The Ozark City School Board’s foray into paperless oversight will be an interesting – and relatively inexpensive – experiment with emerging technology.
The school system recently spent about $2,300 on five electronic tablets for members of the school board, and will begin moving the information ordinarily shared on paper to an electronic format.
It’s difficult to argue with the potential for efficiency, and school officials, who envision a classroom filled with students who use the devices to access online textbooks and do their school work, expect this endeavor to lead the way.
Taxpayers should embrace the potential this approach has to determine unforeseen shortcomings before the school system spends exponentially more money on hundreds of electronic devices.
Riding the wave of the future requires more than possession of an electronic surfboard; it also takes a willingness to climb aboard. Even as long as e-mail has been around, there are still many people who will print out an electronic message so they can read it from paper and have a hard copy to save.
In the model of a paperless organization, that behavior would defeat the purpose.
We applaud Ozark school officials for their willingness to test the waters and school board members for taking on the role of guinea pigs.
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