrictions and limitations on them. They are there for school-related business, he said.

Going paperless and using new technology to do research and complete homework assignments is certainly in line with the new Common Core State

Standards which are being implemented in local school districts.

“Common Core is certainly changing education in America,” Lanford said. Students will be seeing fewer multi-choice-style tests in the future. Common Core is expecting students to explain, show and use what they know. As such, using many of the online services will give both students and teachers ways to be creative in demonstrating what they have learned in the classroom.

“The possibilities are nu- merous, to say the least,” Lanford added. “The fact that the Bill Gates Foundation has helped to create many of the standards in Common Core, it’s clear that students will have to know how to use computers effectively to achieve what is going to be asked of them.”

Though Lanford’s class- room is the first to make the move to paperless in the high school, and math teacher Phyllis Berry’s is the first on the middle school campus, the trend could soon become the norm in Gentry classrooms.

“I think it’s fairly safe to say that the paperless model is the future of the class- room,” Lanford said. “To say exactly when in the future is a little more difficult. We are taking the first steps this year and changes are coming quickly. My experience thus far has revealed a couple of things. First, the paperless model requires a high degree of organization on the part of both the teacher and the student. Things like creating folders and labels properly in your email and drive accounts are indispensable to success. Learning software and new user interfaces take time and practice. But once learned, the benefits are great. Second, the students like it. The fact that they can research, study and create a project at the same time on one device instead of having a stack of books, a notebook and pens or pencils cluttering up their work area is nice. They literally have the world at their fingertips. That, combined with the fact that all their work is saved automatically, will reduce the number of

incomplete assignments. For all these reasons and more, I think the paperless classroom is the direction in which we are headed.”

According to Lanford, many other teachers are us- ing the online services avail- able in their classrooms.

“I’ve talked to others and they have mentioned do- ing things for their classes that involve these services,” Lanford said.

“I applaud the willingness of our teachers to invest their time and energy to expand their knowledge base related to technology,” said Gentry’s federal curriculum coordinator Judy Winslett. “Advancements in technology are made daily and the need to stay abreast of these developments as we attempt to prepare our students for college and workplace readiness is crucial to the mission of our district. Mr. Lanford and Mrs. Berry are both piloting a ‘paperless’ classroom project this year, with the potential to offer a more intensive learning experience while spending more class time actually teaching. It's a very exciting time here in Gentry.”

"The district has been working hard to incorporate the tools of the modern business world into our classrooms,” said Gentry Schools superintendent Randy Barrett. “Our goal is for our students to graduate in Gentry with the use of technological devices be- ing as common place as a slide rule was to me 40 years

ago. I still remember being so thankful for hand-held calculators when they came out. In the last six or seven years, our district has spent over a million dollars in low-value technical equipment for staff and students. It's easy for our parents to see a building being put up; it's harder for them to be knowledgeable of the things our district is doing to give our students exposure to something else other than angry birds knocking down walls."

The changes in education and how instruction takes place in the classroom may appear somewhat unbelievable to those who grew up without computers and smart phones, and when everything was done on paper. Yet, more and more, the paperless model is sweeping the nation and the world. In recent months, Gentry’s school board made the switch, going from a printed packet each month with hundreds of pages to electronic files in Dropbox cloud storage.

“Whenever one changes their entire way of doing things it can seem a little overwhelming at first,” Lanford said. “This is certainly true for me. The paperless classroom model takes time and experience to get use to, like walking before you can run. There is still much to learn about this process. This is true for the students as well, but I think eventually we’ll all get there,” he said.