There are two basic types of scanners: a forms scanner and an image scanner. A forms scanner will scan bubble sheets and other forms with markings on them. Some forms used in education are grading sheets, attendance sheets, and answer sheets to standardized tests. A forms scanner will scan (look at) the marks made on the form and enter the data into the computer.
An image scanner will take any drawing or photograph and make a picture of it -- changing that picture into a computer file which can be used in a word processor or a desktop publishing program. If you have a page of text, you can scan it in an image scanner (which takes of picture of the page) then run it through a computer program called OCR (optical character recognition) to change it into text. OCR programs are about 90-95% accurate in being able to take a picture of a word and change it into the actual word. As such, OCR programs appear to "read" the words in the picture.
Where do we have scanners?
We have an image scanner at each school in the district. These scanners are simple image scanners and do not have OCR capabilities. We also have an image scanner at the district office -- this scanner is a very powerful scanner with OCR features. As a teacher or staff member, you can use the scanner at your school. If you have text you need scanned and run through an OCR program, contact the district computer/network technician for assistance.
How do I use the scanner?
You should find a menu item for the image scanner at your school. You must be sitting at the computer to which the scanner is attached -- you cannot access the scanner from other computers on the network. The scanner must be turned on before the computer -- if the computer is already on, turn it off so you can turn on the scanner then the computer.
Highlight the scanner menu item and press the Enter-key. You'll see a screen similar to this (without the picture of the watch on it):
Steps to making a good scan
1. Place the image you want to scan on the scanner copyboard. Be sure to move the image to the upper, right-hand section of the copyboard where the orange arrow is pointing.
2. With your mouse, click Preview. After scanning, the image will appear on the screen.
3. Mark the selection area. If you want to keep the scanned image exactly as it appears on the screen, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you'll need to mark the area you want to appear in the final scan. You can use your mouse to drag from one corner of the area to the opposite corner of the area. Or you can hold down the Ctrl key and draw around the area you want scanned:
3. If desired, change the image type from line
drawing to halftone to photo, etc. See what
your image looks like with each different type
and decide what image type you like best.
4. If desired sharpen the image by adjusting brightness and contrast.
5. If desired, change the size of the image. If you are going to use the image in a word processing or desktop publishing document, you'll want to keep the scaling small enough so the size is 100K or less.
5. If desired, you can click on Zoom before or after making these adjustments. It is often easier to see your image if you zoom in on it.
6. When everything is the way you want it and you are ready to do the final scan, use your mouse to click Final. You will be asked for a filename -- be sure to put A: or H: in front of the filename so the file will be saved on the proper disk.
NOTE: The image should automatically save as a TIFF 5.0 image. If someone has changed that setting, reset it to TIFF 5.0 (not compressed).
