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As usual, Netters, I am indebted to you all for the valuable information. I will pass it along to our tech coordinator. I also had several requests share the responses, which are listed below. Judy Brown K-12 Librarian Caldwell Schools Caldwell, OH 43724 jbrown@caldwell.k12.oh.us ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ http://papercut.biz/ we use papercut vey effectively Students have a limit and get 50 sheets of paper a term - then they have to buy it at 10c a page in $1, $3 or $5 lots. Most have not reached this limit this year. (we are just at the start of term 2 in Australia.) Also it comes with a download limit monitor. We have it set at 40MB - this is for a week and is reset every monday. We find if students are working on school work they don't exceed this. If they are downloading music video etc they do. Works very well for us **************************************************************************************************** We charge for printing anything from the internet (even if they copy and paste it into word) - $.025/page for color and $0.10/page for B & W. Our students know this and so expect to pay - we do a little bit of chasing down, but not very much. We do allow them to print one copy of their own work for free. If you are instituting a policy like this, I'd put the printer behind a desk and hold pages until students pay. You might also try to figure out how high a stack of paper was used each month (dozens? hundreds? of reams of paper) and have a school-wide contest to see how low you can go. I have to keep telling myself that it's not the money, it's the responsibility and waste reduction that we are enforcing. It gets to feel a little petty asking students for $0.20, and we do take the occasional IOU or pathetic plea. I think a software solution might be easier, but I think the real bottom line is to get students to think responsibly, and that might be more likely to happen if they need to think about cost each and every time they print. ******************************************************************************************** I keep the library printer (I've only got one) in the adjacent workroom and it is generally has no paper in it. That way I can control who prints, what is printed and how much paper is used. I intentionally keep a small supply of paper for student printing which they must request before they can print. Just having to request paper cuts down on use. **************************************************************************************************** At the K-8 school where I was for 10 years the computer teacher and I made it clear that we did not make copies or allow print outs. The students were expected to take notes. They also needed to be prepared with paper and pencil. We had to stop the office from allowing students to make copies. The only printing was for computer lab projects. **************************************************************************************************** For the last two years we've used the PCounter software. About 500 dollars to set up, which really isn't much. We set the price for a print job at 10 cents; then we gave each student a starting balance of 10.00 dollars. We found that the 9th graders needed 15.00 dollars because of their Careers class. We do have a few students that ran out of money in their account because they were printing lots of junk; which we can go in and see their print history. Shows the name of or the webpage printed from and the time. Others ran out of money legitimately, their print history showed that they ran out of money while only printing things for their classes, I bumped them a couple more dollars. I will probably go to 17 dollars next year for the 9th graders, we had a lot of students scrambling the last week of school because they ran out of money in their printer account. You can assign specific printers to the queue or not. Our keyboarding teacher decided not to have her printer included. I am the administrator to the program on the campus, so I can add money, clear the queue and when a new student is added to the system (which I do also) it automatically will add them to the PCounter lists, I just need to go in and give them money. It would be nice if it had a default. The only bad thing, every now and then we will have teachers in, they have their classes in or they are hanging out in the library/labs because they have a student teacher. We do have some in-services here too, anyway I need to go in and give them money too! I will probably just across the board give each teacher on our campus 100 dollars in their account; then I will only have to worry about teachers from other campuses, if they use the generic login, they will have access, if they use theirs they might not. Bottom line, I love it. It really has cut down on the hitting print method the students were using. Now, they use a copy paste and then print their notes or pictures when they have a page full. **************************************************************************************************** There are some solutions listed at http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/assetmng/ **************************************************************************************************** When in for a class, the first 2 pages are free. After that, 10 cents a page. **************************************************************************************************** We had this exact problem. We put the printer behind our counter, right next to where my technician sits and we charge 10 cents a page. It is amazing how just doing that cut down on the huge waste overnight. ******************************************************************************************************* The kids pay $.10/page but we do take our school's "currency" which they receive from teachers for a variety of reasons.. They can't print stuff that's not for school unless we approve it first (medical info for their mother= ok.. cute pictures= not ok). The way we enforce this is actually very simple--we explain we can't afford the ink: Here's our budget for supplies; here's how much the print cartridge costs (but if they'd like to supply an ink cartridge--very expensive--they can print all they want.. Alas, no one has taken us up on this offer yet). They seem to understand this. (I asked a follow-up question about the school currency - and this was the reply) Nah.. our school currency is basically photocopied onto colored paper--6 to a page or something like that - then cut apart. They're called Bronco Bucks but they're only worth a dime each. They can trade these in for snacks after school. Hopefully next year they'll be able to trade them in for more durable stuff-- cool pencils, erasers, wristbands, etc. Teachers can give them out for anything they want e.g., turning in homework, great behavior, winning at some classroom game etc. I decided to take them because sometimes kids really NEED to print but are broke--and I very, very rarely accept IOU's for printing.... This way at least they're forced to make