[ARCHIVED] Using Pen with iPad

[chris_kelley]

I had my students answer their midterm exam questions on Canvas through the Quiz function.  Rather than write their exam on a separate document and upload their responses, they wrote it on the Canvas site.  When I go to grade them on my iPad using my Apple pen to make comments, there is no function to let me do this. Further, I cannot download their answers as there is no download link.  I have had to copy and paste 50 individual responses to Word documents and save them that way, then grade them in the Word file.  Am I missing something? This seems incredibly convoluted.  I have used both Speedgrader and Canvas Teacher, and neither has a pen function, although there is a YouTube video from 2015 where the person is using Canvas Teacher, and it has an edit bar where you can use a pen--mine does have this function--so does anyone know if it was removed or is there a setting that I have overlooked? 

[Bobby2]

Hi  @christopherkell . Thanks for your question.

Is it possible you are trying to annotate on an image file (png, jpeg, etc)? Even though image annotations are supported through the web, they aren't currently supported in the Teacher app. As far as I know the Teacher app only supports annotations on PDF and Word Docs.

If this is the case perhaps you could require your students to turn in all assignments using these two formats so you can annotate in the Teacher app. 

Otherwise you ought to be able to mark in Canvas. Here's a video I found of a teacher using their iPad to mark in Canvas. ipad essay grading canvas app - YouTube  They didn't use the pen though. I will keep researching and see what I can find. 

[KristinL]

Hi - It is possible to annotate on .jpg files in SpeedGrader through the Canvas Teacher app. I do it frequently for my photo and art students.

[Bobby2]

Really good to know. Thanks  @KristinL . 

[chris_kelley]

Bobby.  Thanks for the reply.  I can make the comments by typing them in, but that is not what I am trying to do. I am trying to quickly grade my exams using my pen to write comments rather than typing them.  I set up my exam through the quiz section and clicked "Essay" as the questions. They typed their answers right into the textbox that this option opens rather than write them on a Word doc and uploading them--this is the option that I used before, but some of the students ran out of time and were not able to upload their exams, so to cut out the upload time, I just had them write their answers right into Canvas.  So this does not create a separate file.  When you go to grade them, you do not get the option to download the files--you have to grade them through Speedgrader on Canvas.  And there is no option to use a pen.  My guess is there is no option, and I will just go back to requiring them to save it on a separate file and upload.  Just a giant pain to not allow an option for the pen or a stylus.

[Bobby2]

Hi  @chris_kelly , thanks for the details.

I see what you mean now, and can't think of a way to use your pen in this situation. 

Apologies for misunderstanding.

I think that your assumption is correct and the pen is not available in this situation. But I will reach out to others and see if that is the case. 

[chris_kelley]

No apologies necessary. I appreciate the reply. I did find a YouTube video from a couple years ago where the person is using Teacher for Canvas and there is an edit bar that lets you select the pen, but that option does not seem to be available any longer. I don't know it they had too many bugs or what. Seems to me to be something that most people could use.  Thanks again!

[ericwerth]

Hi  @chris_kelley   I don't have much to add to what  @Bobby2  has already mentioned, but I did just run into a discussion about grading with a stylus in the Teacher App.  A few of the responses seem to relate to the Apple Pen specifically,

Grading with a stylus in Speedgrader App??? The thread has been fairly active so it might be worth posting to this discussion about what you are experiencing to see if anyone following this discussion has found a way around the problem you are experiencing.

If the functionality does not exist, perhaps creating a feature idea would be warranted to let everyone comment and vote of the feature.  Information about the feature idea process can be found here, How does the feature idea process work in the Canvas Community?  and https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14904 

All the best!

[KristinL]

 @chris_kelley  - The annotation tools appear when they're available. Which video do you reference?

[chris_kelley]

To be honest, I no longer have the video open in a browser as I was in melt down this weekend trying to figure out how to grade with the pen right in the Canvas app. But it showed precisely the same screen I was seeing, only the toolbar functions were eliminated.  Even if they could not build this into the app, at the very least they should let you download these as a batch download the same way you do the files when they submit them.  Either way, this does not look like it is a function that will be delivered anytime soon, so I am not going to use it. I will instead just go back to having my students upload their answers in a pdf. I figured that if there way a way, this would be the best place to figure it out.

[KristinL · Accepted solution]

Correct. We cannot use an Apple Pen to annotate text submissions in a quiz. As Eric suggested, this would need to be a Feature Idea. However, since this doesn't exist for quizzes (graded via SpeedGrader on the browser), it would need to be built there before it could be moved to mobile.