After about 10 years since my first online class offering (it was an option in a lecture class), I have finally come to the point where I now teach all of my university classes online (using the WebCT-Vista class shell). If students are late on an assignment, I require some form of written proof of their reason for being late (such as a note from a doctor, or the program from a grandparent's funeral). The most common way that they get this to me is by fax, though I do tell them that it would be OK to take a digital photo and send that.
Well, Scanr.com offers a kind of hybrid photo-fax service that some students might find useful. With this free service, students can take a digital photograph (min. 1.3 megapixels) of a document and email it to Scanr.com. Scanr.com will then process the image to enhance its sharpness and contrast, and email it back to the sender as a .PDF format file that looks a lot like a good quality black and white fax. The student can then forward the email to the instructor.
There is also a "Whiteboard" format, which is intended for copying material on a white board in the same way, but which also provides a color option. Scanr.com also has a Windows Mobile 5.0 application, but I could not get it to work on my Verizon Audioxov XV6700.
Apparently they also "tags documents with extracted keywords", though I did not try that and I am not sure just what use it would be.
Of course there are other potential educational uses of this alternative fax service beyond submitting excuses for late assignments. For me personally, it would still easier to take a photo with a digital camera, process it myself, and just send that. I will grant that Scanr.com could work better for those who think more in terms of traditional "Faxing" or are uncomfortable with photo editing software.
(Actually, if the Windows Mobile 5 application worked, I could imagine myself using that from time to time.)
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