Grading English Papers

[bessenkj]

As an English Teacher, I spend thousands of hours grading papers.  I'd like to limit the time I spend on each paper, so here's my problem:

I want to be able to use a stylus to grade directly on the screen as I would a normal physical paper.  It's faster than any electronic means, for me anyway.  I have a tablet that I have been using for this.  I also have a touchscreen laptop.  The problem is when I use the canvas teacher app on my tablet, I can't eliminate the sidebar on the right, and every time I get to a new page, I have to zoom in.  Every page change, either forward or back, requires a zoom in.  Unfortunately, the app doesn't have an option for fullscreen view.  Why not?  Using a browser, which does have fullscreen view, doesn't work either because all of the speedgrader tools are only usable with a mouse apparently (which is very hard to circle or handwrite with).  All the touchscreen does is move the document around on the screen (on both tablet and laptop, across multiple browser platforms).

I would love to be able to go fullscreen on my tablet and annotate directly with a stylus (or my finger, even).  This way I could breeze through the papers without wasting precious seconds zooming in over and over again.  I know this may sound a bit whiney, but these seconds really do add up.  This is the worst part of our jobs, and I'd love to be able to kick technology in the butt a bit and make it works FOR us rather than against us.

I would settle for being able to annotate on my laptop, if that were possible.  It would take letting the browser know that a touch on the screen should be seen as performing a task whereas a double touch would be translated as screen repositioning.  Aside from this, make fullscreen view a possibility on the app, and allow it to perpetuate across multiple pages of a document.

Thank you for your time,

Kevin B.

[KristinL]

Hi @bessenkj -

Thank you for taking the time to share your insights! I think the points you raised are important, and I wanted you to know that you're not alone.

I think that this Idea Conversation is related to what you described. Minimize Grade/Comments/Files in Speedgrader on An... - Canvas Community If it is, please rate the idea (1-5 stars) and then add to the discussion. It's important for mobile users to share their stories and to collaborate to make the features work better for everyone.