NOTE: Jamboard is scheduled to be deprecated October 1, 2024, and all Jams will be unavailable after December 2024. Google provides instructions for downloading your existing Jams. Alternative tools, Lucidspark and Lucidchart, will be available as an integration in Canvas starting mid-June 2024. Champlain faculty, please contact us if you have questions about using a Jamboard-style tool with your class.
(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? Explore our Jamboard introductory instructions.
Learn how Champlain faculty member Kerry Noonan uses Jamboard to support virtual small-group work in her Core classes.
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
As a prompt, use a name or an image from an assigned reading or viewing, or a creative work in progress. 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.
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.
Mindmapping/Project Planning
While Jamboard is usually thought of as a collaborative tool, it can also be used by groups or individuals to plan a project or organize their ideas over the course of a larger assignment, especially a research assignment.
About The Author
Liz Allen-Pennebaker is Assistant Professor in the Core Division.
