TSR Goes Green: Can studying be made more sustainable?

Yes - problem is some people (like me) prefer traditional writing on paper.
Some schools in my area including mine were given laptops to do our work alongside our schoolbooks, which did help in cutting paper as there were less handouts, we could answer past questions online and so on. But it was much more tricky to navigate a laptop than to use pen and paper.
Additionally when writing notes, you could argue that typing notes is better, but I and a lot of people find writing them is best as you actually process what you’re learning as making them instead of just mindlessly listening.
I do suggest using a whiteboard though, especially for recall if you have a small whiteboard when studying you can practice your recall again and again without using any paper.
Also maybe transferring from paper flashcards to apps like Anki and Quizlet which are fairly easy to navigate and I think you can download your sets to be offline too.
I think it’s going to be a while before schools can go paperless for studying, maybe even never, as it’s convenient and cheap and easy to access.
Maybe big notebook dispatchers (you know those standard blank coloured notebooks you’re given in every class), could try and use recycled paper for the pages or the covers, and that way every school will be reusing the books.
Also something my school did for English which was great is they had like 40 copies of Lord of the flies so each student in the class had one each, you’d annotate in pencil and them after the exam remove your notes and bring the book back to school so they could be reused the next year!
This is such an interesting thread 😊

The government/exam boards and some schools it seems still want to stick to the traditional pen and paper, closed book, under tight pressure exam format rather than getting up to date an moving towards typing and online exams, so think that’s part of the problem.

The UK (at least up until university level) is backwards in this regard in my opinion.

Many schools unless you’re in sixth form or have a disability that entitles you into having access to a word processor don’t even let you make notes digitally even if you wanted to, they expect you to use pen and paper. The fact that I wasn’t given a word processor when I probably would have benefited with that over a scribe was wild.

I think that humanity subjects (when it comes to the exams at least) should phase towards having exams get typed over pen and paper (have paper exams as a back up in case the electricity fails though), subjects like Maths and other STEM subjects should probably remain pen and paper based though.

Maybe subjects like Economics as well shouldn’t go digital as you have to draw/label diagrams when answering questions.

I don’t like the digitalisation of everything but this is one case where I can accept and support it.

The government/exam boards and some schools it seems still want to stick to the traditional pen and paper, closed book, under tight pressure exam format rather than getting up to date an moving towards typing and online exams, so think that’s part of the problem.
The UK (at least up until university level) is backwards in this regard in my opinion.
Many schools unless you’re in sixth form or have a disability that entitles you into having access to a word processor don’t even let you make notes digitally even if you wanted to, they expect you to use pen and paper. The fact that I wasn’t given a word processor when I probably would have benefited with that over a scribe was wild.
I think that humanity subjects (when it comes to the exams at least) should phase towards having exams get typed over pen and paper (have paper exams as a back up in case the electricity fails though), subjects like Maths and other STEM subjects should probably remain pen and paper based though.
Maybe subjects like Economics as well shouldn’t go digital as you have to draw/label diagrams when answering questions.
I don’t like the digitalisation of everything but this is one case where I can accept and support it.

I agree with this. I can see why they don't let children take notes digitally, because then there would always be complaints of not every student having access to technology and then they wouldn't be able to fund giving devices to everyone, although in an ideal world every student would have their own device to aid learning.

I know my exam board has tried to be sustainable by 'reducing the amount of blank pages in exams' - wow that will REALLY change the fact that you're still printing papers for thousands of children, with maybe one page less than normal.

The humanities being types is a good idea, most people type better anway, it wouldn't be messy crossing out and adding things in when you had an idea. I agree with stem staying on paper as I always scribble notes in pencil when doing questions to remind myself of they key info before answering 😂