Kami for Teachers

Kami turns a plain PDF into something you and your students can actively work on together — highlighting, drawing, adding text, and leaving comments directly on the page. It's especially useful for going over worksheets with a class, giving feedback on student work, or recording a walkthrough of a lesson using a PDF as the backdrop.

Why use this tool?

Kami's annotation toolkit covers most of what you'd want to do when marking up a document: highlighting in multiple colors, drawing freeform lines or shapes, underlining, striking through text, adding movable text boxes for typed answers, and leaving written or voice comments. It remembers work you've already done on a file, so returning to a PDF later picks up right where you left off.

It also supports collaboration. Share a document link with a student — whether it lives in your Google Drive, OneDrive, or Kami library — and you can both work on it and comment on it at the same time. That makes it useful not just for presenting material, but for giving feedback directly on a student's own work.

Paired with a screen recording tool like Loom, Kami becomes a simple way to record a full lesson walkthrough: annotate a worksheet live while narrating, and students can follow along with both the audio and the visual markup afterward.

How to use it

1. Create a free account. Sign up using Gmail or another supported account.
2. Open or upload a document. Choose to open a file from Google Drive or OneDrive, upload one from your computer, pick something from your Kami library, start from a blank page, or pull a file in from Google Classroom.
3. Choose your annotation tool. Use the highlighter (in any color) to mark up key text, draw freeform lines or shapes to circle or map out ideas, underline important parts, or strike through anything you want to eliminate.
4. Add text where needed. Use the text tool to type in an answer or note directly on the page — the text box can be moved around after it's added.
5. Add comments. Use the comment tool to leave written feedback (or a voice comment, on paid plans) directly on the document — useful for giving feedback on student work.
6. Save or share the file. Save your changes to Google Drive, OneDrive, or your Kami library, and share a link with students so you can both view or edit the same document.

Note: the eraser tool removes drawings but doesn't undo highlighter marks — to remove a highlight, you'll likely need to reapply the highlighter tool over the same area.