I am just wondering how many of you originally had printers in your classrooms and then they were removed and all printing and copies were to be done with just a few printers in the building. I'd also like to know how you dealt with it logistically. I have been fighting on our technology committee to keep printers in the classrooms, since teachers cannot just leave the room "whenever" to get copies of printed items. There are teacher assistants in some of the classrooms, but not in 5th-8th.
Any advice would be most welcome. I am very angry about this because the needs of the teachers are being ignored again. It's a private parochial school.
We have never had printers in our classrooms unless we purchased them. You will get used to planning ahead. I often will grab something off the copier when we take a group bathroom break.
In my school, if there are printers in the classroom that is because the teacher purchased it and pays for the ink.
We have ONE printer/copier we can use. It is located in the office. Do you know how often I print things, walk to the office, and find my copies missing? Every day! It’s a frustrating problem.
This started to be a thing two years before I retired. As printers “aged out”, they weren’t replaced. My P came to me and asked if she could switch mine with another one. I warily said yes....but it never happened. I still had it when I retired.
The theory was, the ink cartridges were to expensive, and we could send whatever we wanted to print electronically to big machines in work room.
Which defies logic. Sometimes I would need to print a quick note to a parent, or something the class or a student needed. Some things I wanted copied, not printed from an online source. Then you had to send someone to the office to get it.
If I were still working and it went away, I would definitely have bought one for myself and put a big “hands off...personal property” sign on it.
This is my 17th year teaching and I've never had a printer in the classroom nor do I have a classroom aide so can't print something off. I have a colleague who bought his own and pays for the ink.
I guess.....I'm worried this will sound rude but don't intend it to be....I guess I've just never had something come up where I've needed to just "print off" a copy of something. I know we all plan ahead and I always make a few extra copies of stuff because I don't have the option to print it off in my room. If something comes up where I (spur of the moment) need an extra copy of something and I don't have it, I do without. I should say that for the last three years I've been at a school where we have one-to-one devices so a lot of the paper pencil stuff has been replaced with electronic options.
District purchased printers went away years ago. We all print to central copy machines. We are allowed to purchase them with our own money though. The only time I use my personal printer is when I just want to print out an email or something like that. It's not a big deal for me to walk to the copier.
Most teachers used their teacher choice to purchase a printer and the ink. I was lucky to be in the tech room when the tech teacher had an extra old printer with no where to put it. I happily volunteered my room and let my colleagues know they could use it. It’s a life savor. I am usually a month planned a head but so many things come up. It’s also nice for my students while they are working on projects. I do have a personal printer in my room for color copies and for making copies
We do not, nor ever had, printers in our classrooms. Our entire K-12 school uses 1 printer/copy machine that is located in a small supply room. The SPED teacher has a printer because of confidentiality and the office secretary has a printer. When the big printer/copy machine breaks it is chaos. I've learned to copy major items at least 3 -4 days ahead of time.
My school has switched to 6 centrally located printers. It's a pain in the ....!!!!!
If all the teachers would place a "hold" on what they are sending it would be fine. However only one printer is programmed to hold jobs until you come to the printer. The other printers automatically print as soon as you hit the print button. The problem is that teachers must use their own paper purchased with instructional funds so many times there is no paper in the drawers. You come along with paper in hand to the printer to copy something. As soon as you place the little bit of paper you need in the drawer it automatically prints the copies someone else sent but couldn't print because the drawer was empty! One or two copies would be fine but a classroom set is not! I've tried to suspend the other jobs so I could print what I needed but that doesn't work. I've been tempted to delete the other jobs but I do remember how tough it is to be a classroom teacher and how precious their time is and how fortunate I am to volunteer and have a very flexible schedule.
We have not had printers in our classrooms for 7 years.
We all centrally print to the large copier. There are two on campus, for 70 teachers. You are assigned to a specific copier based on your grade level/location.
We have a code that we use to access our copy “box” so copies are held until we go print them. We also purchase the majority of our own copy paper, each teacher receives a case for the school year.
It was hard to get used to at first but no problems now that we are all used to it. You just have to be prepared!
We are not allowed to have our own printers and wouldn’t be able to connect them if we did bring one due to not having admin rights on the computers.
My district removed all teacher printers from our rooms about 8 years ago. We have three main copiers we have to use. I found a printer on clearance for 39.99. We can use our own printer if we pay for the ink. I only use it when necessary. It makes copies and I find that’s what I use it for the most.
We had printers years ago. Now we have to print down to the main copier in the main office. It is a long walk from my room. I wish I could have my own printer or at least one for the hallway.
We have classroom printers and a main copy machine in the teachers' workroom. Supposedly it is cheaper to have the ones in the classroom than for all of us to be using the main copier. We were constantly being fussed at for the number of copies we were making. (Private school- I think we lease the big one or something and the price increases with the number of copies used.) I had a personal one in my room before the school decided to provide us all with one. I liked mine better because it had black and color ink.
None of the three schools I've worked in have had printers in classrooms. I could see that being a huge benefit though, and if I had it I'd definitely want to keep it. We print to the copy machine- you have to swipe your card to login and then release what you printed. Thankfully my room is very close to the office where all of the copiers are. It would be a major PITA to be in one of the very far away rooms.
that was shared between 4 classrooms. A hassle because you had interruptions with kids and teachers coming and going. A gift because the printer was just across the hall. And of course the lazy ones that printed 30 worksheets because they never prepped.
