Hardware

Stay Productive — Even When Schools Close — with Epson Printers and Scanners

Faculty, staff and students are working from home with the help of Epson’s technologies.

Chris Hayhurst is a freelance writer who covers education technology and healthcare, among other topics. He's a regular contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines

Much of the talk around tech for distance learning has focused on videoconferencing and online collaboration tools. Largely absent from the discussion, on the other hand: any meaningful mention of more traditional technologies, such as home office printers and scanners.

But printing and scanning, as students and faculty know well, are crucial for anyone who needs to move fluidly between the digital world and the one that’s best on paper. Printers and scanners may lack the bells and whistles of their screen- and cloud-based technological counterparts, but they are often absolutely necessary — and sometimes things simply look better in ink.

Epson America now offers several solutions that can make working and learning from home a little bit easier, says Sean Gunduz, the company’s group product manager for business printers.

“Remote learning has really changed everything,” Gunduz says. Historically, the colleges and universities Epson has worked with have wanted different printers to fit the wide variety of higher-education environments. “You’d have back-office printers and classroom and teachers’ printers, and then you’d have the personal printers that a lot of students wanted in their rooms.”

Today, however, as courses are taught online — and as college administrators do their work from home as well — almost everyone is looking for the same thing. “And that’s not the ability to print or copy 100 pages per minute. They just need something they can put on their desk that does the job well and doesn’t cost a lot,” says Gunduz.

Epson’s latest entry in that category, Gunduz says, is its Supertank line of all-in-one printers. The WorkForce ST-3000, for example, offers wireless printing from a tablet or smartphone and works with Windows and Mac operating systems. The device prints in black and white at 15 pages per minute (8 pages per minute for color), and it comes with a two-year ink guarantee. “Once you buy the printer, you’re all set,” Gunduz explains. “If for some reason you ever run out of ink, we’re going to send you more.”

Scanning functionality is also included in every Epson all-in-one device, Gunduz adds. Some people may want a mobile scanner if they already have a single-function printer, or if they know they’ll be traveling a lot and will need to scan documents while on the road. “But in higher ed, that’s not really common — usually the all-in-one is the only thing you need,” he says.

Streamlining Remote Work with Epson Connect

In addition to the ability to print from any mobile device, Epson also offers Epson Connect, an application that allows anyone to print on any printer from anywhere in the world, says Gunduz.

“If you’re a teacher, for example, and you want to let your students send their work directly to your printer, you just give them that device’s unique email address and then add their own email address to your list of authorized senders,” he says.

The function allows a student who has completed an assignment by hand to simply take a picture of their work with their phone and send it via email to their instructor’s printer, to print automatically. That saves time and work for teachers because they don’t have to sort and open every email — and they don’t have to send out print jobs one by one.

“Instead, they can just pick it up from the printer when they’re ready to read it,” Gunduz says. “And once they grade it or add their comments, they can scan it and send it back to the student.”

Among the many challenges that are part of distance learning, finding a way to print and scan affordably and effectively should be nowhere near the top of the list, Gunduz notes. There are practical solutions available for anyone who needs them. “You just need to pick the one that works best for you.”

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