How to Control Student Printing in a High School Library

There are many options available for reducing printer costs.

When looking for ways to cut costs at your local high school, one method is to control the amount of printing done by students. Often times students will print information that isn't that prudent to their learning, which may result in the careless use of hundreds of reams of paper during the school year. To curtail this, there are several methods you can use to control student printing.

Instructions

1. Remove the colored ink cartridge from all the printers. Color cartridges are the most expensive replacement device in all printers, so completely removing them can save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars every year.

2. Require students to bring their own printer paper. More than likely they have a printer at home, and large 500-sheet sets of paper cost only a few dollars each. If students don't have paper on hand, they can't print documents they don't need.

3. Connect only one computer in a given room to the printer, instead of having the printer networked to all computers. This allows only one student at a time the ability to print, instead of an entire classroom (or library).

4. Talk to your network administrator about having print requests sent to the teacher in the room. If the printer is attached to the teacher's computer and a student needs to print a document, the print request is sent to the teacher for approval. Students most likely are not going to try and print information other than school-related documents when this is in effect.

References

• Visoracle: Reducing Printing Costs by 35 Percent