In these times of 'home based learning' there is still a need to be able to 'draw on the whiteboard' to help explain content to our students. Some teachers continue to successfully use SMART Notebook (via Google Meet > Present now > A window) and others have been using the more lightweight canvas.apps.chrome in a similar way.

We now have an alternative that sits quite interestingly in the middle of the two - Jamboard.

Jamboard is part of our G Suite for Education range of applications. It can be found via the 'waffle' while you are in Google Drive, GMail or similar.

In the world of Google Jamboard is a web service, an app and a piece of hardware. The web service works well upon the school teacher devices (using the stylus that can be found under your device) that and if you have your own iPad or Android tablet you should be able to install the Jamboard app from the appropriate app store. We will not be getting the Jamboard hardware... shame!

The following are some of the features that make Jamboard interesting for us as staff at International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations:

  • The 'whiteboard' is a web page that can be shared like any other G Suite file so you don't really have to 'present' it via Google Meet. Instead you just share the link to the 'Jam' you are working on and the students can see it. This is a more 'high quality' approach than presenting your screen.
  • Students with devices that have interactive screens etc could draw/interact on the Jam - if you gave them editing permissions (in a similar way as you do with Google Docs).
  • You can change the background of the Jam and there are some dotted, lined and squared options.
  • There is the option to download a Jam as a PDF file to then share with students for later reference.

Here is a video from the 'Welcome to your first day of Jamboard' resource page, which is part of the Google for Education Teacher Center: