24
PRINT.IT
01732 759725
CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY
unstoppable passion to get them
firmly hooked at an early age.
7. Universal Design for Learning
The US is embracing Universal
Design for Learning (UDL), an
educational framework based on
research in the learning sciences,
including cognitive neuroscience,
that guides the development of
flexible learning environments
that can accommodate
individual learning differences.
In the UK, architects are not
allowed to design a public building
without wheelchair access or braille
on the lift buttons, so why are we
as a nation so slow to embrace
Universal Design in educational
software development?
I believe it is a question of
economies of scale. In the US,
state-wide purchasing of content is
making it cost-effective for major
publishers, such as Pearson, to
incorporate important features that
provide access for all students – e.g.
those who have English as a second
language and literacy difficulties.
What do we need to do in the UK?
Introduce purchasing frameworks
that demand that all developers
embrace Universal Design for
Learning.
[1.] Source: Business Insider -
.
businessinsider.com/gartner-pc-is-dying-
so-chromebook-sales-will-shoot-up-2014-
8#ixzz3ASHhoJX2
[2.] Quantifying the economic value of
Chromebooks for K-12 Educationhttp://static.
googleusercontent.com/external_content/
untrusted_dlcp/google.xfguo.org/en/us/
intl/en/chrome/assets/education/pdf/
IDC-WP-Quantifying.the.Economic.Value.
of.Chromebooks.for.K-12.Education-082012.
pdf
[3.] PISA is a league table which shows how
well 15 year olds performed in tests in reading,
science and maths.
understanding. Is there no chance
that schools will say ‘No, we need
to keep things paper-based’?
Bob Taswell:
“That argument is a
valid one, but the main factor I see is
that there is a huge amount of output
and lack of control of documentation
once you go down the paper route.
You have the distribution of the
paper to think of; the production of
the paper to think of. You have to
employ staff to generate the output.
Most secondary schools have a
central reprographics person who
is employed full-time or part-time
to produce a large amount of
paper-based output which then gets
distributed right the way throughout
the establishment and externally to
parents and other bodies. So, there
is the cost of production to look at.
But also, if you can harness content
electronically on a VLE, it is there,
it is not going to be deleted and the
ability of staff to get in, for example
to mark a test paper, is virtually
instantaneous. There are lots of
arguments about whether paper-
based is better, but at the end of the
day, the school will look at the control
of output and the way in which staff
can interact with it. The vast majority
of educational environments we work
with take the view that the electronic
route is the easiest and most
beneficial way to move forward.”
PrintIT:
Especially on the admin
side and communicating with
parents. It used to be usual
to receive loads of paper, now
everything is electronic and by
text message.
Bob Taswell:
“Absolutely. Schools
have vast management information
systems and the cost of those
systems is huge. They give you all
sorts of reporting capabilities and
monitoring capabilities, e-registration,
class registration, automatic text
messaging, automatic e-mailing. Of
course there are costs, but it’s all
about compliance with OFSTED and
compliance with best practice.”
PrintIT:
What are the challenges
presented by greater use of
printing from mobile devices?
Bob Taswell:
“If we look at the
way that people printed material in
the past, they had a desktop PC,
they had a laptop and they printed
to a printer queue that output the
material to a dedicated printer.
With the advent of mobile devices,
the printer queue is removed and
the tablet or mobile device doesn’t
use that queueing mechanism
in the main. So the ability of that
wireless device to connect to another
device, such as an MFD, is crucial.
If you have a wireless MFD using a
technology such as AirPrint you are
able to print, but that does not allow
you to track the print volume that is
done on that device. This is where
our software comes in, as it gives
you the ability to track prints from
Android and Apple mobile devices.
“We believe wireless printing is
crucial, especially now that some
schools are deploying a tablet per
pupil. If you have 1,000 pupils in a
school, you will have 1,000 tablets
that have the capability to print
without control. We can offer that
control.”
PrintIT:
Is the greater use of
tablets creating demand to have
printers back in the classroom?
Bob Taswell:
“No, I don’t believe
that to be the case. At the
moment, we are at the infancy,
the early stages of wide-based
tablet deployment and app-based
deployment. As this evolves, there
will inevitably be an increase in
demand for devices that can handle
such output. All of our devices are
able to support tablet and mobile
device printing at some level. We
can either have the generic AirPrint
capability on the machine itself or
we can deploy a software solution
that converts the tablet output to the
language on our devices. It’s really
only now that schools are harnessing
the application capabilities of
these devices, which will ultimately
determine whether paper-based
output will increase.”
