[K12OSN] Thoughts on paperless school

[Barry R Cisna]

Hello All,

I would like to hear some peoples view on trying to make a school
paperless.
I'll start it out by saying teachers,admins can always argue it is not
possible,due to send outs to mommy and poppy etc.
Reason I am thinking of this at present, is your's truly  deals with the
paper ordered and handling,,,:( of the pallets (stacked who knows how
high) of paper each year! This year our school went completely nuts
going through paper 8x10.
Needless to say the printer cartridges that have been consumed in this
years time (can you say plotter!!!) is almost sickening.
We have been down the print management route in the past restricting
pages per day printed. That idea went down the tubes in the first week
after lotsa leg work getting it setup and in place.
I have found,,unfortunately it is pretty much useless to show teachers
little hints in regards to this scenario as for whatever reason they do
not even want to learn how to do anything  'new/different'.
Example. I showed some teachers how to instead of 'printing off' umpteen
pages,,for a 24 hour reference thing to save it as pdf,and send it to
their home email if they like as well. How could this thing be any
simpler? About 1 out of 10 I can tell thought it to be a good idea.
I use the analogy printing stuff off is like daily newspapers. What they
print will be looked at (maybe) regardless of the multitude of
possibilities, and 24 hours it is going to be in the trash anyway.
My take is if paperless is 'forced' on everyone within the school
building/district people WILL learn to do it,and in time realize its
much cleaner simpler,quicker way of doing what the papered setup 'used'
to do.
Argument will be made mom/pop at home that don't have two nickels to rub
together don't have a PC,in their home, to view Sonny's detention for
example. Bottom line I have found little 5 year old kids in K have a
smartphone nowadays,that I know their folks don't have two nickels to
rub together,so they surely have a pc at home as well.
I'm sure at this point every school is using SMS software (we even have
it here in Podunk,,,) ) but this is such a small piece of the paper glut
in schools.
Sorry for long post.

Take Care,
BC