PDF Technology Boosts the Campus Productivity

By: Melvin James
Submitted: 2009-10-06 17:56:17
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With the development of technology, education is not the way it was before. Educators are facing the challenge of finding creative ways to teach. Students have to prepare themselves to the competitive world. Colleges need to work more efficiently, put the energy actually in teaching and doing research.

As we know, PDF format is rich in file integrity, regardless of the application used to create them, PDF files can look the same as the original format. No matter text, video, 3D, images and so on. PDF files are viewable on any platform, a free PDF reader is the only requirement to view PDF files. It has great extensibility and security. All of these features can be used in education, which will benefit the educators, students and schools. PDF format is one of the solutions for 21th century education.

For Educators
Books and blackboard are not enough for today's classroom. Preparing for class is a time consuming job in the past. Teachers need to collect resources from books, from the Internet, and put them together, then create course guide, and print out thousands of materials and hand to the students. The truth is , half the time and energy are taken up with paperwork.

Nowadays, not everything is on paper. Often, video, audio, images are needed in class. Then teachers have to find the applications to open them. But with PDF format, they can just put all the stuff in one file using Adobe Acrobat, everybody can get, everybody can read. Preparing for class may take a week in the past, but now just take a day. The whole thing can be done sitting in front of a computer, and all you need to bring to class, is just a PDF file.

PDF is a real time saver. It can also make the teaching more efficient. Can you picture a professor reading hundreds of students’ homework, adding comments with his pen page by page? Now students can put their work together into a PDF file. Then they can send it to the professor. The professors can add suggestions for polishing them up, then send back to the students. The communication can be done with just a few clicks.

For Students
Getting into college is competitive enough, but students have to deal with tons of stuff in campus, such as dorm applications, interviews, essays and so on. It's quite exhausting. Can they get rid of the trouble of dealing with paper? Yes, they can fill PDF forms in a few clicks without running to the office, print out their work to PDF format then email to the instructors without finding a printer. They can save more energy and focus on their study.

And creativity is essential in the world, an out-standing student has done some good work and want to show it, or a graduated students need a great portfolio when they are hunting for a job. But many of the work are in different file formats. Not everyone has all the applications to open them, then what should they do? Just create a digital portfolio. PDF is rich in file integrity like I mentioned above, everybody can read as long as they have the free PDF Reader.

For School Administrators
Mass paper flow of document is one of the challenges the schools are facing, which cost lots of money and time. For example, applying materials, medical forms, contact information forms, dorm requests, course registrations and so on. The school administrators need to deal with how many paper forms? What's worse, those papers are easily messed up, then easy thing will become complicated. Now with PDF format, they can scan old files and manage them in computer, make PDF form of anything, then email them to everyone who needs it, and collect them through Internet. A green campus is built like this, no more paper wasting, save a lot of budget and workforce, so that college can focus on research and teaching.  

PDF is one of the great solutions for the connection of education and technology. The most professional PDF software is Adobe Acrobat, it can make all the stuff mentioned above possible. Also, Adobe Acrobat can convert the PDF file back to Word, Excel and so on, the conversion quality is great.

Everyone can read PDF with free PDF reader, but PDF is not easy to be modified without Adobe Acrobat. However, students’ budget is always tight. Adobe Acrobat is out of some academic users’ budget.

Here is a little tips, if someone wants to edit PDF, for example, fill the PDF forms, add comments, modify a PDF file, but do not want to spend a lot of money, just convert the PDF to Word. Some affordable applications like PDF to Word Converter are available. And Create PDF is also easy, just install an add-in, Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 can save as PDF format directly. Just enjoy the power of PDF format, make an innovation for 21st century education.

Article source: Expert Articles