Kami Updates

If you haven’t logged into Kami in a while, you will notice some updates.  Please see their blog post here for all the updates.

Hispanic Heritage Month in Kami

Kami has several templates to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!

Time Saving Tips from Kami

 Kami recently shared this teacher video with suggestions for classroom teachers:

New- the Kami LIbrary

Kami has now introduced new graphic organizers and templates.  Please click here to view.  You can search by grade level and content.  Here are a few screenshots.

Kami Connect- Free PD- 2/26/22

 

Kami Connect is back for 2022! As the world’s biggest virtual EdTech experience, there’ll be no shortage of incredible speakers, hilarious host moments, and most importantly, invaluable insight you can take back to your classrooms – and this year, we’re bringing a celebrity guest 😱 Catch it all (or even just a little) on  February 26, 9 AM PST | 12 PM EST Registrations are free and open now! Sign up to get your link to the conference live stream, plus your Certificate of Attendance after the event.   Click here to register

Student Engagement versus Empowerment

Kami recently hosted a podcast with Adam Bellow (who I met at a DE event years ago and who is now the CEO of Breakout EDU).  In the Teacher-Teacher podcast, Adam shares his views on empowerment and why breakout games foster these behaviors.  Even though we don’t have any of his products, I found the session informative and inspiring.  What’s the one small step you could take today to reach your goal?

Feature Control from Kami

In the past, the only way you could limit student features was via Google Classroom (or your Learning Management System).  With our pending move to OnCourse classroom next year, I was afraid we might lose this option.

Nothing to worry about- Kami has now integrated that feature into their own platform.  Here’s the press release::

Feature Control with Kami

Formerly named “Feature Restrictions”, this tool allows you to pick and choose which tools your students have access to when completing assignments – previously only available through your LMS, it’s now accessible from Kami’s own sharing feature!

Click here for a short video.

Try the new Kami Dashboard

 

Kami has a new dashboard feature- click here to see the details and how you can turn on this Beta feature.

So what is Kami?

If you didn’t explore Kami last year- here’s a quick overview of the features.   Here is the Chrome extension.

All the Kami Updates

Here’s a blog post highlighting the recent Kami workshops.  Ideas for classroom implementation as well as a preview of upcoming features are included.

Kami and the equation editor

I asked Mary Kruh and Lauren Buonpane (both from the high school) to explore the equation feature in Kami.  Below are their comments. If you would like a quick tutorial from Kami, please see the video here.

• The Equation feature is intuitive.
• If you type as you would type in Desmos or as you would type in a message where you did not have math-editing features, it reformatted the equation nicely. For example, I typed "x^2+5x=0" and Kami formatted the equation so the exponent was in the right spot, the variables were italicized, and the spacing was pleasing to the eye.
• For anyone in the math field who has used a Word document to create assignments, Kami's equation editor is very similar.   There are small if any learning curves when it comes to typing equations which is great! 
• For a teacher who teaches higher-level math, when you hit Equation and then the Pi symbol, there are many great options.
• If you hit the integral symbol, it puts in the integral symbol with spaces for the upper and lower bounds.
• If you hit the summation symbol, capital sigma appears with spaces for the upper and lower limits of summation.
• If you hit "log", "log" appears with a space for the base.
• If you hit "lim" for limit, "lim" appears with "n-->∞" underneath, but that can be edited to anything you want.
• The square root and nth root symbols work as expected as does the fraction symbol (horizontal fraction bar). A degree symbol is there, lots of Greek letters, inequality symbols, etc. are there.
• So, while we have not used Kami with my students, we know that the Kami Equation feature seems to be easy to use and has things that would satisfy teachers of higher-level math, too.

Read Across America and Kami!

Beth-Ann Bulla and Lauren Roman used Kami to help their online students share their favorite books!  They shared:

We gave the children this hat as a classwork assignment. Using Kami, they wrote the titles of their two favorite books (not just Dr. Seuss) in the white stripes. The bottom flap was for their name. We found the hat for free online, and added the red using Kami (fun!).

Listen to Gerry

Fast forward to 22 minutes to see Gerry or use the link in the text.

You’ve seen him on YouTube- Gerry  Brooks and his educational philosophies.  This week he presented the keynote at the virtual Kami conference.  Get a coffee or tea, relax, and take 30 minutes to view his presentation. I found his message encouraging and inspiring.  If you use the embedded YouTube video- fast forward to  22 minutes (And then don’t forget to turn off the switch- this will make more sense after you watch his session).  The video is here . I would love to read your takeaways in the comments.