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.
2. Once your worksheet is in PDF format, you will need to visit the Google Chrome Store and pick up the free DocHub app. Have your students add DocHub to their Chome accounts, as well.
3. Assign your students the worksheet via email or an online platform (if you use Google Classroom, make sure to select “make a copy for each student,” they will open the PDF in Classroom with DocHub).
4. With DocHub, students can write, draw, and insert images onto a PDF. They can save it, and share it with you.
Download the Cheat Sheet HERE PDF from THIS Package
As a side note, if you are using a PDF with fillable text boxes, they can use the text boxes for typing, but if there is a button on the PDF to insert an image, that won’t work. No worries, though. They can insert an image in DocHub from the toolbar.
Teaching during the pandemic taught us a lot. I’ve been reflecting on that and this series, Reclaiming Education: What to Lose and What to Keep after the Pandemic is the result of those reflections. In this post, I discuss a way to lose Cookie-Cutter Learning in favor of a workable style of Personalized Learning and the importance of keeping deadlines. Don’t forget to download the templates from my free resource library to help you implement this approach!
Inquiry-based lessons have been around for a while. But hear me out–I think they’re the key to making learning meaningful for our post-pandemic students. When we were going through all of the quarantining and hybrid learning that Covid brought, I remember the anxiety the most. Change was happening so quickly. We had to twist, turn,
Struggling to get the powers that be onboard with NON-digital learning? Those copies are expensive, but sometimes you need them! Read on for 5 Simple Ways for Teachers to Save Copies without Going 100% Digital. I was sitting in a faculty meeting the other day and the principal brought up a major issue at our