How many schools have printers that can print textbooks?

[dhicks]

Hello All,

 

We've been looking at upgrading our leased photocopier / printer / scanner multi-function devices recently. We're looking at getting something that can print colour booklets on A4 paper then fold and saddle-stitch staple them into A4 size booklets (rather like the Big Issue). It struck me that that's pretty much a printing press-ina-box and that we could print our own 30-page A4 text books. How many other schools have something euqally capable, or are planning to get something similar? Is there a market for text books sold as PDFs and designed to be printed on site?

 

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David Hicks

[button_ripple]

Not entirely sure if this is what you want, but I would have a look at RISO.

[localzuk]

Pretty much all medium to large sized photocopiers have this option now - ie. Booklet maker and saddle stitch.

 

Also, 60 pages would be around maximum with such a machine, as the staples can't go through anything thicker (by 60 pages, I mean 15 sheets of A3 paper, each one containing 4 pages).

[dhicks]

Not entirely sure if this is what you want, but I would have a look at RISO.

 

Thanks, but this isn't a question about which bit of hardware to get, we've got that in hand. It just struck me yesterday, after looking at big printers and a thread on the TES site, that we would be perfectly capable of printing our own textbooks on site. Content could be provided as PDF, or even as editable Word, Indesign, etc, files that teachers could edit and change to suite their needs. No need for children to lug large textbooks around with them, and if a textbook gets lost or damaged then it's no big deal to print a few more off. I'm just wondering how many schools actually have one of these large printers around and what the size of the potential market might be for printable content, and if there's anyone offering content to be printed in this fashion.

 

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David Hicks

[localzuk]

Thanks, but this isn't a question about which bit of hardware to get, we've got that in hand. It just struck me yesterday, after looking at big printers and a thread on the TES site, that we would be perfectly capable of printing our own textbooks on site. Content could be provided as PDF, or even as editable Word, Indesign, etc, files that teachers could edit and change to suite their needs. No need for children to lug large textbooks around with them, and if a textbook gets lost or damaged then it's no big deal to print a few more off. I'm just wondering how many schools actually have one of these large printers around and what the size of the potential market might be for printable content, and if there's anyone offering content to be printed in this fashion.

 

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David Hicks

 

I believe there is such a movement going on in the USA for open source textbooks, or collaborative ones anyway. IIRC there was an article on Digg.com about it a few months back.

 

Also, this idea is used every day here by some of our teachers. They create termly 'workbooks' for their classes, and then each pupil works through them.

[dhicks]

Pretty much all medium to large sized photocopiers have this option now - ie. Booklet maker and saddle stitch.

 

Indeed, I'm trying to figure out how many schools have them. Hmm, I suddenly respect market researchers more than I used to.

 

Also, 60 pages would be around maximum with such a machine, as the staples can't go through anything thicker (by 60 pages, I mean 15 sheets of A3 paper, each one containing 4 pages).

 

Ah, wondered about that. That sounds pretty reasonable - 60 A4 pages of content should easily cover a half-term's worth of work, the idea is to make smaller textbooks that are no bother to haul around. Something like the old SMP Maths books strikes me as about the right size.

 

Do any publishers sell content as PDFs for printing in this manner, does anyone know?

 

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David Hicks

[ozzy]

We have a OCE' CS163 Océ CS163 Entry-level multifunctional color printer with an extensive array of options to match office customer needs that does prity much everything except make the tea, but it ain't cheap to run. Not my choice may I add but they liked the look of it (and I mean the astectics)

[localzuk]

Also, meant to say, remember to take colour copy costs into account. They can vary from 8p per sheet (a4) (so a double sided a3 can cost 32p) down to 3p (so 12p per a3 double sided).

[gibbo_ap]

We have a RISO HC3R-HC5500 which i hate! whilst it does meet your requirements and look cool (tis 6foot long, has a touch screen interface) the quality is poor and the touch screen is pooh (pressing yes to a popup 16 times as it doesnt work means it will press it on the 15th attempt and the and then the reset button is under this and you reset all of your settings)

 

i call it the 6ft long k9 faeces!

 

on a lighter note we have just signed a contract with infotec(ricoh) for our curriculum printers and the quality of them is excelent, and they are in essence photocopiers without the finishers attached.

 

Also, meant to say, remember to take colour copy costs into account. They can vary from 8p per sheet (a4) (so a double sided a3 can cost 32p) down to 3p (so 12p per a3 double sided).

 

the cost of our printers will be 0.0051 mono and 0.042 colour

Edited June 18, 2009 by gibbo_ap

[localzuk]

We have a RISO HC3R-HC5500 which i hate! whilst it does meet your requirements and look cool (tis 6foot long, has a touch screen interface) the quality is poor and the touch screen is pooh (pressing yes to a popup 16 times as it doesnt work means it will press it on the 15th attempt and the and then the reset button is under this and you reset all of your settings)

 

i call it the 6ft long k9 faeces!

 

on a lighter note we have just signed a contract with infotec(ricoh) for our curriculum printers and the quality of them is excelent, and they are in essence photocopiers without the finishers attached.

 

Can I just point out that the HC5500 is *not* a copier. It is a high speed, low cost duplicator. It is not supposed to be high quality, as it is aimed at producing cheap colour documents rather than magazine quality copies. This is reflected in click charges (2p per colour copy on a HC5500, see above for copier costs). The machine can do 120 pages per minute though...

[Fuzzz]

We use an Océ 2090, great machine. It does 85 ppm and can make A4 (out of A3) and A5 (out of A4) booklets. It is a monochrome machine...

 

It also has a lot of other functions like queueing copy-jobs, scanning, archiving etc.

It's pretty cheap to run, IF you use it alot (we do about 1 milion copies/prints per year on this machine for a school with 840 students... )

[dhicks]

Also, meant to say, remember to take colour copy costs into account. They can vary from 8p per sheet (a4) (so a double sided a3 can cost 32p) down to 3p (so 12p per a3 double sided).

 

So production costs are maybe around £5 for a 60-page A4 booklet. That's pretty reasonable.

 

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David Hicks

[localzuk]

Ok, more thoughts on this...

 

One of the advantages of traditional textbooks is that they last quite some time. 5 years is not unreasonable a life expectancy. If you're photocopying booklets, how long would you expect them to survive? I wouldn't expect such a booklet to survive a year. So, £5 for a booklet might not sound bad, but compare it to the price of a normal textbook, and the costs of having to replace damaged ones etc... and i think the textbooks become more realistically priced.

[pete]

We have a photocopier with the functionality that can/could be networked, but given that it's in near-constant use most of the day for photocopying duties, giving people the option to print to it may lead to blood on the walls.

[Cools]

It will spend more time broken then working.. and Tech support will be out on site 95% of the time..

 

well the one in the last school i worked for was.. lol..

[dhicks]

One of the advantages of traditional textbooks is that they last quite some time.

 

It's their disadvantage, too - content can't be updated. However, there's nothing to stop people printing on decent paper instead of standard A4 copier paper, and a decent cover made from 200gsm paper should go some way to making a booklet that will last a reasonable time.

 

We have a photocopier with the functionality that can/could be networked, but given that it's in near-constant use most of the day for photocopying duties, giving people the option to print to it may lead to blood on the walls.

 

That's just a logistics thing, though. Actually, that would be kind of the idea in print-your-own textbooks in the first place - decent up-to-date content that can be prepared ready for the coming half term, no need to supplement your textbooks with a wodge of extra photocopied sheets. What is it they're photocopying so much of, out of interest?

 

It will spend more time broken then working.. and Tech support will be out on site 95% of the time..

 

Get a printer / support contract that more appropriate to the volume of stuff being printed. Our current colour photocopier is stuggling somewhat under a workload it was never designed for, but a new device should be able to handle our current print volume easily.

 

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David Hicks

[localzuk]

It's their disadvantage, too - content can't be updated. However, there's nothing to stop people printing on decent paper instead of standard A4 copier paper, and a decent cover made from 200gsm paper should go some way to making a booklet that will last a reasonable time.

 

Not many copiers that I know of can fold card as heavy as that. And adding different types of paper, heavy card etc... will increase the price too.

[dhicks]

Not many copiers that I know of can fold card as heavy as that. And adding different types of paper, heavy card etc... will increase the price too.

 

How's about a dust cover type of arragement, with the first and last pages of the folded and stapled A4 booklet sliding in to the covers of a dust sleeve, like you get with hardback books? Anyone know where you can get such things from?

 

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David Hicks

[localzuk]

How's about a dust cover type of arragement, with the first and last pages of the folded and stapled A4 booklet sliding in to the covers of a dust sleeve, like you get with hardback books? Anyone know where you can get such things from?

 

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David Hicks

 

The person to ask on those would be your librarian.

[contink]

It's an interesting question but I think you'd be better off looking at whether it would be smarter to look at this as a slightly different opportunity.

 

The sort of document you're likely to get out of a copier is going to be thin, slightly scrappy and as a result highly likely to be treated in the same way that worksheets are invariably handled... ie: one use, chuck..

 

If you're going to get the kids to even stand a remote chance of respecting the materials you're going to need a pretty sturdy cover and back to protect it from being shoved in and out of bags, battered with PE kit and lord knows what else.

 

Why not consider something that will print, collate and staple but go a stage further and work out the cost, implications of purchasing the necessary binding equipment that will provide the sort of finished product that might get used.

 

I'll wager if you were to look at this as an opportunity for students and/or staff to earn a little extra part time cash during the holidays and term time you might find you could setup a little shop. Add to that, you could cast around to other schools and see if there's a market for the same materials with a modest profit margin.

 

Just a thought but I think there's a false economy potential here if you just consider the printed/stapled product on the same level and quality as a text book.

[pete]

Actually, that would be kind of the idea in print-your-own textbooks in the first place - decent up-to-date content that can be prepared ready for the coming half term, no need to supplement your textbooks with a wodge of extra photocopied sheets. What is it they're photocopying so much of, out of interest?

 

Honestly no idea - probably handouts for lessons being done by admin staff who run large batches at once. Photocopiers are not my domain and I like it that way.

 

Can I swap some of your teachers who plan things sufficiently in advance to be able to create textbooks with some of ours?

[enjay]

With online learning / device per pupil / VLEs increasing in both popularity and use, I wonder if you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of working out cheaper ways to print and bind textbooks, why not look at ways to digitise them? Take the new AQA Science course, for example - that comes with a "textbook on CD" application, ActiveBook or something like that.

 

Copyright issues will of course dictate/limit/prevent how this happens, but that's a separate topic.

[dhicks]

Why not consider something that will print, collate and staple but go a stage further and work out the cost, implications of purchasing the necessary binding equipment that will provide the sort of finished product that might get used.

 

Good idea. I reckon it should be perfectly possible to make a "bound" textbook via the method I suggested above - a basic cardboard sleeve that the first and last pages of a stapled booklet slide into, like a hardback book's dust jacket. A squirt of fixant or some peel-and-stick stuff on the inside of the covers might help make it a bit more permenant, too.

 

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David Hicks

[dhicks]

With online learning / device per pupil / VLEs increasing in both popularity and use, I wonder if you're coming at this from the wrong angle.

 

Actually, this whole conversation was from a thread over on the TES forums yesterday:

 

Doing away with textbooks one day? - ICT - TES Connect

 

The point made there was that printed text is easier for children to read, more convieniant than current computer technology. Yes, in some vaugly distant future I'm sure we will all have Minority Report-style interfaces built in to our eyeballs, but that's still a little way away. Print-on-demand textbooks seems to me like a reasonable bridge between the old-fashioned, fixed-size printed book and the bright, shiny future of all-pervasive, hands-free computer interfaces.

 

Take the new AQA Science course, for example - that comes with a "textbook on CD" application, ActiveBook or something like that.

 

Proper interactive content is based on open standards for integration with a VLE or similar system and is designed around sound educational prinicples, i.e. it uses interactivity and multimedia to enhance learning, not just because it impresses teachers/management/parents or momentarily distracts pupils from bisbehaving. Too much "interactive" content is still re-purposed print material shoe-horned into a web browser or some dodgy propriatory "player" system with some animations and quizzes added.

 

Copyright issues will of course dictate/limit/prevent how this happens, but that's a separate topic.

 

But it's a serious consideration. The photocopier sales people seemed surpised that no, really, we weren't simply going to scan and make multiple copies of our exisiting textbooks. Content either has a nice, clear, understandable set of useage rights with it or we don't use it.

 

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David Hicks

[p858snake]

With online learning / device per pupil / VLEs increasing in both popularity and use, I wonder if you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of working out cheaper ways to print and bind textbooks, why not look at ways to digitise them? Take the new AQA Science course, for example - that comes with a "textbook on CD" application, ActiveBook or something like that.

 

Copyright issues will of course dictate/limit/prevent how this happens, but that's a separate topic.

Because you would still end upo with students trying to print it on the lasers because they hate reading it on the screen like i do.