SmartPaper

For high school and college teachers

Keep the paper.
Lose the grading.

Students write by hand. You photograph the stack. Scores come back as suggestions you approve.

Print your first quizWatch it grade a page

Free for paper quizzes. No student accounts.

A printed quiz, Friday reading check: The Last Bookmobile, filled in by hand by Amelia Thomas: two ticked multiple-choice answers and two written answers.
Tap the paper to grade it

Proven at the scale of a state

The same technology already reads the paper of a whole state in India.

A teacher walks between rows of desks in a government school classroom in India, handing out paper worksheets.
A government school classroom in India on a worksheet day. Photo: EdOptimize.
13 millionworksheets scanned in five days, in a statewide assessment entered in the World Book of RecordsSource: MIT Solve; Free Press Journal115 millionworksheets graded in Rajasthan's public schoolsSource: HundrED65,000public schools where nearly 5 million students' paper work is read this waySource: HundrED2 millionhouseholds, mostly low-income, that receive a report card built from those sheetsSource: HundrED

Recognized by

Why paper, now

Paper is a choice again.

Students have laptops. Teachers are moving quizzes back to paper anyway.

01A pen lying on a quiz sheet at the end of a fresh line of handwriting, mid-word.

Handwriting can't be pasted.

What a student writes in class, in their own hand, is theirs. We make it as quick to grade as a form.

02A classroom from above: rows of desks, each with a sheet of paper and a pencil; a basket of phones by the door.

No screens for students.

No accounts, no logins, no devices in the room. Students write. The app is yours.

03A teacher at the kitchen table late at night beside a tall stack of papers, an amber pen and a cold coffee.

Grading is what wears you down.

Thirty papers, the same comment thirty times. Now a suggestion you accept with a tap. The judgement stays yours.

How it works

Three moments in your week.

A legal pad with quiz questions half-written and a pen resting on it, a closed laptop beside it.1

Make the quiz.

Laptop. Sunday night. Twenty minutes.

Type the questions, mark the answers, print. Each sheet carries a corner code and a name box.

The printed quiz sheet SmartPaper generates: target marks in the corners, a name and student ID line, a total box, tick boxes and ruled answer boxes.
A phone held above a stack of quizzes, the top sheet framed in its viewfinder.2

Scan the stack.

Phone. Between periods. Four minutes.

Hold your phone over the pile. Each page is captured, matched to a name and graded while you walk to class.

8 of 28

1 needs a name · fix later

A student's handwritten answer with an amber check mark and two small tap marks beside it.3

See what happened.

iPad or laptop. Saturday coffee. Fifteen minutes.

Who's done, who's missing, which question fell apart. Open a student: their handwriting beside a suggested score. Accept or change. Export.

The student's handwritten name as scannedmatched to roster · Question 3 · 3 points

Her answer

Handwritten answer: t = -b/2a = -40 / (2 x -16) = 1.25 s; h(1.25) = -25 + 50 + 6 = 31 ft

Feedback, in your voice

Right on the vertex, Emma, and you checked that it's a maximum. Next time say why you used −b/2a.

Suggested

3/ 3
confident
  • ✓ t = 1.25 s
  • ✓ h = 31 ft
  • ✓ notes a < 0
AcceptChange

You stay the grader

We suggest.
You decide.

A pen hovering over a student's handwritten answer, its nib by the margin where a suggested score of 4 out of 5 waits.
  • Every score is a suggestion.
  • The handwriting is always bigger than the suggestion.
  • Accept with a tap, or change it.
  • Only what you approve reaches the gradebook.

Who it is for

Clear the deck for the work that matters.

In a project-based school the quiz is the small part. Take it off your weekend.

An exhibition of learning: students standing beside their work on the wall, families looking, a teacher at the back.
High school
Exit tickets, chapter quizzes, unit tests. Scores go into your gradebook file for Canvas, Schoology or PowerSchool, or by last name for Google Classroom.
College
Blue books for sections of 60 to 300. One rubric, every TA. Graded by Monday.
A SmartPaper answer sheet: a numbered grid of tick boxes for a separate question paper.
Answer sheet, for a test you already have.
A SmartPaper free-response page: a numbered question, a points box, and a ruled answer box with room to keep writing.
Free response, with a rubric per question.

The evidence

Handwriting is not nostalgia.

A fountain pen whose ink trail branches into a network of connected nodes.

Students who took notes by hand showed better conceptual understanding than those who typed, even when the typists wrote more.

Mueller & Oppenheimer, Psychological Science, 2014

Across dozens of studies, reading comprehension was reliably higher on paper than on screens, and the gap has not closed with newer devices.

Delgado, Vargas, Ackerman & Salmerón, Educational Research Review, 2018

Writing by hand produced far more widespread brain connectivity in the patterns associated with learning and memory than typing the same words.

Van der Weel & Van der Meer, Frontiers in Psychology, 2024

Built to be trusted

Four things a district asks first.

Built on Smart Paper by EdOptimize: 110 million pages graded in 65 countries. Rebuilt for US classrooms.

A filing cabinet with a US map on the top drawer and a single amber key resting on top.
Data stays in the US.
Scans, scores and rosters, US regions only.
Students have no account.
Nothing to sign up for, nothing to sign away.
FERPA and state law, by default.
FERPA, New York Ed Law 2-d, California SOPIPA. No advertising.
Your data leaves when you say.
Export as CSV or PDF any time. Delete anything and it is gone.

Pricing

Paper is free.
Handwriting is the plan.

Paper quizzes and multiple-choice grading cost nothing. Pay when we read handwriting for you.

Full pricing and questions

Free

$0

forever, per teacher

Unlimited quizzes, classes and students. Printable sheets. Multiple-choice grading. CSV export.

Teacher

$12

per month

Everything in Free, plus handwritten answers read and scored against your key or rubric, with feedback in your voice.

Print one quiz this week.

If it doesn't give you back an evening, you've lost a sheet of paper.

Print your first quizSee pricing
A quiz sheet with corner codes sliding out of a printer, its corner curling.