Don’t get me wrong. I love PDFs. They are versatile, easily downloadable, and pretty darn useful. However, the one thing that gets to me is a beautiful PDF activity for my classroom that I can only print and have my students use with a writing utensil. Enter: DocHub.
I like DocHub because it is a Chrome extension I can have my students sign-up for with their school Google accounts (Hello, no forgotten user names or passwords). Then, with a few clicks, we can add text boxes, highlight text, annotate, and take notes right on the PDF.
DocHub is free to use with paid upgrades. For example, the highlighter is only available in yellow unless upgraded to Pro. Also, the account is limited to 2000 viewed and edited documents and five signed documents per month. The details can be found at this link.
After uploading the PDF to Google Drive (or adding to Google Classroom for students, or sharing), click to open the PDF. Generally, it will look like this:
Click on the Open With down arrow and then select DocHub:
The PDF will open in the DocHub app and will be editable.
Text boxes, marking with a pen, marking with a highlighter, adding notes, adding images, and more are available through Doc Hub.
Click on the text tool and then click on the area desired to create a text box and type in the box.
Mark the text with several different colors of pen or a yellow highlighter. This is especially helpful when annotating text. Here, I underlined the rhyme scheme:
Comments can be easily added to the PDF by clicking the comment tool and then click where the comment applies. A sticky note will be on the PDF with the comment off to the side.
Finally, the edited PDF can be directly downloaded to a computer, Google Drive, G-Mail, Google Classroom, Dropbox, or One Drive.
Thanks to DocHub, I am able to keep my classroom mostly paperless. I did need to spend about fifteen to twenty minutes teaching my students how to upload a PDF and use DocHub and then how to download the edited PDF to Classroom. One segment of a class period is worth it when I consider how many times we will be using PDFs for close reading in my literature classes.
Questions? Comments? Let me know by adding them below.
Right Click Classroom 