A new sustainable future with the Papergon Learning System
It has always been a vision of Dulwich College to guide our students to Graduate Worldwise™ as responsible and sustainable global citizens. Unfortunately, our previous paper-based learning system has many eco-sustainability limitations, where more than 2.4 million sheets of A4 paper are being consumed annually alone merely for learning resources. In addition, paper materials are also extremely time-consuming to distribute and organise, burdening to carry, and limited in features. Thus, with the strong support from the Headmaster, the College have been heavily investing in a more transformative education system, which led to the creation of the Papergon Learning System.
What Is the Papergon Learning System?
Papergon is the portmanteau for Paper and Gone, proposed and established by Year 12 student Brandon Kong with Mr. O‘Connor. Within the Papergon Learning System, instead of having to work with the overwhelming supply of physical learning resources, students will be able to access and interact with all of their learning resources via a single light-weighted Papergon Digital Notebook (PDN). The Papergon Learning System (PLS) will be implemented across The College over the next 7 years, where it will be included as part of the standard education for Year 6 to 13. In order to suit the academic need of different year groups, the PLS will be divided into two programs, PLS 1 (for Year 6 to 9) and PLS 2 (for Year 10 to 13).
The Papergon Pilot Classroom
With the tremendous help of participating faculties, students, and parents from class 6S, we have pilot tested the Papergon Learning System over the course of this year. Within the Papergon Pilot Classroom, The College was able to examine the real-life impacts the Papergon Learning System has on students’ learning, inside and outside of the classroom.
We are proud to announce that the Papergon Pilot Classroom’s results were utterly incredible, where 100% of the participating students and faculty found the PLS more engaging and joyful than the traditional paper-based system and 96% of them experienced an increase in their productivity. In addition, through a range of memory testing activities, it was shown that the participating students on average has an approximately 20% increase in their memory retention rate when learning in PLS, by accessing the ample digital learning resources only available to their PDN. More importantly, by leveraging the digitized workflow of the PDN for distributing class materials, the Papergon Pilot Classroom was able to reduce its paper consumption to less than 5% of the original rate, a rate that The College aims to achieve for all year groups within PLS for a more sustainable future.
Timeline of implementation of the Papergon Learning System
The College will be making phased implementation of the Papergon Learning System over the next 7 years, starting with the upcoming Year 6 and 7 students in August 2020. Within the Papergon Learning System (PLS), students will be able to either bring in their BYOD devices (preferably an iPad with an Apple Pencil) to opt-in for the PLS 1 program or rent a school Papergon Digital Notebook from The College with a fee. It will be a requirement for all PLS students to have access to a Papergon Digital Notebook during their learning in school.
Interested in the Papergon Initiative?
If you are interested in finding out more about Papergon or the Papergon Learning System, please feel free to contact the Papergon Team at [email protected]. The Papergon public website will also be open in mid-July, at https://www.papergon.com/
