Canvas Teacher Hack 1.22.1 + Redeem Codes

UPDATED REVIEW: Canvas has fixed the problem and the Canvas Teacher’s app works wonderfully. As before iPadOS 13, it is easy to use to grade student essays or contact students. With this fix, I now give it a five-star review. It took a while, but... Well done, Canvas!!!

UPDATED REVIEW: I have spoken to several Canvas people and have been told Canvas is aware of the app crashing with iOS 13 or iPadOS 13 and they are working on an updated version of the app. I was told by one of their L2 engineers that he could not give me a date for when the new app version will be released. Until it is released, my one-star review must stand. (Why is it taking Canvas so long to fix this problem?)

PREVIOUS REVIEW:This was a great app until IOS 13. Since then, I cannot leave a comment within a highlighted section of text for a student paper because the app crashes —every time. My problem was reported to Canvas, and I get responses from their support staff as though they do not know what is going on. So I will tell Canvas what is going on: Your Teacher App is creasing after IOS 13 came out. Not that hard to understand (Canvas support people actually asked me for my “crash logs” from my iPad). Please fix this! If Canvas cannot fix this, the app is worthless and teachers would be better off going back to the desktop version. What a shame.

I wouldn’t use this alone, but it is helpful when paired with the desktop version. I like the ability to write directly on my student’s pdf assignments (it would be great if it took fewer clicks for them to find that feedback, but that is not the fault of the Teacher app). I pretty much only use this to write on students’ work as I find everything else easier on the desktop .

I’ve removed my complaint about the February 2021 update since that has been resolved. The remaining issue that I have is that sometimes when I write feedback it doesn’t save the ends of sentences/words. It’s difficult to troubleshoot because I can see everything until I close the assignment and reopen it (which I don’t usually do). Unfortunately the students can get confused by comments with partial words or missing worlds! If I don’t feel too rushed I load the next paper then come back to the previous one and skim through the comments to make sure that everything shows up, but it is frustrating. (For reference I use an iPad Pro purchased in November 2019 and an Apple Pencil)

Overall, this is a solid app. However, it seems the developers did not take into account that we use this app to check-in on our courses while we’re on the go. We do not use it to facilitate our courses. Accessing your course through a mobile browser may be a better option depending upon what you’re trying to do.

- There is no ability to mark a message or discussion post as unread in the app. Once you open or view it, it cannot be marked as unread. If I don’t plan on responding at that very moment, I have to make a separate reminder to check it when I return to the desktop. I’ve basically stopped accessing messages and discussions through the app for this very reason. (In most cases, I’m not going to respond as soon as a student messages me, but I do want to read their message. Marking it as unread allows me to see the notification on the desktop where I prefer to respond.)
- The actual text from sent and received messages cannot be copied. Not being able to copy a portion of a previous message I have sent is frustrating. I frequently send the same explanations for assignments, etc. Having the ability to copy a portion of a message for another email - when I’m on the go - seems like an oversight on the developers’ behalf.
- To be continued...

I use this app and generally like it. Performance has been pretty stable with a few times where upgrades screwed up the works briefly, but contact with Canvas straightened things out pretty soon. There is one thing the app does, though, that drives me bananas. They wanted it to be a “speedgrader”, so they’ve made it so that the slightest flick allows you to quickly and effortlessly move from one student to another. I don’t know about others, but this feature seriously screws me from time to time. I believe it’s important to give the students substantial feedback on their work. So I will write a rather long comment - but midway through find I need to scroll to another part of the student’s submission to finish making my point. It’s at that point that, if I don’t really carefully just scroll straight down or up, but accidentally scroll slightly right or left, that the app moves me to another student, and my long comment is lost. I have to go back and rewrite it. I can’t tell you how many times that has happened and it just doubles my work every time. I really would rather it take a little more effort to get from one student to another if it would mean I’m not having to rewrite my comments so often. Thanks for considering that tweak, Canvas!

My course is structured around many team project submissions. When I select an assignment for grading, as I expect, I see a graphic with the number of submissions graded, the number in need of grading, and the number not submitted. When I select the middle option, need grading, I get a list of the submissions. When I select team one, I get a Forrest Gump box of chocolates experience—a team submission appears, just not the one I selected. So I select done, and try another submission. Same issue, the same team submission reappears—again, not the one I selected. So I give in and grade the random submission. I click done, and note it is off the needs grading list. I select another submission and get the same submission I just graded, only this time without a grade. Darn. I click done and then back to the assignment submission summary. I note that one assignment is showing up as graded. I click on it, confirm it is the random submission I graded previously. I open it and confirm it has a grade. Click done, go back to summary, click on needs grading, select a submission, and now I either get a new random submission to grade OR the original random submission reappears—without a grade... this is not acceptable. The system worked fine 2 weeks ago and is now squirrelly. The iPad makes marking up reports so easy, but this is defeated if I can’t access the submission I want to grade!

