We can use excel spreadsheets to prepare our classroom (and for me, Library) budgets, but they must be submitted both online and in triplicate paper copies.

There are hundreds of worksheets printed each day, some surely in violation of copyright laws. I provide information on copyright, fair use, plagiarism, etc. but individual teachers choose to ignore them and the district’s periodic budget cuts make such abuses almost mandatory. Of course, the issue of the value of such sheets is a whole other educational issue.

The whole paper full/paperless learning environment is something that does need to be a top down mandate.

@Chris
The technicians at the d.o. shared with me that they LOVE the HP Laserjet 4 and 5 series laser printers. They are the oldest machines in the district and don’t have the speed or “sleek pretty” exterior that the newer laser printers have, but by golly they are workhorses that are dependable. As the one who does the workorders for hardware in my building, I can vouch for the seven we have–very realizable. Another funny aside about these wasteful inkjet printers–>we can submit workorders for any laser printer and the d.o. will happily get them back in working order. But they will not touch the inkjets. They do not support them. (Message supposedly being sent–>laser printers are cheaper in the long run and more reliable. Message I think some are taking instead–> it’s cheaper to throw away that one on the desk that doesn’t work or has problems and get a new one–tsk, tsk, such a throw-away society contributing mightily to their carbon footprint.)

As it is now, we have 7 of the workhorses described above. Estimated 25 classrooms or offices have some other form of a laser printer. That leaves around 15 teachers who pretty much rely on desktop inkjets. Sigh.

Our networked laser printer (low cost per page) died last year and they won’t replace it because we all have inkjets in our rooms. They don’t realize the cost per page for an inkjet is much higher.

I tried to convince them otherwise, and you see how well that did.

Chris