Welcome to episode 7 of Tech Tuesday!
This week I’m focusing on Jamboard, a tool from Google that you’ve probably never heard of, but has the potential for great uses in your classroom. Let’s get started!
So what is Jamboard? It’s Google’s answer to the interactive whiteboard craze, think Smart Board or Promethean and is an actual board you can buy. But the application software is what I want to talk about today, because number one, you can use it without having a board, number 2 it’s free and number 3 it allows for collaboration, and last, because it’s Google….it’s online and can be used anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection.
JAMBOARD FEATURES
You can access Jamboard at jamboard.google.com or go through Drive, click on New>More> and scroll down to find Google Jamboard. There are also apps for your mobile devices, tablets, or Chromebooks that support apps. Today, I’m going to start out using the web version, but also show you the app on my phone.
When you first enter the website, you’ll be in the dashboard area. This is where you’ll create new Jams or see already created ones. To make a new jam, click on the plus sign, in the lower right corner. Then you’ll get a blank page, where you can create lessons, have students share ideas on sticky notes, add images, and have multiple people collaborate on one jam.
On the left side is the navigation panel. Several of these tools have multiple functions when you hold down the icon, such as the first tool. This has a pen, marker, highlighter, and brush with 6 color options. The Chromebook and mobile apps have a couple more tools available.
Here’s a screencast of my phone, which shows the assistive drawing tools. The first allows you to write text and have it automatically change to typed text. The second allows you to draw shapes with the software guessing the shape and draw it more precisely.
Back on our navigation screen on the web version, the next tool is the eraser tool and then the arrow tool, which selects items to move, rotate or expand. The last three icons allow you to add sticky notes, images, and use a laser pointer on the screen to point out specific items. The sticky notes would be great for posing questions or adding directions or comments and feedback to student work. Images work just like in all the other Google apps, allowing you to import from your computer, Drive, and Google Photos or search the web.
Now, the app has one feature I am very envious is not available in the web version.
You can see here on my phone that this plus sign gets me to more content such as taking a picture with my camera or importing pictures from my image library, but it also has the ability to add files from Google Drive. I really, really hope that Google adds this ability to the web version and soon because that would make Jamboard my new favorite Google app, but as it is, it’s kind of a bummer for my high school that uses laptops because it inhibits some of what we can do with the product.
However, it’s an amazing plus for our elementary and middle schools that use Chromebooks. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have different topics on each jam page and allow students to write persuasive essays for or against and add their Google Doc straight into the jam? The possibilities are endless! But let me get back to the last couple of tools before I start talking about lesson ideas.
Back on the web version, at the top, is the undo and redo buttons, plus where you can change the background, and a button to clear the whole frame. Math and Science teachers, listen up here! There are 2 different graphing backgrounds that could allow students to draw points on a quadrant, graph a problem and more.
Now I also mentioned earlier that you can have several jam pages. If you look at the very top, you can click on the boxes and expand what is called the frame bar and add new pages, duplicate, or delete pages. If you click on the 3 dots, you can download the entire jam as a PDF or individual pages as images and then add it to an LMS, like Canvas or Google Classroom.
You can also make a copy of the entire jam and share it with other people just as you would any other type of Google file.
And that is all of the software features.
USING JAMBOARD IN THE CLASSROOM
So, how do you now incorporate this into your classroom? Jamboard’s biggest asset is its ability to allow for collaboration. Have students brainstorm together or split the board up as you see in this example from Mason City Schools. This school district is one of the case studies for how to integrate Jamboards into education and they share their story on Google’s Education site.
Students can also collaborate on graphic organizers, sketchnotes, timelines, storyboarding for a video or planning for an upcoming presentation. Use each page for a different scene or topic. This would also be great for vocabulary in History, Foreign language or ESOL classes and for labeling diagrams in Science or CTE classes. You can also use this to present. If you have a device that works with the app, you could add Google Slide presentations, interacting with it and even annotating slides.
And the thought occurred to me, what about links? If I’m sharing things, surely there has to be a way to share links. Using the sticky notes, I can copy and paste a URL to view on a page, but it’s not clickable, so, unfortunately, I can only view it.
Again, I was a little disappointed and hope that this feature will be in a future update. But you can still use this like any other whiteboard app and allow students to show their work and app smash with tools like WeVideo or Screencastify and upload to Flipgrid. Or make your own instructional videos. Jams are saved in Google Drive just like other Google files so you can add parts ahead of time or do it live as you’re recording.
Overall, I think this is a great tool that adds to Google’s already amazing products for education. I do have a couple of things on my wishlist, but the collaboration is huge and getting a chance to play with Jamboard and think about other ideas will lead to great things in the end.
If you’d like to learn more and see other classroom ideas, the Google Teacher Center has a lot of support, including first day tips with sample exercises to introduce this to students, plus a guide to get started and other lesson ideas.
If you liked today’s topic, don’t forget to subscribe and like this video.
TECH NEWS
Flipgrid just announced 6 new updates based on teacher feedback and I want to share a couple of them with you!
I love it when an educational company is willing to hear feedback from teachers and make those important changes and these are some great ideas, especially this first one! Sort student responses! Just tap the name column and sort by last name. What an easy, quick tip!
The next one is big too – record without background audio. This is perfect if you have students demonstrating something and they don’t need audio, like explaining a math problem using a whiteboard app.
You can also speed up or slow down the playback speed, which is great if you’re trying to get through several student responses in a shorter amount of time.
You can read all about these new changes on Flipgrid’s blog.
WHAT’S COMING UP?
Before I sign off, check back next week for a special episode and maybe some mini ones, as I’ll be at VSTE, the Virginia Society for Technology in Education conference.
Not only am I attending, but I will also be presenting on Google Forms. So make sure to hit the subscribe button to get all the info and I’ll be back next week!
Have a question for me? Let me know here: https://forms.gle/eZkgJNY3ewffNwBc7
Ms Priester EDU 