12 Reasons to Ditch the Pen - Why it's no longer mightiest against the sword

Yesterday, I was teaching a workshop with Marc Prensky where he was talking to literacy teachers about the digitization of books and writing. As we discussed the death of books, many still held on tightly to the concept of the outdated relics. I love the feel, the smell, the page...Yada, yada, yada. I’ve written many times about the death of books and paper as you can read below.

-A few strong cases for ditching the paper and letting books grow digital wings
-Shed the Paper and Allow Books to Grow their Digital Wings
-Social Books Unlock Reader’s Voice and Provide Opportunity for Conversation
-iPads? Eh! Social Reading from Your Phone? Now That's Innovation!
-Ditch Paper and Get to the Thinking Faster.
-How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On a Paperless Diet
-Read and Personalize Books for Free with MeeGenius
-Innovative Ideas for Using Cell Phones to Summarize and Take Notes
-What Might a 21st Century Literacy Class Look Like? This!
-Reading 2.0: Where is the Love?
-The End of Books? (For Me, At Least?) - Will Richardson

But now, I want to tackle the death of the pen which is quickly being replaced with digital writing tools like laptops, cell phones, iTouches, iPads, Smartpens etc. etc. etc. The same rumblings happen when it comes to the passing of the pen.

• But I love the feel of the pen on the page.
• Taking notes (an outdated skill) with a pen helps me understand what I’m hearing.
• I need an ink pen to be able to capture my thoughts, the keyboard just isn’t the same.

My advice: Get over it and join the 21st century so you can be relevant to yourself, your colleagues, and most importantly your students.

Why? Because...

Ditching pens allows you to do more, do it faster, do it more efficiently / effectively, and most importantly share it with an audience.

Here’s why...

12 Reasons Writing Digital is Mightier then Pen and Ink

1- It’s faster

• The average human being hand writes at 31 words per minute.
• I haven’t hand written in years so probably am slower than this.
• With training (1 semester class) a human can become a beginner touch typist at 40 wpm and with a second class about 70 wpm.
• I type 67 wpm according to TypeRacer.
• Touch typists can learn to type 50 - 60 wpm with their thumbs in a month.
• I type 60 wpm according to my self test.

2-It’s easily editable

• Copy, paste, organize and move text seamlessly.
• Never have to recopy.

3-It’s instantly and easily shareable with others

• Simply share your writing with others by sending them the link to your writing or emailing them an attachment.
  

4-It’s easily editable by others

• Once they have your writing they simply use their keyboard from wherever they are an can edit your writing.
  

5-It’s more efficient

• It kills me when I am in a meeting watching someone hand write notes that they will later spend an hour typing up. Save an hour and type the notes. Then leave work an hour early or take a long lunch :-))
• It also kills me that people see I have a computer and say, “you take the notes.” No thank you.
• Bring your own keyboard. I don’t take traditional notes so you won’t understand what I write and if you hold me back to traditional note taking methods am not effectively able to make meaning of what is happening.

6-It allows you to get to the thinking faster (Thanks Pamela Livingston for this one)

• With a keyboard you don’t need to waste your time figuring out spelling and grammar. You can thumb or type at the speed of thought without ideas getting lost in the process because you are provided spelling and grammar suggestions as well as synonyms when you “just can’t think of a word.”
  

7-It is with you wherever you go

• If you use your Smartphone or Laptop for writing you’ll have your work wherever you go. You can replace, “I’ll get that to you when I’m back at the office going through my files.” with “Here ya go.”
• If you’re like me and type everything in Google docs, your work is with you even without your own laptop, accessible instantly on the computer of whomever is requesting the document.
  

8-It lets you get rid of the clutter

• I remember the days of notebooks, binders, and folders that over took my small (by outside Manhattan standards) New York City apartment. I finally moved them into a storage unit that I pay for monthly five years ago. Since then I stopped using paper so I’ll never need more storage space and my apartment is free from that clutter.
  

9-It lightens the load

• No need to carry all those little notebooks, binders, and folders that are crowding your briefcases and backpacks. It all neatly fits in your digital device. I always get compliments on my beautiful and sleek bag that I travel with. I never have a need for more because my writing is digital.
  

10-It is searchable

• When you write digitally you never have to sort through pages of notebooks, papers, or files. Just enter in the document name or keyword. Poof, you have what you’re looking for. I particularly like to do this when travelling. In my blackberry I have the name of the cities I’ve travelled to and notes about them. When I go back, I just type in the city and wa-la, I have all my notes.
  

11-It enables you to share ideas and make meaning

• One of my favorite ways to capture important ideas is through the use of Twitter. I share ideas or questions via Twitter which also feeds to Facebook. My friends and followers answer questions, extend the thinking, and in the process help me make meaning of what it is I’m capturing. Rather then death by paper, my note or idea becomes a Global conversation.

