Skip to content

Digitising Paper Document

Published by Stanley Sim on April 11, 2020

Last updated on April 12, 2020

Our smartphones have very powerful cameras. The high resolution of the cameras could be used as scanners. With the right techniques, documents scanned with smartphones could be of very high quality.

Incorrect Techniques

When students need to submit work online, many students would capture the documents as if they were taking photos. They would then submit multiple images as their work. There are a few problems when students submit their work this way.

Work submitted as images could be very large. In this example, one page constitute 14 MB. There are two images submitted by this student. The time that Google Classroom took to load the file for annotating is also significantly longer than a corresponding smaller size.
This file submitted as a PDF is only 1 MB. Processing by Google Classroom for annotation is also much swifter.
This is one example of a document scanned by a student without paying attention to the required expectation. You can see how difficult it is for a teacher to mark the task. The student would also likely not use this work for future review, rendering this work as a waste of time, except to obtain a score.
This example shows how a well-scanned document make marking so much easier. The student is also able to review this document in future when preparing for examination.
  • It could be seen that images are large. Given that our phones have 40-megapixels cameras, an image could be tens of megabytes in size. Multiply this by the number of images send, a teacher would spend precious time waiting for the images to download, and more time to process them.
  • Images are hard to process as learning resources. A well-captured digital documents could be read easily on a computer screen. A badly captured document could only at best, be used for grading once, and would be discarded by the students.

Given the consequences listed above, it could not be emphasised more the importance of scanning paper documents correctly. Students need to be reminded about this constantly, as many students always think that as long as the text can be seen clearly, it would be fine. This is not so.

Proper Techniques to Scan Documents

There are many apps that allow you to scan documents. An iPhone user could use the built-in Scan Documents. Android users could use other apps. One very good free app that could do this is CamScanner.

Submitting a Well-Scanned Document

A document scanned with good techniques provides some benefits for both teachers and students.

  • Small file sizes enable fast upload and download by both teachers and students.
  • Small file sizes are loaded by apps in shorter time.
  • Properly captured format allows teachers to grade easily. Students can also used the returned script to review their mistakes and also for future revision.
  • It is also generally faster to for the students to scan and submit their work if they are using the right techniques.

Published inTechnologyVideo