Is your home printer also a scanner? You can use your home scanner as a great study tool. This simple piece of equipment can enhance your projects, simplify your life, and improve your test scores.
In other words, a scanner can be a lifesaver! And it is one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated tools.
Use a Scanner to Produce Practice Tests
Most scanners today give you the option of saving work as a PDF file. You can scan your notes and save them on your computer to design your own practice tests. All you have to do is block out (white out or delete) key words in your notes to create "fill in the blank" notes.Print out notes with key words blanked out and test yourself over and over again. If your computer program won’t allow you to manipulate a PDF, simply print and use white out. Use your original notes as a key to check your answers.
Use a Scanner to Reproduce Worksheets
Your teacher may give you math handouts and worksheets as practice sheets. Some students need to practice more than others. If you need a little extra practice, simply scan your worksheet before you use it and re-work it several times or several nights in a row.
Use a Scanner to Enhance Reports
Your home scanner/printer can capture images you draw by freehand to illustrate any point you make. Create a piece of art to illustrate a history paper and cite yourself as the artist!
You can also recreate an image from one of your sources using the scanner. If there is a key image you need to insert, your scanner can capture it. Be sure to give proper citation! Note: college-level work is a little different when it comes to using copyrighted material. You may need to seek permission from the image owner or publisher before reproducing images.
Use a Scanner to Organize Research
If you’re conducting research and you have lots of published sources to keep track of, a scanner could save your life! Why? PDFs are keyword searchable. Here’s how it works:
You have five or twenty books to use in your research. Two of your subtopics are plankton as a food source and plankton blooms. Each of your books (or articles) hits on these subtopics in just a few pages.
- You scan the pages you need in each book.
- When you save the file, be sure to use the book’s name (or you’ll never be able to cite the source). Save the scanned pages in a file.
- You’ll eventually have dozens of scanned pages.
- As you write your research paper, you will search your files by keyword. You may have to open each scanned page and search individually. Depending on the software you use, you may be able to search an entire file at once.
Use a Scanner to Recover a Lost Document
From time to time, you’ll accidentally delete papers you’ve written. If you have a paper copy of your work, you are in luck! Most scanners can recognize text and send images to your word processor. This saves you the trouble of re-typing an entire long document.