a decision over how important the printing is to them. I also took Bronco Bucks for fines at the end of the year -- but NOT for lost books. Next year there will be a limit on the amount they can apply to fines as we took in something like $150 total in those little pieces of paper but at least they had a way to pay those fines before the school year ended. **************************************************************************************************** I have two media centers on one campus. I have one color printer for each library. The cost is 10¢ for black and white copies and 25¢ for color copies. I posted these signs on the printers when I came to this school in the fall of 1999. The students adhere to it most of the time. If they want free copies there are several black and white laser printers throughout the school they can print to without cost. The most used black and white laser printers are the ones in the computer labs. You will have to make sure the teachers and students know your new policy. Some teachers will balk...keep reminding them. Cartridges are expensive....ours are about $200 per cartridge and each printer needs four of them. Sometimes we still have page upon page of unnecessary printing but we usually find out who it is and solve the problem. Many times the children did not know they were printing that much. They only wanted one picture but the whole article printed. We teach our students to "copy and paste" or "drag and drop" into word. By doing this students can get several pictures on one page and therefore only have to pay 25¢ instead of $1.00 for four pictures. **************************************************************************************************** We request that students ask the teacher's permission before they print; the teachers and I teach the students to pay attention to how many pages they are printing. We found that they don't realize that they may be printing way too much from a site and need to know how to print only the pages they need. Teaching seems better than imposing a fine. Can't teach everyone this skill? Have some eco aware students make a quick video on how students can monitor their printing and help save paper. **************************************************************************************************** I am at a public 9-12 high school. All computers in the Library print to one large laser printer behind the circulation desk. At orientation, we tell the students that printing costs 5 cents per page and they are to see one of the Library staff before they print - there are also signs on each computer monitor reminding students that it costs 5 cents per page to print. We have only 2 computers connected to a color printer (which is not the default printer) and remind students that they must tell us if they want to print in color because they must use a special computer for that - it costs 25 cents per page for color. I have also added the computer name as part of the address that prints out on each page from the internet so we know which student/computer sent the print job, just in case they want to pretend they did not press print. We have very few problems. **************************************************************************************************** My first year at Lancaster High School we went through 15,000 sheets a month. I was beside myself because I grew up with a mother that continually said wast not want not. When I approached the principle that first year he was not interested in doing anything (it might be bad PR to charge a nickle). By the end of the second year we were in financial crisis and could not afford to buy more paper. Here are somethings we did before instituting a charge. We moved the printers behind the desk so that students had to ask for what they printed. Staff could monitor what was being printed. I also instituted putting your name on what was printed. No direct prints off a web page it had to be copied/pasted. The biggest impact was made when we began charging. The rule was you paid for what was printed. Of course this was a high school. I am now working in a k-12 now and the first thing I did was put the printer behind the desk so staff could monitor what was being printed. They already charged in the secondary. But the elementary is print happy. I am going to deal with it next year. I am always amazed how for a printless society promised we seem to be going through a lot of paper. **************************************************************************************************** We began using PCounter as a print monitor a couple of years ago. It creates printing charge accounts for all users on selected network printers. We give each student and teacher a $10 credit and printing costs $0.10 per page so everyone can print 100 pages free. When a student prints it pops up a window telling them how many pages they are printing, which printer is being used, what their account balance is, and how much they will be charged. Users have to enter their network password to confirm the print job. The year prior to its introduction we printed well over 100,000 pages, much of it going into the recycle box. The first year we had it, printing was down almost 60%. It has been creeping up since then but that is due to heavier lab use and more teachers requiring word processed assignments. The software has performed flawlessly. The few problems we have had have been related to our server maintenance, or lack of maintenance (a long sad story). The pop-up window lets kids keep track of how much printing they are doing and it also confirms for them that the print job has been sent so we get very few multiple printouts. The amount of waste has been drastically cut. We keep a small recycle box near the printers for waste paper and we used to have to empty it every 2 weeks or so. This year we only emptied it once. There are some other nice features, like the ability to shutdown one or all of the printers. You can also charge varying amounts for different printers (e.g. our color printer costs $.25 per page). You can also redirect jobs from one printer to another automatically. It keeps a detailed usage log for each printer and each user. When a kid runs out of money I can look at all of his printing and see if it is school work or personal stuff. A kid this past year got a hold of a teacher password and printed 100 pages of another teacher's picture and I was able to trace the job to the workstation and the exact time of the print job. He printed before first period and I knew who it was before the bell rang. I met him at his first period class and put the fear of God in him (and charged him $10 and referred him to the vice-principal). It cost $500 per server regardless of how many printers you have. Set up was relatively easy. Most of the install is done from one station to the server. For the pop-up window a small program is added to the start-up folder on each workstation. It has paid for itself many times over. I highly recommend it. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. 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