PRINT.IT
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CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY
support features, such as word
prediction and fact finder.
The freemium sales model is here
to stay and set to feature more and
more in the education sector.
2. BYOAD – Bring Your Own
‘Approved’ Device
BYOD, the practice of allowing
learners to use their own computers,
smartphones or other devices
for educational purposes, is here
to stay as schools and colleges
nationwide try to make the most of
their small educational budgets by
capitalising on consumer investment
in technology.
But BYOD as a concept presents
IT departments with some
significant challenges in terms of
security, network management
and controlling exactly what a user
does when in class. At Texthelp,
we have seen many schools and
colleges nationwide adopt a slightly
revised policy – BYOAD, bring your
own ‘approved’ device – such as a
Chromebook, Nexus Android tablet or
iPad. Often, the purchase price of the
device is subsidised by the school.
3. Plummeting hardware costs
– and why UK schools will be
slow to benefit
Hardware costs are set to plummet.
According to the analyst Gartner,
Chromebook sales will reach 14.4
million units by 2017, nearly tripling
the current market size. Part of the
reason for that growth is the slowing
of the PC market.
The Gartner report,
Quantifying
the economic value of Chromebooks
for K-12 Education
[2]
, reveals
that US schools that purchased
Chromebooks reduced the per-
device cost of ownership by $590
over three years compared with
alternative devices. This benefit was
seen before new Chromebook pricing
was introduced in May 2012, which
dropped monthly per-device costs for
hardware/software from $20.75 to
$13.30 and boosted the three-year
cost of ownership savings to $935.
So why are schools in the UK
so slow to benefit from similar
economies of scale? Because major
nationwide investment in WiFi is
required to utilise devices such as
Chromebooks, which are designed to
exam papers and curriculum-based
material and this side of things has
flourished, with schools now creating
quite a lot of published material,
pamphlets and parent information,
which has increased actual
throughput. This is why schools in
general look for some form of control
mechanism and some form of
managed service to go behind it.
“Schools in general tend to deploy
a small number of multifunction
devices that predominantly copy but
can also print and scan. Historically,
schools have also had a large number
of print devices – anything from 30 to
100 – that are expensive to run, are
distributed throughout the campus
and are not properly supported by
anybody. That raises many issues
that staff have to deal with, for
example replenishment of paper,
replenishment of toner etc. These are
the things that we are able to deal
with through automated software.”
PrintIT:
Presumably the greater
use of new software tools is
driving colour print to a great
extent.
Bob Taswell:
“It is. We think that
on average colour might represent
anything from 10% to 20% to 30%
of overall volume and that figure is
increasing.”
PrintIT:
When you go in with a
managed print offering, do you try
to reduce a school’s print volume
as you would in a corporate
environment?
Bob Taswell:
“The reduction in cost
is the main thing. The traditional
way of outputting volume would be
by an inkjet printer or a laser printer
that has no static running cost. You
buy consumables, you buy the toner
from a source and put the toner
into a machine. The average colour
output cost per A4 page can be
anything from 10p to 30p per page,
depending on the technology and the
type of device. So the first thing we
look at is the cost of production, the
cost of outputting colour as a given
page rate.”
David Harrison:
“The other strategy
is to recover cost and therefore to
recharge for the prints that are being
produced by students.”
Bob Taswell:
“Historically, schools
focus on curriculum activities and
they have a heavy requirement
for copying output. But in some
cases, they have an equally heavy
requirement for print, both mono
print and colour print, from all
electronic devices.”
PrintIT:
So charging is done in
secondary schools as well as
universities?
Bob Taswell:
“If you look at the
history of charging, MFDs have within
them a metering facility, a user
code facility that allows you to track
volumes taken against a specific code.
That code would then be passed to
the accounts/finance department
and the accounting would be done
after the the print had been produced.
Now, we put in place software that
will track and record all usage –
photocopying, printing and scanning
– so that tracked volume can be
recorded instantly and automatically.
As a result, small finance departments
can operate at the touch of a button,
rather than having to manually collate
information.
“We use and support a number
of packages, for example Equitrac,
Papecut MF and, in certain
circumstances, Pcounter. These
can integrate with biometric
authentication and have support
for a wide array of different devices,
as well as integration with other
technologies.”
PrintIT:
In business environments,
you would introduce rules-based
printing. Is this something that
education customers also make
use of?
Bob Taswell:
“Behind the software,
there is always the ability to refine
the output. For example, if a single
user or a group of users is printing
a large number of pages to a device
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