Earth Day is exactly one month away which makes today a good day to tell you about Shelly Blake-Plock’s Earth Day Paperless Classroom Pledge. To date, more than 750 teachers have signed-up and pledged to go paperless on Earth Day. Read more about the Earth Day Paperless Classroom Pledge on Shelly’s blog, Teach Paperless.

Here are some ideas to get you started teaching without paper:
1. Get your students using Google Docs to write their essays. Students can share essays with you and you can grade them without printing.
2. Try using the Drop.io upload widget to collect your students’ work online.
3. Compare the articles in your textbooks with articles on Wikipedia about the same topic. Similarly, get your students started building a wiki of reliable articles that can replace your older textbooks and periodicals.
4. If you’re in the habit of sending newsletters home, start an email list or better yet a blog to replace that newsletter.
5. If you’re teaching in a 1:1 environment, stop printing assignments and just post them online.