iPad OS’s new “full page screenshot” feature for webpages kicks out a long PDF (no page breaks, it’s one long scrollable page like the actual webpage was) and sends it straight to the markup view. You can draw on it just like marking up an image, but the text is still selectable and searchable.
It’s a nice example of software recognizing how people want to work and building to support that.
And one more for the people with Pencils - you can drag from the bottom corner upward to take a screenshot
in any app with the same markup tools. Works on either side, so the lefties aren’t left out here.
Years ago, I tried using ghostcript to set the attributes of a webpage PDF so that it is like 8k pixels tall and had no linebreaks, but Preview.app would just render it as a single page really zoomed out, and I would have to zoom all the way in. Does it function better now?
When I open in a Preview window it behaves well and fits to the width.
Switching Preview to full screen trips it up still. For some reason that view wants to fit the whole document, and it zooms very far out to do it.
And on the iPad side there appears to be a limit on how long a document the "Full Page" screenshot will make. An HN thread with 110 comments came through entirely, but another one with 160 comments was truncated. Didn't dig any deeper than that, but I wonder what's going on there.
I don't see why you could not do exactly the same thing with MS Word, or even a properly exported PDF.
And, the added benefit is that it is searchable and can be re-rendered in different formats.
But even if sending obtuse oversized bitmaps to be handled on a tablet did happen to be the best solution, that is really not the point. Her class is not about optimizing itself. Her class is about educating students. Not just about science, but about what goes into collecting data, collaborating, and submitting it in an accessible format.
I think that a high school graduate should be able to understand how to take some arbitrary files, bundle them together in a zip file, and email them to someone. I really don't think this is too much to ask of some aspiring pre-STEM students. And if she bent over backwards to use snapchat and accept assignments in the form of a bunch of screenshots, I think she would be doing them a disservice.
Making hand annotation with a digital pencil more seamlessly integrated with typed and otherwise native digital docs actually seems like a great direction to be moving in. Things are moving there to a degree but it’s still hard to shift back and forth between modes.
This would be fantastically more work than typing. Text is an effective and effecient medium.
If the student can't figure out a slightly different way to accomplish a goal then they are incompetent with computers and only proficient insofar as memorizing one workflow.
What? Have you ever graded written papers? Have you ever seen a paper graded by a good teacher?
We’re not talking about pages of written commentary here. The most “effective and efficient” approach involves circling words or phrases, underlining sentences, writing arrows from one part to another, scribbling some wavy lines in the margin, writing a few words here or there, ...
There is a very limited amount of time available to work through each student’s work. The point is not to entirely rewrite the paper for the student, or explain every problem with the paper in detail. The point is to highlight what the student did well, highlight the parts that make no sense, and give the student a few pieces of quick feedback so they can revise their paper or do a better job next time.
A colored pen on a black-on-white printed copy is much more “effective and efficient” (and “fantastically less work”) than electronic tools prominently involving a keyboard.
Achieving the goal with less effort so that you can spend more effort on other aspects of the job or on other endeavors is effecient.
Wanting each of your teachers to learn how to use a constantly changing array of 20 different social image sharing services in order to receive work in a format that is more work to process is lazy.
Why not? Get a tablet with a stylus and draw your commentary directly on the image.
That is the way teachers have always marked up student work, just now without a paper copy or a physical red pen.
Trying to mark up documents using MS Word or Google Docs or whatever is a horrible experience in comparison.