12-It enables you to publish easily

• When I record my ideas digitally I can instantly publish them in any number of mediums i.e. this blog, a wiki, Google doc, etc.
  

There you have it. 12 reasons to ditch the pen and go digital and it’s friendly for the environment too.

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Innovative Ideas for Beginning Your Paperless Pledge This Earth Day

I'm not a fan of "Days." Mother's "Day," Father's "Day," Valentine's "Day," Earth "Day." You get the picture. Be kind to your mother, your father, your love, your Earth...every"DAY." However, I suppose I do see the value in reminding folks of and celebrating what's important, so, this Earth Day my call to action is for educators to GO PAPERLESS!

I've been paperless for many years now. It's been easy and a huge improvement in moving past my former paper-trained existence. Here are some useful posts to help other innovative educators do the same.

• How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On a Paperless Diet - Read ten steps to a successful paperless diet.
• Ditch Paper and Get to the Thinking Faster - How going paperless makes for a more efficient and effective existence.
• Do More with Less by Going Paperless - Read how one teacher has created a more interactive, engaged classroom experience without paper.

I invite you to join me and hundreds of other educators in going paperless and saving an endless number of trees by the actions of you, your students and other educators you touch. You can take the paperless classroom pledge here.

You have read this article earth day / Paperless with the title Paperless. You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2010/04/innovative-ideas-for-beginning-your.html. Thanks!

Dropbox Offers Dynamic Collaboration (and Storage) for Format Intensive Documents

By Dana Lawit

Whether you're going green or going lean, paperless is the wave of the future. Both teachers and students can benefit from going digital. For learners, digital documents offer a dynamic tool that allows documents to change as rapidly as individuals can collaborate. For this sort of work, I'm a huge fan of GoogleDocs. But if you're finicky about tables, or want greater control over format there are limitations.

Enter Dropbox. Dropbox is an online file hosting service with a couple of neat features:

1. store your documents online
2. download Dropbox software to create a synchronized folder on your local hard drive that will connect to your online storage
3. the first 2gb of storage is free (50gb & 100gb are available for $99 & $199 annually)
   
4. you can share folders, that is invite others to share your virtual folder

I had read about Dropbox several months ago on Steve Hargadon's site, but hadn't gotten around to using it until recently when I was designing student materials that needed specific formatting.

Not sure I'll use this with students, but will definitely save any teacher or team time while supporting collaboration on more formatting intensive documents.

How are you using Dropbox?

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Do More with Less by Going Paperless

InsideSchools recently reported on a teacher at Beacon High School in Manhattan who has created a ‘green’ classroom, where all work is accomplished online, on screen, and entirely without paper. This is possible in part thanks to a laptop, projector and, inexpensive flash drives for students to ‘carry’ assignments and projects back and forth, and a tech-literate student body (only one of 139 students lacked computer access at home; another who had a computer but no internet found ample ‘net resources at school, in libraries and internet cafes, and at the homes of relatives and friends). Books, readings, and other classroom materials are provided on line and via the school’s internet portal; so far, essays, tests, and homework have been assigned and returned electronically.

In the post, called, Doing more with less the teacher has noted a more interactive, engaged classroom experience reporting that kids are doing as well or better without paper, he says, even with the challenges of glitch-fixing. In a note to InsideSchools, he added, “I’ve not used a single handout or Xeroxed paper, or printed anything out other than college recommendations that had to be submitted in hard copy.” No copies, no printouts, no paper, no waste.

With the cost of laptops plummeting and more and more one-to-one initiatives springing up (more than two dozen in NYC), I hope this idea, touted as an “unusual classroom experiment,” becomes a lot more “usual” and a lot less “experimental” and takes ground in other schools. This is an idea that is not only good for the environment; it’s one that’s also good for preparing students for the 21^st Century.

For related posts visit:

Ditch Paper and Get to the Thinking Faster

How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On a Paperless Diet

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Ditch Paper and Get to the Thinking Faster

Will Richardson recently wrote Get. Off. Paper where he asked readers, “Does anyone think most of the kids in our classes are going to be printing a bunch of paper in their grown up worlds? If you do, fine; keep servicing the Xerox machine. But if you don’t, which I hope is most of you, are you doing as much as you can to get off paper?” I ask the same question to many of those with whom I work. One of my first blog posts was written to address that question, “How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On A Paperless Diet. Going paperless not only helps the environment, it enables me to work much more efficiently and effectively. Of course trying to convince others to do so as well is not so easy as it requires a complete paradigm shift in the way people work and play.

