Jamboard has quickly become one of my favorite Google™ tools during virtual learning. Jamboard can be found in the Google™ waffle and can also be assigned to Google Classroom™. I will warn you that it can be a little crazy the first few times you do it if you are allowing students to all edit on the same board. But, with expectations and practice it will become much easier and the kids will know how to use it. Below are a few of my favorite ways for using Jamboard in the classroom…
Idea #1 – Interactive Anchor Charts
I love creating anchor charts with my students in the classroom – especially interactive ones with post-it notes. I find that the interactive charts really help with student engagement. Teaching virtually has made that difficult. I can create a chart on chart paper, but it’s hard for the kids to see and they obviously can’t interact with it through the screen. Jamboard is the perfect solution for this! I can create my own anchor chart and also have the kids help me like the two examples you see above.
In the first example, we were launching our inquiry unit on biomes and our launch was focused on the rainforest. The kids added questions all at the same time to out interactive chart about what they were wondering about the specific environment we were in.
In the second example, this is a chart I’ve created many years in-person, but made it virtual with Jamboard. I created the headings – periods, question marks, exclamation marks. The students then were given a specific end mark and asked to create a sentence that fits the end mark.
Idea #2 – Independent Work
Jamboards can also be assigned to students individually through Google Classroom™. The one above is a differentiated assignment for students to show ways to represent amounts of money. I assigned each student both boards (they were in the same file) and they got to pick the amount they wanted to work with. Then using the post-it notes they came up with as many ways as they could to represent the amount given.
Idea #3 – Virtual Gallery Walk
This is probably my favorite Jamboard use so far. We were trying to figure out away to make a picture gallery walk that was happening in the in-person classrooms virtual. Jamboard to the rescue! We added one photo to each board and assigned it to the whole class with them all editing on the same boards. Students could click through the different boards and add facts and/or questions about each picture.
So in a nutshell – Jamboard is one of my favorite new virtual finds with virtual teaching, but it can also be used for in-person. I love how it makes things interactive and allows students to all be engaged with the same material at the same time. Have you used it before? Let me know below…
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