Document Scanner

[meredith_colon]

Document Scan as an upload feature. 

Reasoning: Currently, for my course, uploading notes is a vital component of grading. Our school has limitations regarding the use of various apps, but if Canvas developed an integrated Document Scanner that allows students to take a photo of their notes or paper assignment, and trim the image to the edges of the paper. Many times, this allows students to submit their work to Canvas either as a PDF or a PNG.

Similar apps that work in such a manner are Adobe Scan and DocScan. 

This would valuable when working on grading assignments and issuing comments as opposed to simply having a student submit a photograph of their paper assignment or set of notes for note checks.

[BethCrook]

Think about Math!!  All of those teachers who still want handwritten math assignments!  And foreign languages, especially Chinese.  

[Jul_Cro]

I can see why this would be useful in the lower grades. 

[doerrp]

I agree with Beth Crook. As a math teacher, I would find this incredibly valuable when asking students to submit homework that involves showing their work. A PDF is much easier to read on a screen. Love this idea! Plus, I think PDF's load a little faster than JPEG's when using SpeedGrader.

[James]

As another math teacher, Adobe Scan works well. There is a blog post in the Teaching Math in Canvas group about submitting homework https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14455-how-students-can-submit-handwritten-work-to-canvas-us... . Some of my comments there go into why PDF is better than JPG for grading.

[horton93]

This would be very helpful!! 

[Mfroemke]

I just requested a photo option in rce for elementary students to use. This would work the same! It would help kids during distance learning be able to get feedback on handwriting, thinking maps, and math processes that require picture representation!

[gonzalezc]

This would be extremely helpful!

[kcase2]

A quick way to upload photos into Canvas would be very helpful.  My homeschool parents are quite frustrated with the numerous steps it takes to submit handwritten work.  Thanks for considering adding a tool in Canvas to facilitate this.  

[rderagisch]

A built in document scanner would be very helpful! I prefer students upload their notes as a .pdf, but it takes so many steps for them to do this right now.

[erik_gustafson]

This would be amazing! 

I really hope they can add this. If this were a part of the mobile app, students wouldn't have trouble submitting PDFs. Currently, they are struggling on how to do that. 

[erik_gustafson]

@James I tried to follow your link about teaching math above, and it told me access was denied. Do you know another way of looking at that page? I am a math teacher myself and would like to see your strategies. 

--
Erik

[rseilham]

@meredith_colon, 

I'm not advertising this as a complete solution for this idea, but there is a built-in scanner feature for the Canvas Student app for iOS ONLY. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Student-iOS-Guide/How-do-I-upload-a-file-as-an-assignment-...

It's available when an assignment has a File Upload option. 

The scanner does support multiple documents, but they are scanned as multiple JPEG files and not a PDF.

Hope this helps. 

[Jon_Dunk]

The Canvas mobile app scan function is flawed for use in older year groups. It saves each individual scan as a jpeg. Each submission has a 24 file upload limit which means that if you are scanning an exam paper, project diary or other large document it will not work. It would be a lot better if you could take multiple scans and compress them to a single pdf inside the Canvas iOS app.

[zderango]

@Jon_Dunk

I just wanted to echo this sentiment. As a teacher, having to click through multiple files is a tedious aspect of grading. It would work much better if students could scan multiple images and have them submitted to Canvas in 1 file. Currently, I have to ask my Android users to do this same function through Google Drive and my iPhone users to do it through the Notes app. They complain about it quite a bit, though.

[khigh]

Agreed!!! Photos are often hard to view and clicking through multiple pages is very slow. I often require students to scan their work in another app and then submit, but that additional step really complicates the process and creates many problems. When it happens at the end of class as they are eager to leave, they often say they'll do it later and then forget. PLEASE, Canvas, add a "Scan to Submit" feature to the app.

[Cbraddy]

As a mathematics teacher who has students upload photos of their work through the Canvas app, I would love for the photos that they scan to be scanned into one file so that I can scroll through all submissions at once instead of clicking each page separately and waiting for them to load.

[RyanEdwards1]

Check out the app called "CamScanner" and add a similar feature to Canvas where students can "batch scan" all of the pages to a particular assignment and combine them into one single pdf. They would then upload the pdf so teachers could scroll through all the pages of the submitted work and not have to open each file individually for each student.

[ProductPanda]

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