Teacher Tools: How to grade art digitally and save yourself from the piles of artwork

I don’t think I’ve ever met a teacher that says, “I love grading,” but it can be especially taxing on art teachers. Not only do you often have 10,000 students, but the work can be big, oddly shaped, fragile, and HEAVY. My students turn everything in digitally which allows me to grade from anywhere without carting piles of work around with me, and it becomes a wonderful tool for collecting data and showing student growth.

I know, I know, I lost you when I said the word DATA, but really, you’ll see, it’s kind of cool, and it will make your life easier. Think, when parents ask you about how in the whole wide world did their child get a D, you can show them. You can show them the work, the rubric, the student’s reflection, your feedback, YOU CAN SHOW THEM EVERYTHING, instead of standing there and saying, I think that the piece is now in the trash, and well I gave the rubric back, so I don’t really have that anymore.

Here’s how we do it.