Canvas provides a variety of options to teachers in how they assign documents for their students to complete. One of those options is to assign documents through Kami, which allows students to complete classwork in an easy and reliable way.

What is Kami?

Kami is an online document annotation and markup tool that works the same no matter what device you are on. You can highlight, underline, and strikethrough text in PDF, Word, PowerPoint and other document formats You can also add text boxes, shapes, and images. With Kami, you can easily collaborate on documents in the classroom while avoiding the hassles of printing documents.

Kami sets every student up for success, regardless of ability, by providing inclusive and intuitive tools that support any learning style: 

  • Text-to-speech
  • Voice-typing
  • Freehand drawing
  • Audio and video comments

By empowering students to learn their own way, Kami keeps a class engaged and inspired, whether that’s in-person, remote, or blended.

How to Assign Using Kami in Canvas

Browse to the assignment creation screen as you usually would, and in the ‘Submission Type’ box, choose ‘External Tool’

Click the ‘Find’ button,

And then choose ‘Kami Assignment’:

Choose ‘With Microsoft’ to sign in with your Saratoga Microsoft account

Choose a file using the OneDrive integration shown below. Kami will convert files, so images, office documents, PDFs are all OK.

Check on ‘Enable Real-time Monitoring’ in order to see student work in your Speedreader as students work in their document.

Click Proceed once you have selected a file from OneDrive and you have checked on ‘Enable Real-time Monitoring’.

Choose Select to save the external tool selection. We recommend you choose ‘Load in a new tab’ so your students get a full-screen Kami view.

Opening and turning in an Assignment (Students)

Your students will have either an embedded Kami view or a button to open Kami, if you chose to have them load in a new tab on the previous step. Once they load the file, Kami will automatically create a copy of the file for that student and add it to the OneDrive account of both the teacher and the student.

When the student is finished, they can turn in the file using the button at the top right corner:

Grading responses using Speed Grader (Teacher)

Teachers can see the status and grade their student’s responses using the speed grader tool:

This allows you to give detailed feedback using all the Kami tools while submitting a grade through Canvas.