The printers lasted a l-o-ng time. Found out that the manufacturer stopped making that model because the life span was long and never needed maintenance. As the printers began to die, we had to send our work to the copier in the workroom. It created quite the waiting line.
This year I’m at a school where things won’t print until you walk down and release them. It’s super nice! I can set something up to print and go make copies when necessary. I also know I won’t bother other people nor will they interrupt my copying.
We have a printer in our room, although do most printing on the central copiers. However, half the time I send something and it doesn't go through. Or it's jammed. I use my classroom printer mostly when I only need one thing printed or am doing labels. I can't imagine not having one.
This is my 25th year teaching and I've never had a printer in my classroom. At my building you only do if you bought it yourself and it's not really encouraged.
I'm surprised at the number of teachers who dont have classroom printers. In all my years of teaching (18 this year) I've had a classroom printer provided by the school. The school also provides the ink, color and black. This year all classrooms got a new laser jet to replace the old printers. We also have a big copier in the teacher workroom. Teacher have a copy limit for the big copier 5000 for the year. We are encouraged to use the risograph machine when we need more that 100 copies.
That would drive me insane not having my own printer! Luckily my district has a printer in every classroom in the 21 schools in the town I work in. I would be lost without it.
I had a printer in my classroom for the first couple of years I taught. They removed them because of ink costs. Then as department head I had them for a couple of years, so probably 4 years I had a printer in my classroom. I don’t miss it at all! I just send my things to the copier and pick them up when I can. Our copiers hold all of our print jobs until we release. I can release them from any copier in the district so if I’m on the other side of the building or at a different school, I can release a print job. I’ve done that several times when I needed to have papers at another building.
If teachers have a printer, it's one they purchased themselves, or it's an old one that's been well taken care of. Teachers buy their own cartridges, or they get one toner per year for old school property printers.
There is a central printing department, "pubs." We are to send print jobs there. There are big problems with getting things back on schedule and correctly done.
We're supposed to print to a central copy machine for emergencies. We can only pick those copies up during recess (unless we have duty) or lunch. There are no aides in the classrooms. Whenever that machine gets an update, our district-issued computers can no longer print to it. They need to be reconnected, but teachers cannot do it. That requires a work order and district IT to come out.
I've never had a printer in my classroom. I could buy one and provide my own ink, but nah.
At my school, teachers without classroom aides send kids to pick up emergency print jobs. We also have a FT workroom aide. Teachers without an aide can leave things with her to be copied, stapled, bound, laminated, etc.
We had all printers removed from classrooms and replaced with centrally located printers/copy machines. It was a bit of an adjustment but not too bad. We got in the habit of printing on the way to or on the way back from lunch. I founding easiest to make copies before or after school and that I became better organized.
At our school we have an "office" between our rooms and we have a printer in there that 2 teachers share.
We also have 2 copiers upstairs in our staff room which we can send our things up to. Every teacher has a number in order to get what you sent up to print. That is so helpful as you don't have to worry about other teacher's material printing while you are printing your material.
I never had the pleasure of having a printer in my room. The price of ink kept me from buying my own. We were expected to take care of all our printing needs during our 3x/week prep. In a dire printing emergency, we would open the door between classes while making a dash to the copier.
and honestly I don't use it all the time. Hopefully I don't ever have to print anything last minute, but there have been times where it's come in handy. Most notably being when the main staff printers are jammed.
of responses and I thank each and every one of you for them.
It will definitely be an adjustment for the teachers in my school. I too, have taught both with and without a printer. It's definitely better with one, and it's been quite a while since I didn't have one.
All of this information is very helpful, because I will have some questions about how things will work logistically. I am on the technology committee and teachers will want answers to how this is going to work.
We all had printers in our classrooms and then they decided to move to one huge expensive overloaded copier in the main office. Now 41 classroom teachers are expected to use this one machine. It takes FOREVER and the stupid thing breaks down at least twice a week. We send things to the main copier from our classroom computers, truck all the way to the office and log in only to find out it was not sent down. I spend most of my early morning time at that stupid copier. If not, I have to go in on the weekends to get it done. That crazy machine has more buttons and functions on it that we never use. I just want it to copy and staple. To get it to do that it is literally five different buttons that need pushed. Oh, and if it is humid the machine jams and they have to call the tech man which means the copier is down all day.
every district I sub in required a teacher code to print what is sent to it, (to bill for paper to the teacher) they have several all-in-ones, but I noticed that in the settings that everything teachers were printing, were also sending a scanned copy to a "restricted file" I confirmed that the district monitored everything that was printed in the district. that's why they removed all local printers and went with a network system for printing.
just a thought, a church school may have a proactive plan in place to protect themselves from inappropriate materials being printed on school equipment, per insurance concerns by monitoring all printing.
We don’t have school purchased printers in any classrooms. We have 4 buildings on campus and 1 copier, which is located in the building with the office and specials. Every teacher has a code that must be used to copy/print but we don’t have limits. (We had a teacher last year whose count at the end of the year was over 125,000 copies!) I really don’t feel like it’s a big deal if you plan ahead. If I don’t have the copies then I don’t do whatever it is or I find another another way to use it (project it and kids write the answers down, Kahoot, Google Classroom etc).
Now, with that being said, if I wanted to purchase a personal printer and pay for the ink myself then I can get one for my classroom as we are allowed to connect it to WiFi. We only have 2-3 teachers who choose to do that.
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11-14-2019, 06:04 AM
