How To Use Google Jamboard For Teaching

How To Use Google Jamboard For Teaching

In this post, I'm going to teach you some different ways that you can use Google Jamboard for remote teaching.

Google Jamboard is a tool that can help make your remote teaching more interactive and it can be used in either synchronous or asynchronous learning. In this post, I'm going to show you the most important features you need to know about how to use Google Jamboard, then I'll show you a few different ways you can use it with your students and especially if you're a Math teacher, I think you're really going to find this program useful. Alright, let's jump in and first take a look at the major features of Google Jamboard. On the Google Jamboard homepage, you'll be able to see all the previous Jams you created in the past. To create a new Jam, go to the bottom right-hand corner and select the 'Add' button.


Then you can give your Jamboard a name. Then at the top, you'll see that there's an option to change the background of your Jamboard. It can either be blank or dotted lines, it could look like lined paper or graph paper, or you could add different colors to the background. On the left-hand side, you'll see the different options that you have for how to interact with the Jamboard. The first tool is the pen tool. Here you'll see you have some different types of pens, as well as different colors that you can use in order to handwrite text on the interactive whiteboard. So here for this demo, I'm just going to add my name to the top. Below the pen tool is an eraser tool, so you can see here how I'm able to erase the text that I wrote.


And now I'm just gonna go back and choose a different pen type and color so that you can also see what that would look like. Below the eraser is the Select tool and we'll look at that in a second when we actually add selectable items to the Jamboard. Below the Select tool is the sticky note tool. Here you can choose from different colors for your sticky note, as well as add some text. And then after you've added that sticky note you'll see that you can drag it around wherever you'd like, resize it, as well as change the orientation of the sticky note. If you choose the three dots next to the sticky note, one option will be to duplicate that sticky note, which will just create an exact replica of what you just made.


Beneath the sticky note is a place where you can add some different images. So here you have the full array of different options for images that you could bring in. You can either search for them on Google, you can upload images that you already have on your computer, or images that you have in your Google Photos folder. Just like the sticky note, you can also resize the image, drag it around wherever you want, as well as change the orientation, and you can also duplicate that image if you'd like. And then there's also a laser tool that you can use just to point to different places on your screen. 


Although unfortunately right now Google Jamboard does not allow you to embed video files, one way you can get different types of files into your Google Jamboard is with Google Chrome extensions. So for example you could install the free Giphy extension, find a Giphy that you want, and then drag and drop it into Google Jamboard. Similarly, if you're a Bitmoji user like me, you can also drag and drop your Bitmoji into Google Jamboard to make it a little bit more fun and interesting. At the top, you'll notice that if you click on the 'Next' arrow, it will continue to add new frames to your Jamboard, which are essentially just new whiteboard panels that you're adding. On the menu at the top, you'll notice that you can download this Jamboard as a PDF.


You also have the choice to download it as an image record and I'm going to show you later how you may use that with understudies. At the present time I'm the one in particular that is ready to alter the Jamboard. One way you could use it without actually sharing it with students is to just share your screen during a synchronous video conference call and then do some modeling of instruction with the Jamboard. But really the purpose of using Google Jamboard is to use it to be an interactive tool that students could add to as well. So to share this with students you'll go to the blue 'Share' button. There you can enter an individual student's name.


If you want the student to actually be able to write directly on the Jamboard or if you want another teacher to be able to write on it, you will need to give them editing access. Another option for how you could share the Google Jamboard with an entire class would be to go down to 'Get Link,' and then change the restricted access so that anyone who is given the link can get in. You're still going to need to change it from viewer to editor if you want everyone who clicks on that link to be able to interact with the whiteboard. And then once you've changed that setting, you could copy the link and either put it in Google Classroom, drop it in the chat of a Zoom or Google Meet meeting, or share it in another learning management system that you use. All right for this part of the video, I'm going to show you a side-by-side demonstration of Google Jamboard, so that you can see what it looks like when two different people are interacting on the same board. So you'll notice for example that if someone uses the laser tool that that will also show up with just a slight delay on the other screen. 


Similarly, if the teacher adds a sticky note, the sticky note will then show up on the student's Jamboard as well. And you'll notice here that if both people have editing access, they're both able to interact with the Jamboard in the same way. So both people, for example, would be able to drag the sticky notes around and put them wherever they want. In my opinion, this is a little bit frustrating. I do wish that I had the ability to lock what I had done on my screen as the teacher so that students were not able to edit or alter what I had done. So just to show you another example of how that full editing access could be potentially a problem, you can see here how a student would conceivably be able to even erase something that I had written on my Jamboard. So there are a couple of ways you could manage this.


