In an ideal world, every teacher would have whatever they needed to get all of their teaching accomplished in a fun and efficient way. But in the Real World (and not the old MTV show variety), not every classroom comes equipped with the newest and greatest of technologies.
So when an opportunity comes along to bring you a classroom tool that uses something you probably already have, we’re all over it. For those of you who don’t have a document scanner, CamScanner is a way to use your smartphone as a scanner.
Since it is an app for your smartphone (available on Android and iOS), it’s also a great way to have a scanner on the go which would be useful for field trips and other out-of-the-classroom adventures.
How It Works
It’s pretty simple:
- Download the app. You can choose the Free or Pro version. (The free version has ads and shows a watermark saying “Generated by CamScanner”, shows ads, and Airprint is not available. In the Pro version, there are no restrictions).
- Next, you can either select a photo from your camera roll or take a new photo. If you take a new photo, you can take a number of them in quick succession, which would be useful if you’re scanning a multiple page document.
- Once your photo is chosen, you’ll edit it to your liking/needs. This can include cropping, rotating, colors, contrast, etc.
- From there, you can save, export, send, or fax your file.
How CamScanner Is Useful For Teachers
- Scanning on-the-go or in a classroom that isn’t equipped with a scanner lets you, your students, and parents have access to otherwise non-digital documents.
- You and your students can scan their work, whiteboards, presentations, or information from outside the classroom and organize it into a document/PDF for reading/studying later on.
- You can easily scan work or important classroom information to get it to parents and students.
- You can upload easily to Dropbox, GoogleDocs, Evernote, etc, so it is easy to organize classroom materials with the tools you already use.
