...our school is gradually moving more deeply into using Black Board (a
web-based course system) to support regular courses, hence more of my
peers and I are struggling with the effort of putting traditional paper
materials online rapidly. Black Board has individual password
protected access so we're not immediately worried about the issue of
open web distribution of solutions, exams etc, though this is a clear
long term problem). We are trying to develop or recreate solutions for
quickly scanning documents into .pdf and posting them; something with a
photocopier-like hopper for loading and scanning problem set solutions.
My dept is motivated enough to purchase a station
(computer+peripherals) dedicated to this alone.
I've been looking at (fantastically expensive, much-too-high
resolution) scanners with sheet feeders. At the same time, I notice
that there are some similarly priced all-in-one
FAX/printer/low-volume-photocopier devices being marketed with the
hopper I want. I think FAX scan resolution exceeds my needs, and I
don't need high definition colour photo scanning. We could also use a
low-volume copier.
So my questions are: Does anyone have considerable experience getting
notes and HW solns from multiple faculty into .pdf format for
webposting? How do you do it? What do you think of a dedicated PC
with one of these all-in-one devices as a station for this purpose?
What all-in-one model/manufacturer do you recommend?
Dan M
Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
222SCIE BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave , Buffalo NY 14222 USA 716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu> <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu>