Recently, I was reading a review of
iAnnotate. It’s an app that has been
designed to allow users to annotate documents.
The review (in the ProfHacker blog, The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/3/13) promoted the use of the app as a
grading tool.
The premise for the utility of the app is simple. In the traditional model, students submit assignments on paper. Faculty mark up the assignment with comments and grade it. The paper is then handed back to the student. Students may or may not read the often barely legible comments, and then they typically toss the assignment. The cycle begins again with the next assignment. iAnnotate takes the paper out of the equation and as a bonus, offers legible comments to students and makes more permanent assignment storage easier.
The premise for the utility of the app is simple. In the traditional model, students submit assignments on paper. Faculty mark up the assignment with comments and grade it. The paper is then handed back to the student. Students may or may not read the often barely legible comments, and then they typically toss the assignment. The cycle begins again with the next assignment. iAnnotate takes the paper out of the equation and as a bonus, offers legible comments to students and makes more permanent assignment storage easier.
The app, available for iPad and Android
users, offers a full array of comment features for any imported document. So if a student writes a paper, it could be
emailed to the teacher and then opened in iAnnotate. From that screen, an array of tools is
available. Graders can highlight,
underline, add text boxes or simply type text directly on to the document. Annotators have control over color and font
choices. There’s also a stamp feature which is useful to offer final grades or
"stamp" symbols suggesting a comment (e.g.: check marks, stars, questions marks, etc.)
After grading is complete, the assigned work could be emailed back or synced to
a cloud-based storage account (e.g.: DropBox, Google Drive or Box) with shared
permission to the student.
 |
| In the app, you can read or annotate an assignment. |
iAnnotate costs a bit, as far as the pricing
of apps go. It’s $9.99 for iPad users in the iTunes store. Android users get a
scaled back version but right now it appears to be free.
Just to be clear, there are apps that offer
similar features to iAnnotate. In fact, there’s an excellent web site that will
summarize strengths and weaknesses of similarly featured apps: appcrawlr.com By all means, take some time to find the app
that works best for you.
Not everyone is a tablet user. For computer
users, whether desktop or laptop, another tool is available that offers the
similar promise of paperless grading. It’s Microsoft Word. Current versions make it quite easy to
comment on student work using the Comment feature in the Review tab.
Additionally, add a text box, available in the Insert tab, and a comment can be offered anywhere in the document. That comment can be sized, and there are options to control font and color.
After fully grading an assignment, the work could be emailed back to the student. It might look something like this:
What’s the advantage of using available technologies to move towards paperless grading? There are two big advantages. First, there’s a paper savings. For any one teacher giving an assignment, paper savings would not amount to much. But in the aggregate, a real environmental difference can be made. No less important is the very real possibility that more students will be paying attention to the comments teachers offer about assigned work. A great deal of time and labor goes into grading papers. Shouldn’t we want students to pay attention to what we have to offer in the way of constructive criticism? But it’s hard for students to pay much attention to your comments if they are difficult to read. Fortunately, solutions are available.
Additionally, add a text box, available in the Insert tab, and a comment can be offered anywhere in the document. That comment can be sized, and there are options to control font and color.
After fully grading an assignment, the work could be emailed back to the student. It might look something like this:
What’s the advantage of using available technologies to move towards paperless grading? There are two big advantages. First, there’s a paper savings. For any one teacher giving an assignment, paper savings would not amount to much. But in the aggregate, a real environmental difference can be made. No less important is the very real possibility that more students will be paying attention to the comments teachers offer about assigned work. A great deal of time and labor goes into grading papers. Shouldn’t we want students to pay attention to what we have to offer in the way of constructive criticism? But it’s hard for students to pay much attention to your comments if they are difficult to read. Fortunately, solutions are available.
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