[Air-L] odd query?

[Peter Timusk]

I am so sorry Charles because this problem is too much for me as I am  
not an accountant.

I will mention that landfills are filling up with e-waste some great  
tonnage an hour in the USA is produced every hour(I heard 40 tons)  
and there are studies that in fact since 1990 paper use has increased  
(paper less office report at Statistics Canada).
I once told persons supporting persons with disabilities that if they  
bought someone a computer make sure to buy them a printer.

It seems to me at this point that AOIR is not helping the e waste  
problem by encouraging the latest and greatest e stuff that will  
become the e waste of next week.

Free geek may have your answer www.freegeek.org

I have been a teaching assistant for some professors who used mostly  
electronic mark recording sheets and others who use paper copies. The  
paper copies were used for security reasons and the professor who did  
this had used computers for years.... Well she kept electronic  
records but on a non-networked computer.

Asking yourself, "What is the carbon footprint?" or like questions,  
seems like doing yoga mediation and trying to connect the different  
methods with the rest of the universe.


Sorry I could not be more helpful but the question really needs to be  
asked.

On 4-Sep-08, at 6:52 PM, Charles Ess wrote:

> Hi all,
> a colleague who is responsible for sustainability initiatives on  
> our campus
> has asked me if I knew anything about the following:
>
> a careful, quantitatively oriented analysis of the comparative  
> costs - both
> direct (e.g., consumption of electricity, toner, etc.) and indirect  
> (costs
> of manufacturing and distributing paper, computers, monitors, etc.)  
> - of
> a) paper-based techniques in teaching and learning - e.g., 5-page lab
> reports in a composition book turned in weekly, to be read, hand- 
> marked by
> the instructor, and then returned to the students,
> vis-à-vis
> b) comparable (at least roughly) paperless techniques - e.g.,  
> written work
> produced and turned in electronically, graded and commented  
> electronically,
> and then returned to the students electronically?
>
> I know that the advent of the paperless office has been heralded  
> for at
> least three, going on four decades, coupled with the proclamation  
> of the
> imminent death of the book, etc. - and that for many good reasons  
> (besides,
> in my case, sheer curmudgeonly Ludditism), paper and books retain  
> their
> unique places and roles in learning (and elsewhere).  So I, for  
> one, would
> argue strenuously for the ongoing importance of what Naomi Baron so  
> nicely
> encapsulates in her recent book _Always On: Language in an Online  
> and Mobile
> World_ (Oxford U.P.) under the heading of written culture (thanks,  
> Naomi!),
> even if paper and books might be comparatively more expensive from a
> material and environmental standpoint.
>
> But however one views these matters pedagogically, etc. - the  
> question is a
> good one: does anyone know what the comparative costs really are?
>
> Many thanks in advance for any pointers listmembers can provide!
>
> - charles ess
>
> PS: I'm using ch. 9, "Gresham's Ghost: Challenges to a Written  
> Culture" in
> my Freshman class to introduce them to my arcane insistence on their
> developing their own commonplace book - and thereby as an introit  
> to further
> work in Plato's Phaedrus as a way of helping us develop a framework  
> for
> thinking through the relationships between our technologies of  
> communication
> and our conceptions of our selves, our relationships to larger  
> communities,
> etc.  I recommend the chapter - and the book at large - heartily!
> - c.
>
>
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