Every student has a laptop in school but how do we setup printers

[spacevortex]

Every student has a laptop in school but how do we setup printers.

Here is a dilemma that is facing us....

Students of 6th form and Year 11’s and 10’s are being issued with a laptop each (windows 7)
6th form will be taking their laptops off site and home, and as yet we’ve not decided what level of access they will have but it won’t be as restrictive as the years 11s and 10s.
The dilemma were facing is the printing, as student will be moving around the school, how can we overcome the problems of students printing to different printers.
What we want to avoid is this:
English students’ print to English printer, but some students have forgotten to select the correct printer. Now maths printer receives some of the English students work.
Some English students don’t seem to be getting any work on the English printer so they keep resending, not thinking to check the settings to see what the default printer is set at.

What we need to have is a way that students don’t make the above mistake
Toner is charged to the departments, so maths won’t want to be picking up the cost for English etc....

We have several ideas but all of them need exploring for possible flaws, and welcome any advice.

Option 1:
Buy a network photo copier for each year group and place these around the school, each student will have a print code. This is something we already do with staff...
Pros: we have tabs on printing, and only one printer would have to be mapped per year group..
Cons: which departments will pick up the cost of printing, paper and leasing of photocopier? Students may be leaving lessons to collect work from photocopiers, queues may develop as students input their print codes at the photocopier.
Option 2:
Internet printing is being investigated by my senior techie tomorrow; neither of us have explored this before.


Option 3: The reason behind me making this post, since i saw this as a possibility to our problem, and its been welcomed by my systems manager as a possibility.

Solution Example
Student with laptop goes to lesson, Maths with Mr T period 1.
Student needs to print out graphs so they send to printer in classroom; laptop tells them no printer driver installed, not active, no permissions, choose printer etc... Whatever warning is required.
Student realizes that they now need to access the GUI interface for printing which is found on the desktop of the laptop.

GUI Interface
The gui interface is designed with the option of typing in the printer code and clicking connect.
The interface loads the script which maps the printer as the default printer, the student can then print.
The script only remains active for 10 minutes and then if its need again the code has to be entered again.
After 10 minutes it disconnects the printer.

Gui interface backend
Backend script could be configurable to allow time out adjustment and change of printer codes and adding and taking away printers.
Interface would be compiled into exe, flash app or of similar with script embedded, or in the case of year 10 and 11 it would not be accessible.

How do students get the code?
The code will be displayed on the front of the printer and on lament A4 landscape in the classrooms.

How easy will it be for students to input the wrong code?
Rather than use TC-Print01 and then 02, or other forms of distinguishing that makes it slightly easy for students to remember. The code can be irregular so that students will be forced to look at the printer room code on the wall.
An example would be:
TC-mathsprint01 would be inputted as - 35927
TC-mathsprint02 would be inputted as - 196874
Tcmathsprint03 would be inputted as - 769252
Cons: The flaw would be that students might just copy and paste the codes to a desktop document, and rather than look up at the code on the wall will just copy and paste from desktop. But i would guess this would be less likely to happen if the codes are fairly short... it’s easier looking up and typing 3, 4 or possibly 5 digits.

Student moves to another classroom and needs to print?
A student leaves maths and goes to Music, the chances are from leaving one room to the next and getting around to printing the 10 minutes will of expires and the code will have to be input in again.
Since we are in a new room the student does not have access to the previous code and therefore sees the new code on the wall and enters this.
This now maps the printer in music.



The final question i got asked about option 3 was, how long would it take someone to create the script and what would the cost me..........? so if anyone wants to answer that or offer there services great.......

[bossman]

Invest in a good print management system which will allow you to set a credits system and also for the printing to be monitored and the costs can be divided by the subject quotas and how much printing they have done.

This will stop you having to stop students printing from whichever printer as the print management system will send to the appropriate printer and the costs bourne by the subjects will be worked out automatically.

I am sure if you engage with a good print management software company they will be able to help you set it up and train your relevent technical staff on the use and management of it.

Try not to make things too complicated with scripts and things as this is when it all goes to pot and you end up chasing your tail.

Good luck with your decision

[mavhc]

Set the default printer to be PDF printer or similar, so you're forced to pick a printer every time

Or see which wifi AP they're connected to and reset the default as they move around the school.

[spacevortex]

[QUOTE=bossman;852933]This will stop you having to stop students printing from whichever printer as the print management system will send to the appropriate printer and the costs bourne by the subjects will be worked out automatically.
QUOTE]

we have the p credit system in impero so we still need to look at that....
just trying to get my head around how this might work, will it stop students from printing to another classroom during lessons.
the big issue is making sure they choose the correct printer for the subject or room they are in at the time of the period...

thanks for advice, i will look into it......