The first that's probably the best educator move, is to use this opportunity to teach some digital citizenship skills and talk about some norms and expectations when using Google Jamboard. If a student were to continue to do things that they weren't supposed to do, like erasing text or adding things that they shouldn't be adding, one option would be to change their access to 'View Only.' So you'll notice here that if I change the access from Editor to Viewer, that the menu board on the other Google Jamboard goes away and that that student is now only allowed viewer access. Once you were ready to give that student editing access again, you could go back and change the permissions back to Editor. Obviously, the downside of being in View Only mode is that it kind of defeats the purpose of using Google Jamboard if students are not able to interact with it. But if you're going to use Google Jamboard to first demo a mini-lesson, it might not be a bad idea to restrict students to View Only, and then when you want them to be able to have editing access again, just quickly change that back to Editor.


All right now I'm going to show you a few different ideas for how you might use Google Jamboard during remote teaching. All these ideas could be used if students were all together on a video conference or it could also happen asynchronously if students needed to be doing the work independently. The first idea is that you would use it as a preview activity in the beginning of a lesson. So here, for example, you could create a sticky note where you ask students to record their observations, then you could add an image that you want students to observe. On the student end, they could add their own sticky note, to make observations about what they're seeing. One of the things that I love about these live interactive tools is that it can still help students feel like they're part of a class community because they're going to be seeing all their classmates posting their answers live at the same time. In addition to a preview activity where students make observations, you could also use images to have students make predictions or inferences.


So here, for example, I could use this same image of the pyramid, but ask students to make a prediction or an inference about how they believed that the pyramids were built. Then just like the last example, students could add a sticky note to answer the question. As opposed to text, you could also have students answer questions by posting their own images. So here, for example, you might start the day by having students post a different image about how they're feeling. Then students could go look in Google Images themselves to find an image that they want to post. Similarly, as a summative activity, you could also have students post an image and a caption that represents something important that they learn throughout the week.


So let's say it was a student who had just learned about the importance of agriculture in my Ancient Civilizations class. They might pick an image of agriculture, as well as write a short explanation about what they learned about farming and why it was important, throughout that week. Since I'm not a math teacher, I tend not to show a lot of math-based content, but I actually think that Google Jamboard could be a really powerful tool for a math teacher. So here I'm going to show you how you could pair a Google Jamboard with a Google Chrome extension called EquatIO. If you're a math teacher and you haven't yet used EquatIO, I would definitely recommend checking it out. All the math teachers that I know absolutely love using it. So in order to use the EquatIO extension, you're going to need to go to a Google Doc first.


When you click on EquatIO, you'll see that it pulls up a menu bar at the bottom of your Google Doc, where you have some different ways that you could input a math problem. For example, there's a microphone where you could actually speak the problem and it will transcribe it for you, or you can use this pretty cool handwriting tool where you can handwrite a math equation that you're looking for and it will interpret your handwriting and create an image out of it. Once EquatIO has generated the image of the math problem, you can copy and paste it back into your Google Jamboard. So here you can see I'm going to change the background to graph paper and then I'll paste the equation in. This would be a great way to model how to do a math problem in front of your students and then you could also have students solve the problem on their own. One way to manage this would be to have students all be working on the same panel.


Another option is that you could create and label different panels that would be designated for particular students. Here again, you would obviously need to have a discussion about digital citizenship to ensure that students were using their correct page because they would have editing access to everybody else's pages as well. Then you could just copy and paste the problem or many problems on to individual students' work pages and then students could use the different tools to show their work directly on the page. So if you were doing synchronous learning here, you could jump on to a student's panel to check out how they were doing their work and if they were making some mistakes, you could give them immediate real-time feedback. Of course, you could also give students access, and then they could get into the document and do their work in an asynchronous environment as well.


And then one way you hold students accountable for the work that they did is by having them save the panel as an image, then they could take that image and actually upload it back into Google Classroom as an assignment. Of course, if you were really concerned about students writing over each other's pages, another thing you could do would be to create a separate Jamboard for individual students and then different panels could represent different assignments that you're assigning throughout the week or throughout a unit. I hope this post helped you learn how to use Google Jamboard to make your remote teaching just a little bit more interactive and engaging. If you have any questions about how I've used Google Jamboard with my students or suggestions about how you might use it, please comment below. If you found the tips that I shared helpful, please share it with other teachers that you know.