Paperless Education:

The use of paper in businesses, offices, and education has drastically reduced due to electronic digital connect devices today. Businesses use email and PDF file transfer to conduct business, Storage devices like the memory chips have reduced or practically nullified the use of paper to transfer, spread and store information. Knowledge is no longer stored in books in a library but a huge amount of knowledge is available in the form of cloud storage where many companies offer considerable free space to store and retrieve huge amounts of information.

The concept of saving paper is crucial because it is directly digital connected to environmental concerns. Paper is mainly an organic material that uses the huge amount of trees and grass and this leaves a dent in the forest wealth and consequently affects the ecology.

The concept of paperless operations is catching up slowly in business and industry. One day we may see a scenario that operates entirely without paper. Is it enough to change the scene effectively? Surely not, because there is another field where huge amounts of paper are used. Yes, it’s education. The amount of paper that is used in classrooms, libraries for books, notes and assignments is making a deep effect on the ecology. Added to that there is the question of time management and effort that has to be put in for storage and distribution of knowledge.

An effort is being made in the west to create totally paperless classrooms where digital connect technology is used. Students use PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) to download and upload assignments, communicate with the library and with the office to receive information, to make payments and get acknowledgments and receipts.

As with all new things, there are pros and cons in every concept. The pros in paperless education are saving in paper, environment, and cost. The cons are the cost of devices and the technology ignorance.