Simple Feedback

Marking a class set on an iPad should feel like marking on paper. 

Simple Feedback is built around the way marking actually goes: you get a folder of student work, you go through it one piece at a time with a pencil in your hand, and you hand it back.

SET UP A TASK IN A MINUTE

Name the task, add the student documents from Files or from Google Drive, and — if you use one — choose a marking rubric. The rubric is placed on the front of every student's document, so the criteria are always on the page beside the work you are marking. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are turned into PDFs as they arrive, and you can drag PDFs straight in from Files or from another app alongside you.

MARK THE WAY YOU MARK ON PAPER

A full pencil toolset comes across from the Simple suite: pens, pencils, markers and highlighters with real pressure and tilt, a colour picker, an eyedropper for matching a colour already on the page, paint fill, and both a pixel eraser and an object eraser. Lasso a comment to move, resize, rotate, duplicate or delete it. The Pencil draws anywhere on the page with no dead margin, while a finger scrolls, and if your iPad has no Pencil, you can turn on drawing with a finger.

THE TOOLS GET OUT OF THE WAY

One document fills the screen. The toolbars fade out while you are marking or reading, and come back with a tap. No tabs to manage, no panels eating the page.

MOVE THROUGH THE CLASS WITHOUT LEAVING THE PAGE

The document roller sits in the top bar: tap it, scroll to the next student, release. Your work is saved before the next document opens — and again on a timer, and again when you leave the app.

WRITE A COMMENT ONCE, USE IT ALL SET

Lasso something you have written — a tick, "explain your reasoning", a worked correction — and add it to that task's Library. Tap it or drag it onto any other document to place it, then resize it to fit. It arrives as real ink, not a flattened picture, so you can still erase a word or add to it.

THE STUDENT'S NAME GOES ON THE FILE

Tap the name button and type the student's name. The PDF itself is renamed, so the name carries through to your export, your Files app and your LMS.

YOUR MARKS ARE ORDINARY PDF INK

This is the part that matters when the work leaves the iPad. Annotations are written into the PDF as standard ink, so a parent opening it in Preview, a student opening it in Chrome, and your school's LMS all see exactly what you drew. There is no sidecar file, no "best viewed in", nothing to flatten. Open the same PDF again in Simple Feedback and every stroke is still live ink you can rub out, move or write over, with your pressure intact.

HAND THE WORK BACK

Export a whole task and each student gets their own PDF — never one merged file to split up again at the other end. Send them through the share sheet to Files, Mail or AirDrop, or drag a single document straight out of the app and into your LMS in Split View.

ON THE IPAD, AND ON THE IPAD ONLY

Student work stays in the app on your iPad. There is no account to create, no cloud service behind it and nothing uploaded anywhere. Signing in to Google Drive is optional and only ever gives the app the files you pick yourself.

Requires iPadOS 26 or later. Designed for iPad with Apple Pencil.