The Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) department is piloting “wepa” a cloud-based solution to easily print files in black and white, color, and even double-sided, throughout this semester. As a member of the pilot test group, I’m convinced wepa is undoubtedly the future of Penn State printing.

For the pilot program, participants were given $5 in printing credit, equivalent to 100 black and white sheets of paper. TLT installed five wepa printers around campus, at Pattee Library, the HUB, Pollock Commons, Findlay Commons, and Willard.

Whenever I’ve had to print out a report or a quick page of notes before class, I’m often forced to email the document to myself or upload to a cloud storage website like Dropbox or Google Drive, then find an open computer on campus to print it out. Sometimes it’s hard to find an open computer and even when I do, it’s annoying to log in, then log in to my Dropbox, download the file, open it, print it out, and log off the computer.

All you have to do with wepa is walk up to the printer kiosk and follow the easy on-screen instructions. Instead of logging into a desktop computer like you normally would, just swipe your student ID card you’re logged in.

From there, your current printing balance is displayed and you can log into any of your preferred cloud storage websites or simply insert a USB drive to access your files. You have the option to make an account at wepanow.com, but I didn’t even bother and just used my existing Dropbox storage account instead.

It’s easy to search through your cloud storage account from the wepa touch screen for your file. All of the major document and picture file types are supported, so you shouldn’t have any problems printing reports or sets of class notes.

You can even add multiple files in your print queue at the same time, including files from different file sources. Then you just select “print” and wait for the documents to come out below. It’s really that easy!

That’s it! Wepa prints your documents more efficiently, easier, and in a quarter of the time it would take to do so from the desktop computers nearby. It’s time for Penn State to roll these out campus-wide.