How do you annotate student writing? Exploring solutions for Haiku and iPad Apps

This post focuses entirely on the challenges and possibilities for annotating on the iPad in both the Haiku and iPad app environment. As an English teacher, this is a central and regular task for receiving, annotating, grading, and returning student work--so developing workable solutions for this aspect of my job is a strong priority.

Before iPads:

• Student work was paperless on Haiku
• Annotations were added using Haiku's somewhat awkward annotation system
• Annotated and graded student writing were returned via Haiku
• The interface was a PC (keyboard, mouse, etc)
• Advantages of Haiku annotations
• I type faster and far clearer than I hand-write
• I enjoy the centralized aspect of Haiku grading. All feedback is kept in the assignment gradebook, and all grades on each assignment are automatically inputted into my Haiku gradebook.
• Haiku annotations seem faster than downloading and/or printing work and grading through a different medium (word's track comments, hand grading/scanning/uploading, etc.)
• Disadvantages:
• Haiku grading is slow--it is not, in any form, a track comments interface. I don't quite understand why this must be the case, but one must click on an assignment, click on a student, and then click to annotate/grade. Then, once grading, one has to click on the pdf and insert each comment as a little "notch" in the document. 
• Visually, Haiku annotation is unconventional and generally misaligned with general teacher goals and processes: it doesn't offer a clear path for simplifying or encoding comments without even more clicking.
• For students, Haiku annotations are difficult to view unless they download the document as a pdf and then open it in a pdf reader

Basically, Haiku is the most efficient way, but it is the most work-intensive and least logical and aesthetically pleasing medium for teachers to generate and students to access. Given the disadvantages, I'm excited to explore alternatives for the ipad. I've found a handful of free apps that allow for easy annotations on pdf docs. Here's what I've found:

• TinyPDF: an excellent medium for easily downloading from Haiku, scrawling or typing on a pdf, and then sending it back through the Haiku dropbox.
• Textilus: a far more limited app for annotating (in its free version) that has comparable functionality as TinyPDF.

I tried both for annotating student work. And then I realized: I gave up on writing on student papers years ago. It's too work intensive to scrawl tailored comments, and I have terrible hand-writing. I embraced Haiku's annotation system for this very reason. Sure, I could type comments on a pdf in either app, but I might as well just use Haiku's integrated interface to accomplish that. 

What I'd like to do next is explore an app that is built to for teachers' annotations of student writing, something that mimics, in some way, a more robust track comments environment--or that at least has a clear library of pre-set and standardized comments. 

Again, the biggest issue for an English teacher is time. Teachers want to give meaningful feedback, but with 80 student papers, they can't afford to spend time downloading, uploading, and dealing with the glitches or quirks of an annotation environment (it's likely for this reason that many teachers still stick with the paper and pen model!). Haiku is still the most efficient model for me, the grader, even if it is the clunkiest visual model for students. I also have a hunch that I should be harnessing Haiku's integration of turnitin.com for turnitin's built-in rubric features--this may kill 2 birds with one stone, too. 

Next Steps:

• Explore turnitin.com rubrics feature for standards-based grading (right now I design my own rubrics for each assignment and then paste the rubric into each comments section on Haiku)
• Explore apps designed for annotating and grading that aren't just the free ones available in itunes. At first glance
• TagNotate: Allows for annotation and assigned tags (removes need to rewrite "comma splice")
• PDFReader: This might just work--it has fantastic features: drag over text (for highlight, underline, squiggly one, cross out), voice comments, and easy bubble comments. I'm especially interested in trialing spoken comments this year, as I think that may, in fact, be the most efficient and meaningful way to give student feedback.
• GoodReader: A fun interface that allows for multiple forms of annotation types (this seems to be its particular strength)
• Readers, what annotation apps do you use in your English classrooms? Again, please offer apps that streamline student feedback in a meaningful way--and that reduce teacher redundancy and maximize teacher efficiency and productivity.