More schools continuing switch to paperless environments

These days, many businesses and government agencies are seeing the value in converting paper documents to digital format. Often, these organizations spend huge chunks of their budget on things like paper, toner, printing equipment, and so on, but by going paperless, many are reaping significant benefits after a small upfront cost.

One place where the paperless trend is really catching on these days is in the classroom, as many schools from kindergarten to high school are swapping out paper assignments for work on computers and other devices. One such school system is in Great Bend, Kansas, where middle school students were recently given lightweight, durable laptops to complete in-class assignments and do their homework elsewhere, according to the Great Bend Tribune.

The immediate impact
Teachers at the school said that they came to quickly prefer the paperless world, with few using the copy machine for any reason in the early days of the school year, the report said. Further, many teachers find kids are a little more engaged when they use paperless lesson plans: not only because it helps to collaborate their work across a number of classes, but also because kids today have a natural predisposition toward using computers, making work more efficient. However, some students still prefer to work with paper products, so the school accommodates those needs as well.[

"It's not forced on them to do digital things," Joseph Bliven, an enrichment teacher at Great Bend Middle School, told the newspaper.

More considering the switch
Meanwhile, the push to go paperless is a hot topic for school administrators and city officials across the U.S. as well. In Asheboro, North Carolina, the Randolph County Board of Education is expected to approve a plan to push 27 of the district's 31 schools toward paperless classrooms in the near future, according to the Courier Tribune. This is part of its broader School Improvement Plans for each site. Meanwhile, the other four schools in the county are likewise moving toward paperless, but have separate plans to improve because they were considered "low performing" by state standards.

The more companies or government groups can do to evaluate their needs to convert to digital, and how they can best achieve that goal – from scanning documents to automating workflows – the better off they'll be as they adopt this new type of document management system.