Wanna Copy and Paste from a PDF? Kami to the Rescue!

 

To quote Peter Griffin, "You know what really grinds my gears?", not being able to copy and paste from a PDF. Many times, we teachers are given resources in PDF form. When we go to adapt it for how we plan to teach, trying to copy and paste content from PDFs can be problematic. The same is true for students. 

This school year, in teaching history, I placed a greater emphasis on having students cite quotes and textual evidence from primary sources. More often than not, the primary sources were sent to students as a PDF file. Students complained how problematic it was to tab switch or try to memorize text when quoting a source. 

One way to alleviate this annoying pain point, for both teachers and students, is to use OCR technology? OCR stands for optical character recognition. This gives you the ability to pull text from an image and make it editable. Most PDF files are scanned images of text. OCR can make the text of a scanned PDF editable. For teachers and students who want to copy and paste snippets of text from a PDF, they can use the OCR function built in to Kami. This function is available in the free version of Kami as well as paid.

Start by opening a PDF either in Google Drive or Google Classroom. Click the Open with button. In the drop down menu that appears, click Annotate with Kami.

When the PDF opens up in Kami, in the top right corner, click the "hamburger" or three lines menu. In the drop down that appears, click OCR For Scanned PDFs. 

Give it a minute to process. At the bottom of the page, you'll see a small pop up saying Running OCR. The page will reload when it's finished running.

When the page reloads, using the Kami Select tool (found on the top of the left side toolbar), select a snippet of text just as you would on a web page or Google Doc. Right click in the selected area and click Copy. You can then paste the snippet of text anywhere you need to use it. 

Teachers! The next time you get some great PDF resources from a PD or workshop and want to use that information in planning a lesson, be sure to rock the OCR function in Kami. Show your students this skill to help them identify textual evidence as part of a lesson and or writing process. How will you use the Kami OCR function?

If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Chat at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. My book, The Complete EdTech Coach: An Organic Approach to Digital Learning, co-authored with my wife Katherine Goyette is now available on Amazon. Click here to purchase. It is published by Dave Burgess Publishing. Be sure to follow the hashtag #OrganicEdTech and #CVTechTalk for updates.

Immersive Reader, PDFs, Google Drive, Kami and Translation of Text

 

On February 5th, I wrote a blog post about how to use Microsoft's Immersive Reader to translate text for English learners and how you can record the "read aloud" as a video for kids as a scaffold. If you are having students read text online via Google Chrome, this works great, but what if you have text saved as a PDF in your Google Drive? In that situation, you cannot select text on a PDF when viewing via Google Drive.

To use Immersive Reader to translate and read aloud PDF text in Google Drive, you will need to open the PDF first in Kami.

With your PDF file open, hover over the text to make the Open with button appear. Click it and select Annotate with Kami in the dropdown menu.

When the PDF processes and opens in Kami, you will have two options. If, on the top right, you see an option to Run OCR, click it. Running OCR will allow you to select text on the PDF like you do when reading text on a website or on Google Docs. 

If the Run OCR button didn't appear automatically when the PDF opens in Kami, click the "hamburger menu" (three stacked lines) in the top right corner. In the dropdown menu, select OCR For Scanned PDFs. 

When OCR is finished running, you will be able to use your cursor to select text. With the text selected, right click anywhere in the selected text. In the menu that appears, click Help me read this. This will open Immersive Reader.

As explained in my blogpost from February 5th, Immersive Reader will appear and there will be a Play button that will read the selected text aloud.

If you want a translated read aloud, click the "open book" button in the top right corner. In the menu that appears, select your desired language. Turn on the switch for Document.

Immersive Reader is such a great tool for English learners. One way I've used it is to record the read aloud in another language  so they can read and hear the content in that language and use that to respond to and mark text in English. How might you use Immersive Reader to support English learners? 

If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Chat at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. My book, The Complete EdTech Coach: An Organic Approach to Digital Learning, co-authored with my wife Katherine Goyette is now available on Amazon. Click here to purchase. It is published by Dave Burgess Publishing. Be sure to follow the hashtag #OrganicEdTech and #CVTechTalk for updates.

How To Create a Kami Assignment in Google Classrooom

 

For years, I have championed DocHub as a free tool for marking PDFs in Google Drive and Google Classroom. Kami was been around for a while now and is an alternative to DocHub and is generally liked by most people who use it. Both perform a similar role as well as integrate with Google Classroom. Though a Doc Hub fan, I would encourage people to use Kami if that is what they prefer. If interested in taking a look at Kami, take a look at the steps below for creating a Kami assignment within Google Classroom. Click here to add the Kami Chrome extension to your browser.

Step 1: In the Google Classroom Create button, select Kami assignment. If you don't see this as option, notify whoever is in charge of your GSuite domain and ask them to push the Kami app to teacher and student accounts.

Step 2: Wait for the Kami assignment window to pop up.

Step 3: Select the Classroom into which you want this Assignment to be assigned.

Step 4: Select which students within that Google Classroom you want to be able to access the Assignment.

Step 5: Decide whether or not you want this Assignment to be published immediately or save as a draft to be edited and or published later.

Step 6: Add your title and instructions. Then click the Google Drive button at the bottom left to add a PDF file from Drive. You have the option of clicking the "paperclip" to attach a PDF saved on your computer.

Step 7: Search Drive (or your computer's files) for the PDF file. you want to attach and have students mark using Kami.

Step 8: Before clicking Assign, determine whether or not you want to check the box that says "Send Kami instructions to students". This will attach an extra document to the assignment that students can read to learn how to mark the text with Kami and turn in to Google Classroom. This is optional for you, the teacher.

Step 9: Click Open in Classroom to view the Kami assignment in Google Classroom.

Step 10: Review your Kami assignment and make sure you've set it up the way you want. If you want to edit, click the three dots in the top right corner of the assignment and select Edit. 

The video below shows you step by step how to set up everything shown in this blog post. 

If you have any questions and would like a follow up, contact me via Gmail or Hangouts at ajuarez@techcoachjuarez.com. If you would like to unsubscribe from this blog, go to bit.ly/tcjinbox.