NEWS: The Human Side of Printing in Schools

When Debbie Callaghan attended a recent event, she came prepared with printing stats in hand – but the conversation took an unexpected and uplifting turn that stats alone couldn’t capture

Of all the things I expected from this year’s Schools and Academies Show – tired feet, a hoarse voice from eight hours of talking, the most memorable moment was… not about printers at all. If you know me, that’s saying something.

I’m usually at events to earnestly talk about stats between overpriced refreshments. And to be fair, there were plenty of great conversations about environmental concerns and crimes against reliability. But the moment that stayed with me came during a quieter stretch of the day, in a conversation with a teacher I’d just met, who wasn’t looking at print samples or power consumption stats, she just wanted to tell me something about worksheets.

I know you’re thinking – back to printers. Not exactly.

A Surprising Conversation

She’d noticed little rituals printed worksheets created in her classroom. How students handing out sheets to one another becomes a moment for connection. A routine act of courtesy. “They aren’t always delivered with the greatest of care,” she said, “but they don’t get that interaction on a screen.”

This year we went full game show at SAAS: “Beat the Buzzer” with a RISO twist. Noisy, and impossible to miss. Which was exactly the point. It started plenty of conversations. This one reminded me that sometimes print’s value can’t be measured.

Important Interactions

There’s no column on a procurement spreadsheet for courtesy during worksheet distribution. There’s no dropdown menu for interpersonal development opportunities via A4. Maybe there should be.

Suppliers and consumers have become focused on the financials of printing – cost per page, ink usage, service intervals – and started treating it like a utility. Like water, essential, but invisible. But we risk missing the human bits. The ones that only show up in classrooms.

When printing works, teaching flows. When the printer breaks, so does the rhythm of the day. And when a student gets to stand up and help hand out the work, they’re participating in something real, and shared. I’m not saying OFSTED should enforce a printed materials policy. But, just maybe, the next time we talk about the value of print, we consider the things that go unmeasured in the margins of the lesson.

This is a sponsored article, brought to you by RISO

To find out more about RISO products and services, visit https://www.riso.co.uk/