Jamboard – 10 great ways to get students engaged!

very student I have ever met loves to write on the board. 

The minute they get the opportunity to put those beautiful, colorful markers in their hands and scribble on the whiteboard, they all jump at the chance. 

If you are nodding your head, like “ain’t that the truth”, then you will love Jamboard. It is a collaborative, online digital whiteboard that students and teachers can write on at the same time. 

Actually, they can do a lot more than just write. They can post “sticky notes”, they can draw, they can type and even highlight things too. It could be a great tool for brainstorming, classifying, sorting and diagramming. Let me show you how …

As this is a free Google product, you can just go to www.jamboard.google.com and use your Gmail account to sign in. 

Or, if you are already in Google Drive, you can go to “+New > More > Jamboard”. 

Like this:

Once you are there, just click the “+” on the lower right corner to create a new Jamboard.

It’s super easy. Just take a look at this image to see the Tool Menu on the left side.

A couple things worth noting before you start to use Jamboard:

• There is no way to search for the “History” of a Jamboard, so if you erase it, it’s gone.
• When you click on the “pages” button to add another page, you will see that you can copy pages, rearrange them or delete them. There is a tiny menu of 3 dots on the corner of each page.
• You can copy an individual page inside a Jamboard, but you can’t copy (or duplicate) an entire Jamboard to create another Jamboard.  Hopefully that will come as a future update. 

1. Improve just about any class topic by asking for student’s opinions or participation. For example, at the beginning of a lesson, ask them how much they know about the topic you are about to begin.  Have them add a sticky note with their initials to the category that best describes them. At the end of the unit, do the same thing and see how it changes!  

2. Use the sticky notes as manipulatives for students to move into the correct place. Here is an example of spanish verb endings that they must match to the correct verb.

 3. Have students sort vocabulary words or concepts into different categories

4. Identify parts of diagrams or photos with either sticky notes or the pen tool.  This photo is a cell membrane for science class, but other examples could include identifying the countries of Africa on a map or diagramming a sentence for language class.

5. Timelines are another great way of getting the students to interact with the content you are teaching. Upload a photo that includes a timeline as the background of the Jamboard, then have the students move the sticky notes to the appropriate place on the line.

6. There are a million other ways to use Jamboard also. Here are just a few:

1. • Have a “All About Me” activity on the first day of school where each student creates their own slide with photos, images and text to describe themselves.
   • Brainstorm any topic with a small group or the whole class.
   • Create a Venn Diagram or a Plot Diagram and have students add comments.
   • Play bingo with each child creating their grid with vocabulary words or concepts. They mark their grids with a circle when they hear their word called out.