I took the paperless nature of my previous 1:1 school for granted. A couple of recent experiences drove home another reason why going 1:1 in our schools makes a lot of sense.
Ever try to buy all the papers, pencils, binders, etc., your child needs for school during Ramadan? Ever move your family halfway around the world to find box after box of student tests, papers, journals, mind maps, etc., in your shipment when you have no storage space in your new home?
International educators can smile at our family’s situation, but it gets to the universal point of families buying school supplies wherever they live.
Having spent a good part of Saturday at the very crowded market where families were shopping in mass to get home to break their fasts, we felt a bit of stress working through the various teacher requests for school supplies. Adding in the mass of papers, worksheets, notebooks, and binders our sons had from their previous school, I scratched my head, realizing just how simple things had been at my 1:1 laptop school in Taiwan.
There was only one item on my school supply list as students prepared for the new school year- a laptop. At the end of the year, instead of notebooks, papers, and binders, our students had Google Docs for their papers, Moodle instead of agendas for their homework assignments, blogs for their reflections and writing, MindMeister for their research notes and electronic portfolios with projects and reflections about their learning. The students left the school in June with the one learning tool they had entered with. Simple.