In the mobile era, people like to work on any device, anywhere and at any time. This means a lot of information is stored on the device (how many notes do we take on the computer versus a notebook?) and for transparency purposes, moved online. By working in the cloud or through sites like WordPress, organizations that typically use a lot of paper are able to move to a paper-free environment (or pretty close to it).
A great example of this comes from a Florida Middle School teacher, James Hays, who broke away from “the norm” and moved his classroom online. With The Paper-Free Class Experiment, he built a site that included everything from discussion questions to writing resources and test prep materials to a page for communicating with parents. Using the Morning After theme, which allows him to create custom menus and designate sticky posts to highlight important information, he’s created a site that’s jam-packed with information, but still easy to use.
Along with providing resources, assignments, and a place to continue classroom conversations, The Paper-Free Class Experiment connects to other online education tools. Students can create their own blogs on edublogs.com, enter private chats, and log into the school district’s portal to submit assignments electronically. Students and parents can even keep up with classroom news on social media channels like Twitter.
By moving everything online, Hays was able to improve communications with parents and students, connect students to other various resources, get them blogging and collaborating on assignments after school, all the while reducing the paper trail. Government agencies can do a similar thing. By creating online portals, private chats, and discussion forums you can increase collaboration, connect employees across departments and reduce paper.
You can view other great examples here.
How can something like the Paper-Free Class Experiment be used in your agency?
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