Fortunately, as the manager of professional development services for the NYC DOE I am able to help many educators down that path. Despite some initial protesting from the paper-trained, our professional development went completely paperless about four years ago. Taking notes is never necessary. Everything is posted for participants at a wiki or our website which I show them how to download as class begins. There they will find a facilitator guide outlining all content presented, materials, links to resources, a participant agenda, a digital presentation (i.e. PowerPoint, Smart Notebook, etc.), and links to every single document we use or material we reference. Rather than engaging in the low level thinking task of copying down what the presenter shares, participants in our classes can get to the thinking faster and move beyond copying. Instead they go right to thinking about, commenting on, and begin producing, creating, and acting on it right there in the class.

The days of audience as a transcriber are gone. Instead when attending a class or presentation, participants are not required to regurgitate what they hear by copying it down (we provide this), but instead to think about concepts, post the thinking to discussion boards, carry on backchats at places like Skype or Chatzy, or since participants have freed up their time now that they’re not taking notes, they are producing work they can use back at schools i.e. action plans, videos, audio casts, Voice Threads, Vokis’s, etc. After the class, workshop, or presentations we usually write to participants encouraging them to keep the conversation going and stay connected on the discussion board, social network, blog etc. that we used in the class. I’m also looking into using http://wiffiti.com for larger audiences that may have cells, but not computers.

With the advent and availability of sublaptops it is clear that it’s time for this to go beyond the adults and into schools who can ditch the paper and copy machines in exchange for the more cost effective alternative--The $100 - $300 laptops that will last for years and eliminate the need for all paper, handouts, textbooks, and books, mags, newspapers in general. You can read about how one school is doing this by reading about, “The Power of 21st Century Teaching and Learning Brought to Life at Bronx Middle School CIS 339’s Open House."

Of course we’ll still have to account for the digital immigrants who are more set in there ways as I experienced a while back. When reviewing class materials following a PD, a participant called to say when she clicked on a particular link nothing happened. I walked her through the process a few times and she said it still didn’t work. When I asked her what browser she was using she sounded confused. After some digging I realized she had printed the materials out and was literally tapping her paper. True story.

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How I Lost 20 Pounds in One Month On a Paperless Diet

I walked into my interview for a position at the Office of Instructional Technology with a huge blue wheelie bag containing 25 lbs of necessities for my literacy coach position. Inside my bag was the balanced literacy curriculum (in what was known as the big red binder), a bunch of notebooks containing the latest reading and writing workshop units of study, binders with notes on the work I was doing with teachers, and folders containing information that supported my coaching work. I was interviewed by Troy Fischer who looked up, pointed to my wheelie bag and said, "If we are to consider you for this position you'll have to get rid of that thing." I protested explaining I am the type of person who needs to have all resources at my fingertips wherever I am so I wasn't quite sure I could agree. Additionally, I explained that in my position I had no access to a laptop or digital material and though I had access to a desktop it was shared by numerous people making it difficult to reliably access. Mr. Fischer said, "Well, I'm looking to hire someone who’s ready to change all that."

A few interviews later I was offered the position and my first responsibility was to digitize all the literacy and math materials that coaches would need as part of an initiative to equip NYC Coaches with 21st Century Toolkits comprised of fully loaded Tablet laptops. I worked with all our partner organizations and was able to get a treasure trove of textbooks, resource materials, and even that big red binder in digital format. At the same time I was committed to going completely digital. It was surprisingly easy and was ultimately an absolute blessing because once I made the decision to do this I never had to worry about printing or locating a file again and I had all my work with me wherever I was.

Here are my ten steps to a successful paperless diet:
1) I converted everything I was currently working on to my laptop computer so that I had everything I needed at my fingertips at all times. As a result I would never need to print anything because I had everything with me on my laptop.
2) I didn't worry about converting and transferring everything over. I just did it per the project I was working on making this a very manageable task.
3) I committed to traveling with my 3 lb laptop which is surprisingly light when you're not carrying a lot of books, notebooks, and binders.
4) Prior to meetings I emailed the organizer with a request to receive digital copies of the materials in advance of (rather than following) the meetings.
5) I started ordering books digitally and read them using eReader allowing me to read books directly from my laptop. This was great because I could search, highlight, play the audio if I was driving or unable to read at the time, and more.
6) I joined Audible and ordered audio books. I found audio books are better for fiction rather than nonfiction.
7) I carried a usb drive with me so I could easily and instantly take digital files from others when necessary.
8) I backed up weekly
9) I started using wikis and Google Docs for my materials rather than my hard drive to make everything easy to share and collaborate on and to free up my hard drive.
10) Lastly I got a Verizon wireless card for my laptop enabling me to have internet access anywhere I had cell service. I highly recommend this purchase and believe that is the wave of the future. While this may seem a bit expensive (about $50 a month) I no longer have to pay wireless fees anywhere and there is never a hassle getting on the internet.

Within a month I was able to shed the 20 pounds of paper and could finally fit into a sleek shoulder bag. After a life-time of paper training, I have successfully been able to keep the paper off for three years now. I vow never to be bulky again.

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