saying goodbye to paper

Hey

Recently I asked Jeff Solin, one of the Information Technology teachers at Northside to bring me up to speed on a project he is working on that will help minimize the paper usage at Northside College Prep High School.



He emailed me back with some excellent information.


· Used grant to purchase a $3000 networked digital sender (powerful scanner). This device is as easy to use as a photo copier, and works just as fast with color / bw / grayscale / double sided / etc. It can be used without a computer and it will either email you a pdf (or other file format), or it will store the file on the network for later retrieval. The idea is that teachers will scan what they need to distribute, and email it out or post it online for their students. If just one student decides to read it on screen, instead of print it, you have made progess.


· Train teachers on how to electronically collect, grade on a tablet with digital ink, and then redistribute student work. When done properly, you can completely eliminate the need for even one page of paper to be used in a multi-draft term paper or other writing assignment.


· Work with administration and counseling to handle all in-house correspondence over email using scans when necessary. There is no need for a purple sheet of paper with scholarship info to be printed 1000 times and then split into advisories and distributed to the teacher mailboxes. That not only wastes resources, but is time consuming. Throw the file in the digital sender, then attach it to an email out to all students…done.



I know that this is on a grand scale. But I hope this might spur others to look around their work or home and see if they can find ways to minimize the use of paper. Finding ways to minimize paper usage on the front end also creates less energy needed on the back end with waste removal and recycling.

A Fresh Squeeze has some fun outdoor activities that will get you looking for ways to improve the environment and at the same time lessening your carbon footprint. You can see these details at www.afreshsqueeze.com