VIDEO:Teen to government - Change your typeface, save millions (+ Rebuttals)

[Ryan Goble]

From CNN's Head of the Class Blog...

(CNN) -- An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right?

Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed.

OK, so that may have been a first for you, but it came naturally to 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani when he was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money at his Pittsburgh-area middle school.

It all started as a science fair project. As a neophyte sixth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School, Suvir noticed he was getting a lot more handouts than he did in elementary school.

Full blog HERE.

This was followed by an excellent (and kind) rebuttal from The Atlantic "Can a Teen's Idea to Switch Fonts Save the Government $400 Million?" that would be brilliant to show students as it would help illustrate the complexities and additional variables needed do a more accurate study. Here are the highlights:

See also the following OTHER ways to save paper and money:

You can use something like Clean Print on your browser:

See also (from Good Magazine):

The website changethemargins.com is calling for printer owners everywhere to take the simple step of, well, changing their margins from the current luxurious standard 1.25 inches to a the more modest .75 inches. It may sound like a small change, but if everyone in the nation did it, we'd save a little less than a Rhode Island's worth of trees every year. Does tinkering with Word's cumbersome preferences scare the fonts right out of you? Another goal of the site is to petition Microsoft to change the default margins on all its Office products.Changing your margins in Microsoft Word:Go to "File," then "Page Setup."Once on "Page Setup," click the "Default" key, and you'll be offered "Do you want to change the default settings for the page set up? This change will affect all new documents based on the normal template."Set each margin to .75 and save an immense amount of paper.

See also:

Download @ http://www.rymaneco.co.uk


I think this story - and the related resources - are an excellent collection for developing inquiry and critical thinking across the curriculum. This article at Edutopia "Ten Takeaway Tips for Teaching Critical Thinking" is a nice set of brainstorming prompts to build around these resources.

My question to everyone here is: How would you use these diverse and conflicting resources to develop inquiry and critical thinking?

Please share your ideas below...