I use the Canvas app exclusively for Speedgrader since everything else is easier to do by computer. I noticed that it was often failing to save the last annotations or erasures I made on papers. This would be an understandable bug, especially given the sudden demands of the pandemic, but six months after my initial report it still hasn’t been fixed. Much worse is the constant gaslighting along the way by Instructure support: for example, they said they had never heard of the problem and tried to claim it was the fault of my network connection when six different members of my department (everyone who has used it, on many different networks including our very fast one on campus — as well as other reviewers here) see the same problem. They claimed it was a problem with the Apple Pencil (what else would I use?) and said they couldn’t obtain one for testing. I’ve sent them samples and recorded multiple videos showing the problem but then weeks go by and once I do hear from them it’s back to square one.

Update: my campus Instructure liaison has told me this will not be fixed. Apparently data corruption is considered acceptable. Don’t make the mistake we did of getting locked into this platform — find a different LMS provider!

I wish you updated teacher-friendly features on here. However, this app paired with book widgets allows me to grade French and Spanish worksheets so much faster and have self checking assignments for distance learning. We have it set to sync to infinite campus so s lot of data entry is accurately and reliably done for you. This is the first time in years and years that part of my workload was LESSENED! Such a time saver. It is so much easier to track kids’ work patterns. I spend time helping, not repeatedly grading the same answers on fill in the blank activities. I wish the Quiz portion of the app were more flexible. That part needs improvement to aide in engagement and making the kinds of paper and digital quizzes I make. It is far behind on that front but thankfully allows other software access. Zero regrets. I highly recommend the app to my students. It is very user friendly for distance learners.

This app is a disaster, and even worse than the SpeedGrader which I am happy to say I still have in this iPad. 1. I teach by Module. Each Module has supporting material as well as the week’s assignment. Why then is there no Module I can work with in the sidebar? This I’m guessing is why my students rarely do their reading or video assignments — they seem to be unaware of them if they are using the app. PLEASE ADD MODULES TO THE APPS. 2. Where is my custom Dashboard with my system of colours that allows me to instantly recognise which class is which? 3. I am constantly losing sentences I have carefully constructed for my students as commentary on their work. Where are they going? Sometimes I want to copy something from another student’s comment field and when I come back my current comments are gone. How about a clipboard feature inside the app so we can save often-used comments, like “Please submit this assignment” and “please read the instructions?” 4. Why couldn’t I see my students’ uploads of .pngs and .jpgs on my new iPhone 8 plus? I teach digital art.I take off so-and-so many points per week late... 5. I like having access to the due date of the assignment (and the parameters) so I can make a wise grading choice. 6. I like the speech-to-text feature but it is a hornet’s nest of, um, hornets.

I have been waiting for the ability to annotate student papers with my Apple Pencil for a long time. I'm so excited about that and it seems to work pretty well. I have lost, though, the ability to leave voice or media comments from my iPad. That is a feature I use with every paper I assign, so I really hope that comes back soon. I also had a hard time getting a grade to save. This particular assignment I was just marking rough drafts as complete or incomplete. I hit the + to add a grade, selected "complete" from the menu, but then had to push the + again to save it. It took me a while to figure out why nothing was saving. It seemed a little awkward. I like the direction this app is going, but I had to go back and reinstall the old SpeedGrader app in order to accomplish what I needed to get done. EDIT AFTER SOME MORE USE: I also realized after grading a whole batch of essays that some of my handwritten annotations are missing! There are times when only a few words of a whole sentence are there when I go back in or when students look on their end. NO!! Waste of time!!

There are so many odd quirks with this application that it makes you wonder. They apparently have developed the whole app without access to iPad and Apple Pencil - this has been born out when I’ve called support and the people that answer the phone have stated that they’ve never used an Apple Pencil and can’t understand my complaints. For example, the engineers decided on a 2.0pt stroke for the pencil when grading assignments and the default can not be changed. As you scroll through each assignment you have to select the width you want; it doesn’t even remember your selection during a session! Not that big of a deal, but annoying. (The default used to be 1.0pt, but some developer changed it without providing an option to set your own default!) This tells me that the most important users in the Canvas universe are the programmers.

Overall, the app works about 80% well and they have no interest in making it better. Like google, Canvas is satisfied with mediocrity. Too bad.