Introduction to Jamboard - Whiteboard Deluxe!

Jamboard is an interactive, collaborative whiteboard, which is available for free to the U of M community through the G Suite of apps.  To find it, click on the Google apps icon in the upper right corner of your U of M email, then scroll down to the bottom of the list of apps and click on the giant orange J!  

Jamboard makes it easy to create, share and collaborate on a whiteboard!  As with a Google Doc, 

• I can create a Jamboard and share it with others.  
• I can set others’ access to view or edit.  
• My collaborators and I can work on the same whiteboard asynchronously or synchronously. 
• I can link to the Jamboard from anywhere: on Canvas, in an email, or through the Zoom chat.
• I can save my work as a PDF or image for later use.
• The Jamboard persists and can be further edited at any time.
• I can pre-populate a Jamboard to use with a class, and if I want to use the same content with multiple sections. I can make multiple copies of the same Jamboard.

In Jamboard it is easy to use colors, shapes, images, sticky notes with text, and to reposition each item with a simple drag and drop.  Each Jamboard file can have multiple screens, or “frames,” which you can create in advance or on demand, and reorder at any time.  You may want to assign a different frame to each group; to review what each group created, simply click through each frame like a slide-show. 

Here are a few examples to help you visualize the possibilities:

1.  The instructor writes a question on the slide.  Each student writes a response on a sticky note and posts it on the board.  

2. A student or the instructor underlines parts of speech or vocabulary with colored markers.  

3. The instructor creates sticky notes with individual words. Then the instructor or student can drag and drop the sticky notes to build sentences with varying word order.

4. Jamboard also allows you to save the entire board as a PDF or to save individual frames as images.  These PDFs and images can be reposted on a Canvas site for review or to compare with what students are able to create at the end of a unit.

These examples are only a beginning.  To see how each of the tools in the menu bar works, watch this video tutorial.  Then, for more ideas, tips, and templates for teaching, see this article on the Ditch That Textbook website.  Finally, let us know how you decide to use this exciting new tool!