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PRINT.IT
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www.binfo.co.uk
Education
As part of the Building Schools
for the Future programme,
Langley Park School for Boys
in Beckenham, Kent recently
moved into a brand new
building on the site of its old
sports field, providing its 200
staff and more than 1,700
pupils with the most up-to-date
facilities including high quality
printing, scanning and copying
facilities provided by office
solutions provider Direct Tec
based nearby in Westerham.
Leanne Dundee, the school’s
Digital Media Manager, said:
“The new building has a
completely different design and
internal layout from the old one,
so we wanted to reconfigure the
reprographics function in order
to reduce the burden of having a
central facility. Our plan involved
siting multifunction products
(MFPs) in strategic parts of the
building, so that access to them
for staff and pupils could be
increased.”
Direct Tec account manager
Richard Price recommended
nineteen 55ppm Toshiba
e-STUDIO colour MFPs configured
with booklet finishers and hole
punchers and integrated with
the PaperCut print management
solution. This allows school
administrators to track and
monitor printing, copying and
scanning by user, device or
department. The ability to
implement quotas and restrict
where and when mono, colour
and duplex printing can take
place has enabled the school to
achieve significant cost savings.
Price said: “By utilising an
embedded web browser feature,
PaperCut allows print jobs to be
activated from a hold/release
queue when the user is at any
available e-STUDIO MFP on the
network. This functionality can
lead to a paper reduction of up to
30% and also cuts the amount of
consumables – such as ink and
toner – that are used.”
The e-STUDIO MFPs form part
of Toshiba TEC’s Carbon Zero
scheme which fully offsets CO2
produced during the devices’
manufacture and supply. Carbon-
saving projects funded by the
scheme include the African
Energy Efficient Stove project,
which supplies domestic stoves
that cut the use of firewood by
more than half. Each cooker
typically avoids three tonnes of
CO2 emissions every year.
01932 580100
www.toshiba.co.uk/imaging
Continued...
time. If it’s submitted to a queue
only the latest one needs to be
printed,” he said.
There are many print
management solutions offering
authentication, reporting,
accounting, rules and pull
printing. One of the most
popular in the education sector
is PaperCut.
Surlis attributes its success
to its pricing policy. “PaperCut is
very strongly favoured at least
in part because the distributor
provides the NG product (print
tracking and control) at a
very low cost. We find it very
helpful when a school has used
it because we have a more
accurate baseline. If you don’t
know how many devices you
have, you won’t know what
they print. It’s a logical move to
upgrade from NG products to the
MF product.”
PaperCut MF provides more
sophisticated functionality
including swipecard authentica-
tion at a device, secure pull
printing and tracking and control
of off-the-glass activity (i.e. scan,
copy, fax).
Other benefits of PaperCut
mentioned by Altodigital account
manager Andy Hargreaves are
that it is priced per user rather
than per server, which is more
affordable for large schools
spread over multiple sites, and
that it offers new features for no
extra cost.
“PaperCut is unusual because
add-ons are available at no
additional cost. Now, as well as
controlling colour usage and
putting limits on printing activity,
you have the ability to do printing
from a smartphone or tablet at
no extra cost – with Equitrac and
Safecom you can do it, but it’s a
bolt on,” he said.
“Recently, PaperCut
introduced pull printing from
desktop printers via QR codes.
In the education sector there
is always a requirement for
single-function desktop printers
in addition to MFPs. In the past,
to integrate printers with an MFP
mobile pull printing solution,
you would have to have bought
an external control box costing
circa £1,000. As a result, many
organisations can only track
output from desktop printers and
have no control beyond applying
default mono and duplex. With
QR code functionality, any
teacher who has a smartphone
can send a print job to the pull
print queue as they normally
would and go to any desktop
printer and scan the QR code to
release it.”
Electronic workflows
Monitoring and controlling print
usage is not the only way to
reduce print costs. Another is to
implement electronic processes
that reduce the need to print in
the first place.
Most schools already use
electronic systems to automate
routine processes, notably
Microsoft Sharepoint and Capita
SIMS (School Information
Management System), which
is used by more than 22,000
schools in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland for school and
pupil administration.
In a survey of delegates at
conferences hosted by Capita
SIMS, 81% of respondents
said teachers had access to
management information systems
(MIS) in the classroom. Teachers
use MIS to take registration
electronically (94%); record and
track pupil assessment data
(83%); and record and monitor
behaviour (63%).
All print vendors have a
means of integrating their
machines with SIMS either
directly or through a third
party solution such as eCopy.
According to Bob Pickles, Director
of Public Sector Business
Development and Public Affairs
at Canon UK, the main benefit
of tighter integration is simpler
scanning processes.
“Schools have a particular
requirement to keep information
about pupils. SIMS is a widely
used system in schools in
England, Wales and Northern
Ireland that acts as a repository
of information. That is not
so much about printing as
scanning. For example, when a
parent sends in a letter saying
‘Johnny can’t attend’, it’s usually
saved into a pupil’s records
management system,” he said.
Scanning documents into an
electronic system has enormous
benefits for school efficiency.
It gives instant access to
documents, making it much easier
to process and share information,
and enables schools to maintain
complete electronic records
for each pupil and track their
progress throughout their school
career, even if they move school.
Another much used solution
– also supported by MFP vendors
– is Microsoft SharePoint, which
hooks into web services such as
the school intranet and virtual
learning environments. These give
schools the opportunity to reduce
print and postage costs by posting
important documents, school
Andy Hargreaves, Account Manager,
Altodigital
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