Paperless lessons

I have been trialling paperless working in year 9 science lessons with some positive outcomes for students. Students are provided with a set of Google Slides which have resources and tasks for a complete topic. The ‘exercise book’ is assigned in Google Classroom so that each student has their own copy to edit on their iPad.

Some pages are very prescriptive and straightforward for students to complete using their online textbook as a reference. I am pleased that they can have high-quality diagrams in colour and I am confident that all students are covering the core concepts that they need for the topic.

Independent working is a key focus of the Science Department and this way of working has allowed students to be creative and experimental in their response to a task. Currently some students do need to be directed more closely, but for others, the freedom to include images, video and the editing opportunities have been excellent.

Clearly there will be times when there is some paper, here a short assessment on cells and magnification was carried out, students inserted a photo of their work, with corrections. No more loose papers and lost work!

Early conclusions for a school where students all have an iPad device, this is an exciting way of a class recording their learning journey. The possibilities of including their own video, voice recordings and images as they go are motivating. As a teacher, it has made me think of different ways of having more differentiated working in my classroom where all students are accessing different tasks and responding in different ways but hopefully all making progress…

UPDATE

I have surveyed the classes opinion after the first topic of paperless science lessons. a copy of the survey, a summary of responses and individual responses can be found here

Students are motly very positive about their experience in science lessons using iPad although some have found the experience of working more indepednently a challenge. I will be repeating and comparing the survey later in the year. Nothing in the student responses has made me want to stop the experiment but I have introduced a more structured pathway through the next topic.