Beuchley et al.

Colin I agree that schools do not have the funds to buy technology for every student in the school. I believe in the future, the money spent on textbooks will be spent on technology, and the students will access something similar to wiki spaces in the humanities at least, thus removing books and/or e-books from the equation. Martin

Hi Colin and Martin,

I wonder if using iPads or other tech ed materials like computers, etc. would make a different in reducing paper copies when most of the course is on the computer (also less textbook costs). Our school constantly has paper jams or problems with the photocopier and it results in calling in a specialist to fix it. What a waste of educational resource money! Teachers still seem to print mass amounts of paper like it's no big deal. Over the long run, with less photocopier maintenance and paper costs, perhaps more could be in the budget for the technology that replaces a lot of that paper...Just a thought.

Hi Alicia, I have been trying to reduce the amounts of copies that I make in my math and science classroom this year. I teach grade 9's, and both of our textbooks are available online. I did not check out textbooks to my students unless they were fully aware that they were to return the textbook or pay the $90 replacement fee. I received a huge amount of resistance to parents because their student MUST have a textbook. Breaking this pattern is going to take some time. I also posted all of my notes online this year, in the hopes of reducing the paper copies that I would have to make. After having a group website for all of our core classes for grade 9's for one year, I still have students asking me where they can find the notes (mostly because final exams are starting). It's frustrating to do this extra work to find that it isn't being used by parents or students. I haven't reduced my photocopying at all, but I have reduced the numbers of "lost" textbooks. Rose