In the tough economic times we face today saving money is important. When saving money can save us time and natural resources as well, there is that much more of a reason for change. At SRJC, our teachers have a mostly untapped resource that can accomplish these tasks: the class website.

Some teachers use this tool effectively, placing syllabi and other documents on the site, using it to share links to class materials or to allow students access to their grades. However, this adoption of new technology is not uniform among the faculty, costing the school money, wasting student and teacher time and consuming vast amounts of paper.

Look at the typical class syllabus as an example. A teacher with a four-page syllabus and three classes of approximately 30 students each will have to print 60 pages per class. This assumes that the teacher prints double-sided documents and only makes enough for a full class. How many classes are more than full on the first day? How many classes have wait lists? How many people cannot register but still want in? The maximum class size is the minimum number of syllabi a teacher can print.

Each page a teacher prints costs money. Each page is an expended resource. The teacher must also spend their time having the pages printed, collated and stapled. All this work, all this energy, all this money put into producing papers that if lucky, will see students through to the end of the semester. Most likely they will be lost, mutilated or doodled into uselessness.

By posting digital copies of these documents teachers can save the school money and time while reducing waste. This will also reduce excuses. If students can find the lesson plans online they have no excuse for not knowing when an assignment is due.

There are those who will argue that not every student has access to a computer. However, we have libraries on both the Santa Rosa and Petaluma campuses filled with computers. This is in addition to the laptops available to borrow from the circulation desk and the computer labs scattered across campus. Each one of us can find a computer to use at school. If we must have a copy of a handout we can print them, store them on a flash drive or put them on our iPod or other such gadget.

Each class comes with web space and the energy to run the computers is used whether the teacher creates a page for the class or not. Even if professors are unwilling to stray from the tried and true format of handouts, they should still make the digital copy available to students who want to move away from reliance on dead trees to store their information.

The space is there but maybe it is not used because navigation is difficult. Class websites are outdated, ugly and annoying to navigate. What we need to do to make the information readily available to students is overhaul myCubby.

myCubby knows what classes I am taking. If class info and assignment lists are available online, why not have myCubby pull up the info when I log in. I can click my Math class and see the assignments due next week. Did my English teacher want all papers double-spaced? Let me check the syllabus. Currently you have to dig through links and section numbers, bookmarks and search results to find the information. Imagine if you could just log in to myCubby and find a Facebook-like wall where your only friends are your classes and all they invite you to do is your homework.