Heath Primary School, Heath, Derbyshire

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MPrint Project

[Background information and details of the project]

[Initial Feedback from Heath Primary School]

About the Learning

What was the activity and the key objectives?

There were two printers provided for use during this project and the school decided on two key objectives for their participation in this project.

The first concerned their use by pupils: the school has been using Asus minibooks with some pupils for about a year and thought the M-Print might enable the minibooks to be used more effectively out of the classroom to enhance learning across the curriculum. One of the printers was given to the Y6 class for their use.

It was decided to see if the second might be useful for staff use.

Activity

Actions taken

Initial information from Brother showed that drivers are available to enable the MPrinters to work with XP and Mobile Windows based machines but not with those having Linux operating systems. Staff discussed possible uses for the MPrinters in school and it was decided to deploy the larger, MW-260BT, in the Y6 classroom for pupils to use with their XP based Asus minibooks with the other being available for use by members of staff.

The Y6 pupils use their personal minibooks for a variety of cross curricular activities and it was decided to enable them to choose which of the school printers they preferred to use in a variety of activities. It was hoped that by empowering the pupils to make the choice it would enable them to show whether such printers would be beneficial in school and what their possible role may be in other classes.

The printer drivers were easily installed via CD on the teacher laptops with the driver information then copied onto a USB stick which enabled the drivers to be equally easily installed on the minibooks.

Impact

Evidence of Success

The printers proved very easy to use, automatically scaling A4 pages to the size of their output. All users quickly learnt to ensure larger enough font sizes were used to enable the output to easily be read - size 10 and smaller fonts scaled down were really too small to be easily read though they are clearly printed and decipherable. They worked well with all the programs normally printed from in school, including Textease CT Studio, Open Office, MS Office, etc.

All users preferred the A6 printout to the A7, usually because it was easier to read, this was especially true for pupils who have difficulty reading but for ease of use outside the classroom the smaller one may be better - it would depend on the purpose of the work being printed. For all participants, the main use of the MPrinters was with alpha-numeric work such as documents and spreadsheets.

The school has networked printers and these were still used in preference throughout the project time by all participants whilst working in school in easy reach of them - especially for work produced in different colours. The MPrinters proved most beneficial when working outside the classroom - they are so mobile, have excellent battery life and are very easy to use. It is felt that the real benefit of such technology in our school would be with during out the the classroom scenarios, in our new outdoor classroom and on visits where pupils are using moblie technology and the usual network facilities are not readily available.

During out of school INSET, the MPrint proved very useful when teachers were engaged on collaborative activities with staff from other schools. It is so easy to print out and share, collaborate and change then for all participants to have the finalised documents to take away with them.

Lessons Learnt

*Were there any critical interventions which affected the deployment of the printers in either a positive or negative way?

The main reasons for deploying the printers as we did was the availability of appropriate printer drivers. Their use with HP IPAQ PDAs was also considered and could have happened but it was thought the Y6 pupils would make better use of the opportunities and be able to give more relevant feedback on the benefits and drawbacks of their use for this project.

*What advice would you give to other Teachers thinking of using this type of printer?

The main advice for others considering using this type of printer would be think about just where you wish to use it. They would definitely be useful with non-networked workstations or away from the school. They enable additional opportunities for extending learning for the pupils concerned, can encourage collaborative activities, empowering all learners to share resources and output, etc.

*Were there any unexpected hidden costs in deploying these types of printer– whether financial, staffing, time or learner related.

The main hidden cost would be the time to install the printer drivers - but this was not any different to installing local printers on any workstation, so could easily be anticipated. They save time for learners - teachers and pupils - by enabling sharing of documents to occur quickly and easily especially away from school networked situations. They may prove invaluable as the use of outdoor educational opportunities are developed in primary schools, providing the on-cost of their use are not prohibitive in the current economic climate. It will be interesting to see if the cost of consumable resources for these machines decreases as their use develops.

Information about the school/setting

OFSTED inspected the school in December, 2007 and recognised that Heath Primary is in an average sized school in an area of particularly high deprivation. Although not immediately obvious to visitors, the school has a significant proportion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and ICT is used to enthuse and encourage all pupils to achieve their full potential.

Author: Elaine Brent

Class Teacher and Lead teacher for ICT