[spacevortex]

Set the default printer to be PDF printer or similar, so you're forced to pick a printer every time

Or see which wifi AP they're connected to and reset the default as they move around the school.

looked at the no mapping of any printers and having the dafualt as you say, the problem is and this is from a trial with a static classroom.... students will pick the wrong printer, even odd teachers make that mistake.....

The AP was also an idea, but without further investigation, on the surface there seemed to be a flaw that they might not all be connected to the same AP. (Bluesocket APs) on one campus and (aruba Aps on another)

my senior techie has come across this.....
EveryonePrint for Education/Overview and Feature Tour

[tmcd35]

We use Papercut NG here. Although we don't have your problem (yet), I'd use the webprint facility (they upload the document to a webpage to print it) and set up print release stations. This means you don't need to set drivers up on student laptops and they have to physically go to the printer and release the document before it prints. I'd also see print credits as a necessity in this environment.

[Chris_]

Like what others have said, use a decent print management system (we use PaperCut NG), and set something up like follow-me printing (Tour - Find Me Printing - PaperCut ).

Users will print to a virtual print queue then the print job can be released from whichever printer they are nearest to. I believe this can work better with PaperCut MF when embedded on photocopiers to avoid the need for seperate print release stations by each printer.

[spacevortex]

My senior techie managed to resolve our problem by the following:

Getting students to install the printer drivers, by accessing them from the web printing list.... once they select the printers they require for the subject they can install the drivers themselves.
that covers geting the printer drivers installed, so no waiting around for gpo deployment as the user is making the choice of installing the driver when they have the laptop turned on.


every users laptop will have a null printer set as default.

when they come to print they choose the printer for the room there in and can print.
in gpo a schedule will run which will disconnect the printers and make them default to null printer at the end of every period. or even during periods depending how many schedules we set to disconnect....
to be able to print again they will need to select the printer if the schedule has disconnected the printer.
null printer goes no where it drops it in a printer queue and then deletes it.

it all seems to work very well in testing, its just now a matter of fine tuning the amount of disconnects in a period, some form of notification to the user that the printer has defaulted to a null printer and that they need to select a printer.

[twin--turbo]

I can see you life becoming a nightmare....

Are you restricting what software they can install on these devices?



BTW, we use Pcounter with toshiba MFD's and it works realy well ( perhaps too well as it makes it very easy to print anywhere ) with our rfid badges.

Rob

[SimpleSi]

Or see which wifi AP they're connected to and reset the default as they move around the school.

Have you got a short script to detect which AP a laptop is connected to?

Si

[ricki]

HI

I would give then a central printer in school in the reporgraphics room or office and get them to use a photocopier or a group of the same printers and enable print pooling and get them to pay the member of staff on duty. Its cheap and chearfuly and you will get waste if you dont use a photocopier with secure print enabled. But with secure print enabled the member of staff will only allow the ones to print when students go to collect and you can set the photocopier to delete any left in the que more than a specific lenght of time.

Richard

[ricki]

Sorry I forgot

There is also something called location aware printing Location-aware printing - Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows

I have never used this and its normally used with different networks.

Richard

[robyholmes]

How about getting the MAC address of the WAP the laptop is connected too? Then match that MAC to a room and set the correct printer?
Here is a example script to get the MAC, can't confirm it works however
Access Point MAC Adderss

[spacevortex]

(twin--turbo) yes we will be using GPO to restrict year 10's and 11's as there laptops stay in school. 6th form were still in discusions regarding what the school wants... we then highlight what possible security threats or problems to the network.... as long as the school understands we then comply to there requirements.... we used to not allow staff to install software to laptops, now we do, it may be a case of using that restricted policy a kinda (power user access or something... still thinking about it at the moment)


(Riki) the photocoping and securing printing was the only real viable option to our problems initally, but it seems other suggestions have come along, and we have settled with the null printer as default printer. this is working really well it just needs some tweaks. so no expense of buying or leasing any more photocopiers, faculties /departments cover the cost of toner. the only real over head is to the technician replacing toner or fixing printer issues liked jammed paper etc.....

(robyholmes) i like that and may also look at that, though our problem is now covered with the null printer option as mentioned in one of my above responses. the only problem with it is that it still replies on the student selecting the correct printer for the room, but at least they wont be pressing print and not checking which printer, here there forced to choose the printer.