How far would you go?

I want to be paperless. Teaching and learning without paper! No paper. The question becomes, how far am I willing to go and what am I willing to do to make that happen?

Here's the steps I've taken, just on the hardware front:

1. Work for hours to get 15 of 40 old Compaq laptops working.
2. Beg the building tech to get log-ins for 3 other laptops that would work.
3. Beg the tech for more old iMacs (we're talking old). Got 2 so far!
4. Share my school issued laptop with the students (it's a daily raffle).
5. Share my "teacher" computer with the students.
6. Share my prized OLPC XO laptop with the students (I share the story at least twice a day)

Here's the steps I've taken on the Web 2.0 front:

1. Registered my class for Ning. Shut that down due to not enough teacher control.
2. Registered my class for Edmodo. Shut that down because it wasn't robust enough. I here that is changing though.
3. Registered my class for the Minneapolis Public Schools wiki/blog/podcast page. Never used due to confusing interface.
4. Got entire class working on Moodle and have been there all quarter.
5. Used Wordle for a few assignments.
6. Explored Toon Doo and another cartoon generation site.
7. Tried to use Vimeo for some how to videos. District promptly blocked the site.
8. Tried to use Twitter for class updates, homework assignments, and parent communication. District promptly blocked this one too.

Have I given up? Nope, not a chance. I've got a good thing going with Moodle. My students are more engaged, more willing to do the writing assignments, and more willing to interact with each other and me in the evening and on the weekend.

Here are a few of the pluses:

1. No missing work.
2. No waiting for copies that could take days.
3. Dogs can't eat computers.
4. I don't have to carry notebooks back and forth to school.
5. My assignment basket is going away.
6. I'm much happier using things that I like and that engage my students.
7. Behavior incidents have decreased.

Those are my thoughts on being paperless. Am I there yet? Not quite. It will take a while and a shift in the thinking of me and my students. Education is all about shifting thinking. Can't wait to tackle school in the fall. I've got a lot of work a head of me.