Kami

This cool tool is an interactive learning platform that enables teachers and students at any stage of their learning journey to collaborate on digital documents and learning resources as they move toward a more hybrid, flexible future. Educators use Kami to increase student engagement, improve learning outcomes, save time, and easily create, distribute, collect, and grade assessments as part of a seamless workflow. Kami enables the use of texts, drawings, images, whiteboards, audio and video screencasting tools to support K-12 education, whether in-person or virtually. It seamlessly integrates with programs educators already use such as Google Classroom, Canvas, Microsoft Teams, and Schoology Learning Management Systems.

Kami was founded in 2013 by final year University of Auckland students, Hengjie Wang, Jordan Thoms, Alliv Samson, and mentor Bob Drummond. After being disappointed by the expensive and unimaginative reliance on printed handouts and seeing students struggle to find a good way to take notes, collaborate and share knowledge, the team decided to create a cloud-based note-taking app to transform the modern classroom.

In 2020 Kami had 5.4 billion pages uploaded, 9.3 billion annotations added to documents, $700 million saved in printing costs, 625 miles of paper saved (if stacked), 625 thousand trees saved by going digital, and 11 tonnes of paper saved if printed. Today, Kami is used by 29 million educators in more than 180 countries looking to improve engagement and collaboration while teaching.

For these reasons and more, Kami was named a Cool Tool (finalist) for “Best Collaboration Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2022 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.