Jamboard:
The Collaborative Whiteboard Tool That Will Become Your New Jam!
When you think back to your experience as a student, what is a standard tool your teachers used as part of instruction?
Now, as you think of your own classroom-what comes to mind when you picture the room-what tools exist in your classroom?
Most likely, at some point in your educational experience, a chalkboard or whiteboard played a critical instructional role. Chalkboards and whiteboards are arguably some of the most iconic tools associated with teaching. With good reason-research shows students learn better when information is presented through multiple modalities, primarily through visual means (Mayer, 2003). Boards are one of the most straightforward tools for visual thinking.
As we find ourselves in a digital learning environment for eLearning days, it is essential to continue to provide multiple means of visual representation to support our students, just as we would in a traditional classroom setting. However-assuming, most of us do not have classroom-sized whiteboards installed in our homes, what's a teacher to do?
If whiteboarding, doodling, or illustrating is your jam, Jamboard is for you!
What?
Jamboard is a free collaborative whiteboarding tool from Google. Users create "Jams": digital whiteboards that save automatically to Google Drive and are shareable between others via shareable links or direct sharing. Jamboard is accessible through a laptop device via Google Chrome, or through an app on iOS, Android, mobile phone, and tablet devices.
Where the magic happens is really in what you can do with a Jam-users can insert pictures, text, sticky notes, drawings, charts, graphs, and more. Multiple means of representation-all in one!
Why?
Utilizing a digital whiteboarding tool can help minimize threats and distractions for students by providing them with a familiar learning experience, despite the unfamiliarity of extended emergency eLearning. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of Jamboard can also help students feel connected, despite the distance from the typical classroom setting. Jamboard best supports providing multiple means of representation, with its ability to provide visual options in the form of notes, illustrations, images, and graphs. Options for representation can help support comprehension and understanding across many languages. Lastly, Jamboard supports providing learners optimized choices for action and expression. Teachers and students could work together on a Jam to illustrate lesson concepts, plan out group projects, or map future goals.
Lesson Ideas for Jamboard:
- Lesson starter:
- Create a collaborative Jam to illustrate what students recall from yesterday's lesson.
- Video Conference Visuals:
- When hosting a video conference with students, illustrate major concepts with a Jam as you speak. Share the Jam link with students so they can follow along at their own pace while you explain.
- Assignment Option:
- Provide students with the option to create their own Jam to showcase what they've learned from the lesson, answer math problems, and more!
- Gamify Vocabulary with a Game of Virtual Pictionary
- Give students a vocab word-in a collaborative Jam, the teacher or the student attempts to illustrate the concept, while other students try to guess the word. A fun way to bring community, communication, and energy into a lesson!
- Project brainstorming and planning:
- Similar to brainstorming sessions with sticky notes and chart paper, provide students with the option to virtually map out ideas via Jamboard
- Backchannel Chat:
- Create a Jam to serve as a space for students to ask and answer questions- a great option if students feel too shy to ask in the middle of a video chat or call!
- Exit Ticket:
- Create a Jam for students to show what they learned or reflect on the day's lesson.
Prefer a written guide? We've got your back!
Jamboard becoming your new jam?
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1. Mayer, RE. (2003). The promise of multimedia learning: using the same instructional design methods across different media. Learning and Instruction, 13(2): 125-139
Bread, peanut butter, and jam image courtesy of Jonathan Pielmayer
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