(An important caution that applies to all of these ideas: Items placed on a Jam are not locked, which means that students can move and delete items. You may find it best to open up the sharing settings for a period of time and then “lock” the Jam by changing the sharing settings to “view only”.)
New to Jamboard? Here are instructions.
Brainstorming
Add one or more sticky notes with questions or prompts to a Jam and ask students to respond by adding their own sticky notes, images, drawings, etc.
Character/Scene Analysis
Same as brainstorming, above, except the prompt can be either a name or an image. Students can add notes describing the development of the scene or the character, citing evidence of character development, or anything else that pertains to that character. (If you start with simply the character’s name, and the character is from a book, students can add images of what they think the character looks like – a fun way to get discussion going, since everyone will have a different idea.)
Collecting Research Ideas and Sources
You can start by posting sticky notes or using the “Add text” tool to label one or more frames in a Jam and then ask students to add files from their Google Drive (note: as of August 2020, the only way to add Drive files is via the Jamboard app, which is free to download from Google Play or the App Store).
Storyboarding/Wireframing
You can use a Jam to set up a sequence of a story as a pre-writing or brainstorming exercise, or as a draft of a series of wireframes.
As the instructor, you can, if you wish, set up the Jam in advance by putting sticky notes or text on frames indicating which scene or webpage should be planned on which frame.
As students evolve their ideas, you can add notes commenting on their work.
(Note: As of August 2020, you can add really good drawings to a Jam using the app – a feature that is not yet available on the desktop browser version.)
Collages
This can be a fun “get to know you” activity for the first day of class, or a way to warm students up at the beginning of each class or during a “soft start” to a synchronous class session. It would also be a good way to incorporate current events into a class.
After you give students a prompt for the collage, they can add whatever they wish.
You can do this as a full-class, small group, or individual activity – simply add as many frames as appropriate to the Jam.
Remember that you can save the entire Jam as a PDF or individual frames as PNG images – feel free to invite students to save their work if they wish!
Infographics/Flowcharts
Instead of asking students to respond to a prompt by posting sticky notes, you can ask them to work together in a small group to create a rough infographic or flowchart that captures their thinking.
Timelines
You can create an image showing a timeline with dates/events, add it to a Jam frame, and ask students to add sticky notes and other content to explain what happened.