Im pleased to be able to say that the iPad is bringing the paper-less classroom revolution closer to the classroom day by day - at long last!However, as much as schools can see the benefits of moving towards a paper-less classroom and indeed the benefits including no more broken printers to fix, having to log errors in the ICT book, needing to call in ICT technical support to fix printers, going over budget on printer cartridges and being reprimanded by the Headteacher :-(
..... the reality is, there will be times when we still need to use a printer!
For some schools teachers may request that students email themselves documents to print either in the print centre or at home. These schools are reporting that paper consumption has reduced considerably.
Once schools get underway in using their iPads effectively within and across the curriculum, inevitably one of the next questions will be, "Can I print some of the children's work?".
And the answer is "Yes you can!"
There is a great article on various printing solutions here from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning and I need say no more - just read it!
The Printing Apps mentioned in the article include the following, there is plenty to go at here if this is something you are keen to get sorted now:
Epson iPrint - free - for iPhone & iPad
Print Magic - for iPhone & iTouch
ACT Printer - for iPhone & iPad
Doc Printer - for any ios device
Air Sharing - for iPad
This article from PCWorld.com is also useful and may help you further in making your mind up.
Other Apps to consider include the following but Ive not been able to test all of them myself!
AirPrint Activator it's FREE and works really well.
AirPrint allows you to print from the new generation of Apple iPhones, iPad and iPod Touch to a printer shared over your personal WiFi network. You only need to run AirPrint Activator once. Once it's been turned on it will remain on even after a reboot.
Printopia - for iPad - allows you to 'print' digital pdf files to designated folders on the computer that it is installed on. Students can submit their coursework and assignments as PDF's.
However, be aware of some of the quirks, for example if you print a Pages or Keynote document (from iPad) with an embedded video in it, the printed doc will only display a video poster frame for the video part.
A great tip I came across was to install Printopia onto any old Macbooks which you may have lying around, too old to be of any real use for anything else. It costs about £13 and it makes use of a redundant laptop. Simply add the printers you want to print to into the printer list on the Macbook running Printopia and that makes them available to an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch on the same subnet as the machine with Printopia.
Printer pro - for iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment