January 2026 Edtech Tips

Adobe Express

Animate characters project.mp4

My current favorite tool that you and your students have access to is Adobe Express. It’s packed with easy-to-use, ready-to-go tools that make creative tech use actually doable. Students should be creating with technology, not just consuming it, and this platform makes that happen. It’s a go-to space for students to show what they know in creative, meaningful ways.

There are oodles of ready-to-use templates you can tweak and roll out with students to help them get started, stay focused, or avoid the dreaded blank page. The best part? You can create a class, assign a template, and have students complete and submit it all in the same tool. One stop. No chaos. Easy peasy.

Check out Animate a Character; it’s a powerhouse for creativity.

Knowt

Knowt is an AI-powered learning and assessment platform designed for both teachers and students. It focuses on helping you turn content into interactive study and teaching tools. You can play all of the games right within Knowt with just a class code.

With Knowt you can:

Automatically generate flashcards, notes, quizzes, and practice tests from any text or file.
Assign those materials directly to students and track their progress.... all within the AI tool.
Let students interact with AI study tools like learn mode, spaced repetition, and games.
Create AI chat activities (e.g., students “chatting” with historical figures or tackling prompts).
Upload PDFs, videos, recordings, etc., and instantly turn them into usable content.

Knowt blends content creation and student engagement , with assessments built right in.

I love the "Podcast Generator" because you can set the tone! Check out this one about the major themes in Charlotte's Web. I set the tone to "gossipy". What an attention getter for your students!

Meet Kami - Your Paperless Teaching Sidekick

Still wondering how to put Kami to work in your classroom? Think of Kami as the tool that turns anything into an interactive, digital learning experience. Upload a reading, worksheet, graphic organizer; if it exists, Kami can digitize it. Students can then highlight, annotate, draw, comment, and show their thinking right on the document using built-in tools.

Even better, Kami plays nicely with Canvas. Attach an assignment, and students can submit their work with one click...easy for them, even easier for you.

Kami also shines when it comes to student support. It includes tools like a dictionary, translation, text-to-speech, and features to explain or summarize text. These supports boost accessibility, help diverse learners, and encourage independence.

On top of all that, Kami offers hundreds of ready-made templates you can use as is or adapt for your lessons. And since the district already pays for Kami, you have access to everything!

You can find Kami in your browser extensions or head to kamiapp.com to get started. Or reach out to me and I will help you utilize kami in whatever way you envision.

Want to sync your Canvas grades to Powerschool Gradebook?

1) Make sure your assignment categories in Canvas are named the same as the ones in Powerschool. Exactly the same.

2) In assignments in Canvas, click the three dots and then click sync SIS categories. Match the Canvas category to the appropriate powerschool category. Then click Sync Categories.

3) It will sync nightly. Or you can force a sync, by clicking on grades in Canvas, and then clicking the sync button at the top.

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