*NEWS*BUT MY PRINTER IS OUT OF INK……

[Anonymous]

But my printer is out of ink…
Pink
may be the new black if you believe my trendier students, but this is
the new “My dog ate my homework.”  Since most of us require assignments
to be typed, students often show up the morning a paper is due
lamenting their lack of ink or their broken inkjet.  I can’t usually
fault them either, since my crappy inkjet in my home office is always
out of ink too.  However, the number of students who still don’t think
to email papers to an instructor is remarkably large.  More
importantly, the number of teachers unwilling to accept papers
electronically is remarkably small.  All this means is that schools and
parents bear the cost of printing when electronic means exist to easily
exchange and view files.

Why do we make our students print out
papers?  I know I received countless papers back in high school and
college that my instructors had “bled all over, ” my mistakes happily
pointed out in red ink.  While there is some satisfaction in subjecting
my students to the same torture, this is the 21st century and there are
countless ways to electronically explain to my students how their
inability to write a complete sentence really does matter, even in a
technology class.  And no, this doesn’t mean printing out the paper
yourself and then writing comments.

Comments and feedback can
easily be entered through the editing tools built into all recent
incarnations of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.  Better yet, feedback
can be provided through email or just embedded in the electronic
document.  Even at pennies a page, the cost of printing documents adds
up quickly, especially if teachers happen to be using inkjets at their
desks.  Whether the cost is passed on to students or borne by the
school, environmental impact as well as the bottom line can be
controlled by leveraging the network infrastructure that you have
worked so hard to build.  Many student information systems and
standalone products like Edline also allow students to leave work in a
“digital dropbox”, enabling administrators to easily log electronic
communications (as required by recent court decisions) and providing an
efficient means for teachers to get feedback to students.

Not
only does a more modern approach save time and resources (for students
and teachers), but also means an end to excuses.  Even, “the Internet
is broken at my house” won’t cut it anymore.  I always make sure to
have a few extra cheap flash drives in my pockets for the
Internet-challenged.  This is a win-win, as long as we can all leave
some very old habits behind.

[Author]

April 23, 2007 at 11:59 AM