I realized an important truth recently–I have been hopelessly spoiled for the past sixteen years. I did not have a copy limit in my school system. It took moving to a school system with a strict copy limit for me to realize the unabashed luxury of my former situation.
I call this an important truth because overindulgence, and well, waste are often byproducts of luxury and being spoiled rotten. I hated making copies, but I never truly tried to conserve them.
I’ve written a lot about going 1:1 and blending my classroom, but I would sometimes make copies because they were there and it was easy. Now I truly have to live up to my own advice, “If paper works best, use it. But all things being equal, choose digital.”
I love the SAMR model for adding technology. What I’m going to discuss today is straight up step 1–substitution, something I didn’t do a ton of in the past but that copy limits have forced me to increasingly do. So, here’s how I
Make My Worksheets Work Digitally
1. All you need is to have your worksheet in PDF format. You can do that with phone apps that enable you to take a picture of a sheet of paper, save it as a PDF, and email it to yourself. You can also do this by scanning your worksheet. Most school copiers these days also have a feature that enables you to scan a worksheet and send it to your email as a PDF.![]() |
| Download the Cheat Sheet HERE PDF from THIS Package |
And check out the video tutorial:






