[K12OSN] Can printing be "controlled" in the school environment?

[Todd O'Bryan]

The problem with this is that a *lot* of print jobs in a school are 1-2
pages, so you end up increasing the amount of paper used by a great deal
just to deal with the deviants.

I like the idea of giving students a fixed number of pages at the
beginning of a semester (perhaps based on which classes they're taking)
and charging them a per page fee, based on actual costs of
paper/toner/etc., if they go over.

Todd

On Sat, 2007-05-26 at 14:57 -0400, Steven Santos wrote:
> I would start by adding job separator pages that include job details,
> including the user account, workstation printed from, printer the job was
> sent to, time, number of pages, and whatever other details you think you
> might need.  Then, when you get these abandoned jobs, you know exactly who
> to deal with.
> 
> At one local area high school, kids can print up to their quota, so long as
> they are not abusing it.  If they abuse it, there print jobs are then sent
> to a control queue, where a teacher must approve the job before it goes out
> to the printer.  They did this with Windows, but I am sure it could be
> hacked using CUPS.
> 
>   _____
> 
> Steven Santos
> Director, Simply Circus, Inc.
> Email: Steven at SimplyCircus.com
>  Mail: 14 Pierrepont Road
>        Newton, MA 02462
> Phone: 617-527-0667
>   Web: www.SimplyCircus.com <http://www.SimplyCircus.com>
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com]On
> > Behalf Of Rita Gibson
> > Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 10:24 AM
> > To: K12OSN
> > Subject: [K12OSN] Can printing be "controlled" in the school
> > environment?
> >
> >
> >
> > Are we the only school that has this problem, because we allow our kids
> > to have complete access to computers all over the building all the time?
> > I happened to substitute for the computer lab teacher last week just two
> > days of the week. I know of at least three reams of unclaimed printing
> > in the computer lab (we have two of the network printers in there) just
> > last week alone! Kids and teachers print things -- they don't want to
> > look through the pile, or to wait for their job to print, or really even
> > know where their job went because they didn't pay any attention, and so
> > they print it again... and again... Our school doesn't have grades per
> > se, they use portfolios to demonstrate kids' learning. This is high
> > season for completing portfolio work and every year at this time, I am
> > reminded of this print problem of trying to control printing.
> >
> > http://www.pykota.com/
> >
> > Have you ever used this software? Or know of some kind of control
> > software? I looked at this Pykota website a few years ago, but we were
> > resolving so many other issues that I never looked at it again. Now that
> > it is on my mind again, I need to look at it a little more.
> >
> > Uncontrolled printing may be a problem whose time has come to solve. I'd
> > love a software that popped up a message to the user that said "I'm
> > sorry, but you sent this job to the XYZ printer three minutes ago, are
> > you sure you want to print it again?" or "I'm sorry, but you sent this
> > job to the XYZ printer three minutes ago, there are four jobs printing
> > to that printer ahead of your job, it will be approximately three
> > minutes before your job will finish, would you like to send this job to
> > an alternate printer, or wait for this job to print at XYX printer?" Or,
> > "I'm sorry but you have met your print quota for the day, you must ask a
> > printer administrator to give you a Exception Key key in order to print
> > any more pages today." Maybe that's too extreme, however, what I saw
> > last week was pretty wild with paper all over the floor and on the
> > tables around the printers, stacks of unclaimed print jobs on the
> > printer, the network printer in the hallway upstairs was the same, and
> > sometimes worse. (OMG!, or however the kids would say it.)
> >
> > --
> > Rita Gibson
> > Tech Support
> > School:  (303) 759-2076
> > Cell:  (720) 935-4437
> >
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> >
> >
> 
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