You shouldn't need a printer for homeschooling

[KateBlush]

DC Y3. 30 plus pages of print outs sent out today via Google Classrooms. Nothing is interactive/ editable online. We don't have a printer and get through life the rest of the time perfectly well. IABU to expect school to try a bit harder to set more work that doesn't have to printed out/ transposed by parents to paper in order to complete?

It is worth a whinge, I think. It's the ink that costs. It's expensive, environmentally damaging and so wasteful of paper... when it could just all be online. It's another thing that means some can do x and some can't.

we recently discovered that pdf documents on Googleclassroom can be opened as a google doc (within classroom) and saved. Not sure if that's just the way our school is set up. But it means you can then write on the pdf.

We don't print, teachers are perfectly happy for us to write on a piece of paper or the computer the answers. Anything they want written on paper or labelled they have to wait for until I can get to my dads (support bubble)

We got a questionnaire at the start of the last Lockdown if we had printers etc. I said NO. I'm not paying Out if my own pocket to print stuff the school should cover. That is where the allowance per child comes in.

School haven’t requested anything to be printed, but if there was an emergency, id send the relevant docs to my work email and print there.

Same. NO Printer here and I know that several parents were grumpy about being in the same boat (class whats app) - I emailed the school late last night not really expecting much more as this is our 1st home school lockdown as DD is reception and have heard all the negative stories.

So I'm very impressed that one of the staff turned up this morning before 9am to drop off a printed version of all the worksheets and will post the following weeks work through the door every Friday going forwards. They are doing it for all families who request it.

I think it’s one of these things parents just need to accept and purchase. I don’t know many households without a printer tbh, to me it’s like having a kettle or a TV.

Parents have had nearly a year of covid to know they could have to home school again!

YANBU. It really seems to vary by school - DD's school are using Seesaw, which means that everything can be edited, or at least drawn over. It runs fine on Linux (so no Microsoft software at all) on a very elderly laptop (she's not the only one on Linux in her class...). We do sometimes print things to make it easier for her/us, but at least we have the choice.

Other suggestions for cheaper/environment:

Print black and white only - uses less ink, better for environment
Print in draft only - as above
Buy a monochrome printer - much cheaper
Buy recycled paper
Print on both sides - I print day one on one side, day 2 on the other side etc
Recycle the sheets
Recycle/Refill the ink cartridges - loads of places do this
Use an (admitedly more expensive) re-fillable ink printer - pay for themselves over ink costs eg www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/canon-pixma-g1501-a4-colour-inkjet-printer-0629c042/version.asp?refsource=ldadwords&mkwid=sqU0yHJ8T_dc&pcrid=447945409321&product=0629C042&pgrid=102920570814&ptaid=pla-747915975741&channel=googlesearch&gclid=CjwKCAiAudD_BRBXEiwAudakX9byjVlgSsuJ2q3LP6mt66Wm7Qd3gP_BZqgjWqQib1mKHPZDrTqyzhoCK-8QAvD_BwE
Another not initially cheap option that would work out cheaper in the longrun is to get them an ipad or tablet where they can zoom in or out and it is much easier to fill things out online - many groups round here are gathering up old/unwanted ones to give out to people strugging with home learning eg The Scouts, schools themselves, local charities

Many people on local Fb sites are printing stuff for people - I have a cost effective fillable ink printer, a set of spare ink bottles that last months and lots of recycled paper. I'd happily print stuff for local children, it would cost me very little, either in time or ink/papaer costs.

i.e take some ownership for educating your children in a less than ideal situation that everyone with kids is in.

What do parents do that have more than one child who are supposed to be 'online' when they only have one device?

I'm pretty sure it's all.meant yo be done online, haven't printed off anything,

Bought a printer today.

We use Showbie. We upload sheets - they have to be Word or PDFs - and children can write directly onto them on tablets. We bought KS1 pens for this last lockdown. We can then mark their work onl;one and give them some feedback. It’s fab! (But very time consuming for the teacher)

MS OneNote is excellent for students www.onenote.com/students

MS Educational pricing is reasonable

There are lots of offers on MS 2019 for Home & Students at the moment - including OneNote - I've seen as low as £22 today.

what about homes that don't have internet access ?
hope something is being done for them.

Those children are meant to be covered by the vulnerable children scheme i.e they will be in school, hopefully.

Same here last term filled it in. how am I meant to access all this tech.

My school have been giving out dongles and our local community/local businesses stepped in with donations of hardware - ask the school if there’s any available

@pinbinpin

Those children are meant to be covered by the vulnerable children scheme i.e they will be in school, hopefully.

I got a email saying mine aren't covered despite being covered in the school and gvt criteria.... 😡

If you are using Google classroom, you can open a Google Doc and type on there for most things. Gen you just 'hand it in' Spag with missing punctuation, not so easy, but lots of stuff doable without printing.

Have you communicated this with the school? I am really encouraging parents to give feedback but I know what works for some won't work for everyone so in reality it will probably have to be a mix - some want everything printable, some don't. It also might not be the case that today's work is not what it will all be like. I had my lessons planned to teach in person and at 8am this morning adapted them as best I could for online. Tomorrow's lessons work better as interactive ones, and Thursday's will be even better. Please also consider that some things simply are better written by hand - children need to practise writing lots and lots and writing was the area that really suffered for children in lockdown. I'd always expect my class to write out whole sentences and add commas, not just add commas to a sheet. I've found even when I've asked children to do this as home learning though they've tended not to and it means they are not building the writing stamina they should.

@Minky37 I'm pretty sure students can download a version of microsoft office for free?? University students certainly can so I would assume this applies to school students too...

What format are the worksheets? PDFs? Word?

If they are in word it is easy to copy and paste onto a blank word document which can then be edited. PDFs are more difficult unless your have Adovbe editing sofware.

If you can afford it just buy a printer. To be fair, everyone seems to have seen this coming for a while.

I brought one last lockdown thinking we would need it and we havent used it once. My kids schools purely all online.

We're not printing out, but my children are looking at the work on screen, writing it down then I'm scanning it and sending it back. In theory it should be edited online, but it's quite faffy and I can guarantee that my 10 year old will start mucking about and then accidentally trash his work.
Here's a tip though - if you need access to decent word processing or spreadsheets etc then download OpenOffice. Works just like the Microsoft version except it's free.