Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digital Homework Markups

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» Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digital Homework Markups

I’ve received several emails from faculty who are using their tablets to markup homework. You’ll find this particularly helpful if your students are already creating and submitting digital projects in MS Word, PowerPoint, or Adobe PDF formats…

For PowerPoint projects, use the same “ink your slides” instructions I provided in my Tablet PC Tip #1. Only this time, the PowerPoint is something your students submit to you. You simply run their “show” and mark it up with your handwritten comments. Press ESCAPE to finish, KEEP to save your ink, resave the file, and then send it back to the student.

For MS Word, I’ve provided a brief (~1min) clip on using the Ink Annotation tool:

Finally, if your students are creating other digital artifacts, consider having them sent to you in Adobe PDF format. This allows you to mark up documents such as Web Pages, spreadsheets, drawings, or anything that can be printed to PDF. Professor Gupta from Imperial College London recommended to me some software that makes this easy – it’s called PDF Annotator. I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds perfect.

If you’ve had experience with digital homework markups, please post a comment and share any tips you’ve learned along the way!

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Program Manager - Worldwide Higher Education Philanthropy
Hewlett-Packard

For information about the HP Technology for Teaching philanthropy initiative in higher education, visit www.hp.com/go/hpteach-hied

Posted by Jim Vanides on Sunday, October 21, 2007 2:48 PM

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Comments for Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digital Homework Markups

Re: Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digita

Hi Jim! I'm using electronic submission with my students, and I really like it. However, I don't use Word directly. I prefer to print their documents into the OneNote notebook that I keep for each class. I mark their papers in OneNote and export them as a PDF. One advantage to this is the PDF conversion embeds the ink. So the students can't change what I wrote. Thanks for these tips, I learned several things!

Posted by sbtablet on 10/22/2007 7:01 PM
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Re: Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digita

Hi Jim, I used to mark up Word docs from students. Now, I convert them to PDF using Bluebeam PDF Revue. PDF Revue allows me to use symbols which have comments that I make up. I then move the symbol to the part of the homework needing a comment. For example, I have a symbol "SP" for spelling. I also can use the pen just like on MS Word.

Posted by garysolom on 10/22/2007 9:43 PM
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Re: Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digita

Jim, I have a brief review and links to PDF Annotator, Bluebeam REVU and Adobe Acrobat Pro at http://learnecon.blogspot.com/2007/10/bluebeam-revu-prefered-over-adobe.html. For my time, Bluebeam is the way to go. The digital ink in Acrobat is so bad, PDF Annotator is great, but Bluebeam has more features and allows the creation of pdf files via MS Office plugins and a print driver (just like Acrobat). The only drawback is the lack of having Bluebeam REVU load links in Internet Explorer. Overall, Bluebeam REVU is the best I have seen so far. However, these products seem to be sprouting up everywhere so soon there may be more products to do this. Some of the ideas on electronic grading are in http://learnecon.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-ua-faculty-should-get-tablet-pcs.html and in particular in some of the references deep in that long posting. Keep the ideas coming Jim. Steve Myers

Posted by campnmug on 10/24/2007 10:29 PM
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