As artists and students, we are responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of trees each year. We bring insight and aesthetic beauty to the global community, but we kill the life-giving forests in the processes of inking our little drawings and writing our little essays. One might say we deserve some form of punishment. Perhaps we should have our color pencils thrown out? A flogging maybe? Is there no chance of redemption for the artistic student?!
Sure there is. We can't stop wasting paper until the government wises up and legalizes hemp, but we can cut the losses in half with one handy-dandy website:
TurnItIn.com is a web resource designed especially for educators who wish for a more efficient way to collect and keep track of student work. Teachers set up an account on the site and distribute their newly attained class ID and class password to their students. Next, students need to sign-up with their name and e-mail address. Once one is signed up, one can add that class to one's account (and any other classes they might have on the same account!). From there, students need only type up their work and upload it to the assignment folder; and teachers need only visit the site to review everyone's assignments. Simple!
While trees will still be forested for other purposes, the promotion of this assignment submission method will help in decreasing the demand for paper in the US. It's a definite start. Teachers will also find this method favorable because the site comes with built in plagiarism-detecting software (oh lala!) and will definitely make their desks look a lot neater. Students will love it because it means they have until midnight of the due date to complete and turn in their assignments.
Please help spread the word about this beneficial tool! Pitch the idea to all of your teachers, and hopefully we won't all go to Artists' Hell for squandering Mother Nature's resources.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The right to vote or equal civil rights may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts. It begins in [the] soul." -Emma Goldman
