Camera marking for printed worksheets is open as a test release

Earlier this month I wrote that I was building a way to mark a printed worksheet just by photographing it. It's now open to everyone as a test release. That doesn't mean it's finished — it's at the stage where I improve it while people use it.

How it works

Your child writes their answers on a printed worksheet, and you photograph it on the diglabo site. The QR code in the corner identifies which worksheet it is, so there's nothing to select — no grade, no topic. Circles, crosses and a score appear on screen. There's no app to install.

The marking is finished the moment you take the photo. It's there to remove the time spent checking answers one problem at a time against the answer page.

It does misread

Let me be straight about this. Reading handwritten digits isn't perfect. In my own checks it misreads one or two problems in a hundred. A 0 read as a 6, a decimal point dropped — that's roughly what's left.

There's something else I didn't know until I built it: it reads erased pencil marks as answers. When enough of the mark is left that a person could still read it, the machine treats it as the answer. I spent a long time trying to clean those marks out of the image, and so far I haven't solved it.

So instead, any box that was read wrong can be fixed on the spot. The score is recalculated immediately. If a cross appears but your child's answer was right, please correct it.

What happens to the photo

As I promised last time, the handling is now written into the privacy policy. Photos are stored on diglabo's servers and deleted automatically after 90 days. If you'd rather not wait, you can delete them yourself from the marking history screen.

What's next

I've called it a test release because both the reading accuracy and the screen you see after marking are still things I intend to work on.

I'll keep measuring accuracy against sheets that are actually used, and raise it from there. Every misread you correct is a clue for that. The screen side, including how results are shown, will keep changing bit by bit.

The feature works the same way in all five languages. Units and layout do differ by language, so if a sheet won't read properly, please tell me through the contact form.