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Re: on computers in the classroom



John Gastineau replied to my comments:

<The only problem that I see with that is the strain on the
<printing capability on campus if everybody in a large class decides
<to print a handout because it is still true that it is easier to read
<something on paper than it is on screen. We are still debating over
<that.
<<

My experience was that students tended to NOT print out handouts during class
because of the delay--they read it on screen. Some did print it out later, but
remember that printing a copy on a laser printer is typically no more
expensive that printing a xerox copy.

True, but a Xerox normally makes many copies of the same thing and is
very fast whereas a laser printer is normally printing one copy of
whatever it is tasked with, but it might do the same process many
times, starting from scratch each time, and it is usually much slower
than a Xerox, so the time used by students printing copies off the
web is usually greater in aggregate. The other problem is that it
shifts the cost from a central copying facility to the departments
that own the printers. The copying facility is usually set up to
handle this, and the departments are not, and of course the
maintenance costs of the printers must also be borne by the
departments.

These aren't insoluble problems, and some can be handled by creative
accounting procedures. I am happy to hear that you don't see a lot of
printing the web information. Shortly after we started putting things
like lab worksheets and homework assignments, we got some plaintive
cries from the math department (who owns a significant fraction of
the public printers on campus) that they were having a hard time
keeping up with the demands for paper and toner in their printers
because the physics students were printing their assignments on the
math printers. The situation has gotten a little better as more
public printers have come available, and also as the teachers using
e-mail for assignments have learned how to send e-mail to their
classes without using up the first three pages with the addresses of
all the students.

But for some things, a 5 or 10 page tutorial handout, for instance,
the students will, or should, want paper copies that they can
annotate and underline. I suspect that for these things, even though
it is a good idea to put them on the web, it will remain useful to
make copies for them to carry out of class.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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