FTT - Annotate PDFs and So Much More. It's the Magic of Kami!

Annotate PDFs And So Much More

It's The Magic Of Kami

 @LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Back in the 2014-2015 school year I visited a middle school classroom for students with disabilities. The 8th grade students were coming to high school the next year and the staff were very excited to show off how they were using technology in the classroom. They had ipads for each student and were thrilled to showcase their use. When I got to the classroom there was a lot of fanfare about the ipad use. There were posters on the wall about how to care for the devices. There was a giant cart for charging them. There was a schedule on the wall indicating the plans for the day including "break time". The lesson involved the students reading pdfs on the ipads and then answering verbal questions from the teacher. When break time came, the students all excitedly played games on the ipads. The teacher proceeded to tell me how much the students enjoy having the devices in class. 

Even back in 2014 I remember being unimpressed. Giving students ipads to read on was not exactly going to make the reading more engaging and it certainly was not going to impact their reading comprehension. What the students really enjoyed was the games on the ipads, because there was some interaction there. The break time could have been used to play a game in the classroom that involved some human interaction. There has got to be a way for students to interact with the text, right?

How to interact with pdfs continues to be a common question that I get.  There are lots of reasons to digitize our print materials, primarily for accessibility purposes, but it's 2023 and we want more than just having students reading pdfs.

Kami is a chrome extension that provides tools and features that allow you and your students to easily interact with pdfs. It was developed in Aotearoa, New Zealand by four university students who wanted to streamline their note-taking. Kami has received many accolades over the past 2 years and are really being noticed on the edtech scene. This is for good reason, Kami is easy to use, and the tools really can level the playing field for many of our students who struggle in school. 

Kami lets you and your students annotate, highlight, draw on, and comment on pdfs. There is also a library of templates within Kami that you can customize and use. Students can work together to collaborate on the templates, or any file you share within Kami. The list of tools that you have available to you in Kami is long, giving many options for students to interact with digital text. 

We currently have a trial of the pro version of Kami. But even before we had premium access I had been using the free version as it is robust on its own. Here is a list of the features and tools that are included at each level. Since we have the premium access, let's take advantage of it and give it a try. 

Getting Started With Kami: 

You and your students can access Kami by downloading the chrome extension which you can access here, or by going to Kamiapp.com. Kami saves and works seamlessly with Google drive. I know that it can look and feel overwhelming to try a new tool in your classes. When you use Kami you don't need to worry because there are built in supports including a tour of the dashboard and short tutorials. Kami files are available even when you and your students are offline so if the internet goes out you are still able to access and work on those files. 

The Dashboard:

Take a look at the screenshot of my Kami dashboard. It is uncomplicated and straightforward. 

•  If you have files saved on your Google drive or your computer, you can just click where it says- open file. 
• You also have the ability to create your own by starting with a blank page in Kami.
• If you have a file that you are unable to edit, the text recognition tool will scan your file and make it possible for you to edit. There is also a split and merge tool that allows you to separate files or combine multiple files into one. 

Here is a two minute video tour of the Kami dashboard.

With premium access, Kami integrates nicely with Schoology. You can assign through the Kami app in Schoology and your students can turn in their work to you after they have used Kami on their files. Here is a short video showing how it works.

Start With A Template: 

I am a huge fan of starting with a template whenever it's available to me. I can easily customize something that is already created and for me it's much faster than starting with a blank page. Take a look at the Kami template library and you will see that you can easily filter the templates by grade level, subject, or file type: brain breaks, diagrams, activities, etc. They even have templates made for your students to learn how to use and explore the tools in Kami. 

I especially like this hexagonal thinking template. It prompts students to use the voice comment tool to explain the connections they create. This is a wonderful formative tool. It can also be used collaboratively if you have your students work in groups.

There are lots of templates for note-taking, graphic organizers for pre-writing, diagrams, timelines, charts, and comic strips. From the Kami dashboard, just click on template library to see what is there. You could even allow your students to choose the template that they think most appropriate for their work. Hearing their reasoning could be a wonderful insight into their understanding.

How will you use Kami? Want some help getting started? Feel free to reach out. I'm always happy to help.

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