Picture this: you are walking into English Class, happy about finishing your essay during Office Hours, but as you look at the board, you realize you need a hard copy. You run outside to the printer, hoping to get back to class before the bell rings. But when you get there, an error message fills the screen, blocking you from printing. Many Middle School students find themselves roaming the halls from printer to printer, searching for one that works.
A sudden shortage of working printers has thrown students and staff off track this school year. Westminster IT Services is known for its attention to detail and reliability, but there seem to be some issues troubleshooting Xerox machines this school year.
Like many of his classmates, 8th-grader Thomas Stainback is annoyed that he often needs to spend time troubleshooting Xerox machines throughout the school day. “I feel like I am losing instructional time by having to find a working printer during class,” he says.
Middle School English teacher Tyree Churchill does not think the system currently serves students. “One of the skills we try to develop in students is executive functioning, and it is hard for us to expect students to be proactive and plan ahead if they can’t count on our resources, like printers being available,” she says. “It’s frustrating because I think there is an easy fix to these issues, one we aren’t taking.” Churchill proposes IT Services make rounds throughout the day to check on printers, which would reduce the number of printers down at a time. “At the end of the day, I kind of feel like it is IT’s responsibility to make sure the printers are working properly, and if their devices aren’t working properly, they should work on a solution.”
On the contrary, London Shaver, Senior IT Services Technician, says community members need to pitch in to keep printers up and running. “We manage thousands of devices every day, so it would be impossible for us to independently keep tabs on each machine,” he says. “If you experience issues with a printer, please report the outage to IT Services by emailing [email protected].” The department targets a “one-hour time frame,” meaning they aim to have every device returned to service within an hour of an issue being reported.
Shaver also explains that it is hard for technicians to know when students need help with technology if they do not get outage reports from students and the faculty in real time. “We know it’s frustrating when devices stop working, especially when you’re counting on them before a paper is due,” he says. “Please file a ticket, even if you think someone else may already have, because often it’s not that we aren’t able to fix an issue, it’s that we haven’t been told yet.”
Overall, there seems to be a disconnect between IT and the Middle School, but perhaps one that can be solved with a little more communication.