Scanning for resources

Notes for faculty who have support staff (ie secretaries) do scanning for them:

• Only the PC version of Acrobat will scan in directly from the scanner. You cannot scan straight into Acrobat using a Mac. Thus the office will need to have a scanner attached to a PC in order to create Acrobat documents for Moodle.
  
• The process involves uploading the scanned Arobat file into the Files section of your Moodle course. The secretary will need to have full teacher access to your course in order to do this. To grant Teacher access:
  
  • Click Administration : Teachers
  • Potential Teachers: type in second name or username of secretary and click Search
  • Click Add new teacher
    
• Do supply original material rather than 2nd or 3rd generation photocopy! A scan from a book will be much clearer to read than a faded copy.
  
• Clear detailed instructions. Cryptic notes scribbled on Postit! labels don't cut it. Your secretaries are not mind readers. Do them the courtesy of writing out chapters, page numbers to scan and precise notes about what to include or leave out.
  
• Suggest filenames to use that will help you remember their contents, eg Snibble_86_chap7.pdf. Include this in your instructions.
  
• Allow plenty of time to accomplish the task but do suggest a deadline.

Example:

Charlene, would you please scan the following from “From Mafeking Street to Kipling Road: Reminiscences from the East End” by Algernon Snibble:

1. Introduction (pp 1-5) into snibble_86_intro.pdf
2. Chapter 7 (pp 96-108) into snibble_86_chap7.pdf
3. Chapter 9 (pp 130-145) into snibble_876_chap9.pdf

Please then upload these files into the Files area of my course Cheery & Violent -- An Eastender's View, HIST 550. I could do with this by August 31st and certainly no later than sept 2nd. I have added you as a teacher on this course.

The full dope on scanning into Adobe Acrobat is here. Some quick tips:

1. Don't just use the default scanning mode. You will probably scan in full color at 300 dpi and produce gigantic file sizes.
   
2. Make sure you choose manual operation (you may have to Cancel) with the following settings:
   
   • Image Type : Black and White document (you want to scan in grayscale not full color)
   • Resolution : 150 dpi (300 dpi is over the top -- 150 is fine for printing)
     
3. Before clicking Scan draw a box around the actual text to be scanned (include page numbers and header text) -- then you'll only scan what you need rather than the whole scan bed and the page background will get lighter because the contrast will be set better.

Small is beautiful
Smaller documents will load faster over the network; bloated files cause students great problems because their network connections are often slower and more congested.

Scan at 150dpi into Acrobat	size full color	size grayscale (b/w document)
13 pages	65Mb	4.5Mb
7 pages	33Mb	2 Mb