One Way (or Another)

Depending on which educators you follow online, you have either read that computers in classrooms are the greatest thing ever and that we should all go paperless or you have read that computers in classrooms are toxic distractions and sources of evil and students should do everything on paper.  As with most things, both extremes are stupid.

Paperless is stupid.
All paper in the 21st century is stupid.

My school is in our 8th year as a one to one school, and I am on board with what can be done with computers in the classroom that cannot be done without them.  From simple things like, "Hey, guys, look up the height of the Empire State Building in meters" so that we can write a physics problem about it to more complex uses like, "Our honors discussion of the Richard Feynman book will be a Twitter chat" to "Construct a solution to a problem in a developing nation," there are skills I would not have been able to ask of my students without each of them having access to the internet.  And those examples don't scratch the surface of the day to day activities of downloading instructions, dropping illustrations into their notes, and the fact that they keep track of all of their assignments on a digital calendar. 

Sometimes, however, it just makes sense to do things "the old way."  I have days in which I advise students to work on paper today.  It is easier to do math with a pencil than it is to type it, especially at higher levels.  Fractions make no sense later when you have typed them.  It takes more time to time to type subscripts and superscripts and special symbols of chemical equations than it does to write them.  In these activities, the techy way just isn't better.

Here's the thing.  You are in the classroom for a reason.  It's not because you know everything.  It's not because you can answer every question.  It's because a computer doesn't have professional judgment.  There are about ten ways to do everything.  Your job as a teacher is to decide which way or ways are best.  A blanket policy of any kind doesn't allow for you, as the educational expert in the room, to recognize the differences between your students.  It might be best for 2nd period to do something on the computer while 3rd period does the same activity on paper.  It might be best for one student to type because their handwriting is atrocious but for someone else to write on paper because they won't stop playing games online.  It might be that one student needs to put files on their computer because it is searchable while another student will do better with color-coded, tabbed folders. 

Know your students.  Know your content.  Decide what is the best way to do things.  It can't be all one way.