Empowering Our Littlest Learners!: Google's Jamboard in the Primary Grades!

Earlier this past week, I had the opportunity to explore Google Jamboard with some of my teachers. Like many schools around the world, we have recently taken the leap to distance learning and are exploring some additional ways for students to interact and collaborate in this new learning environment.

What is Jamboard?

Jamboard is an interactive whiteboard! It works much like many other Google creations and saves to Google Drive. The file can be shared to individuals and groups. Jamboards can be distributed to students in Google Classroom Assignments like most Google Docs - either collaboratively on a single Jamboard, or in a way that each student gets their own copy. Teachers can view their students' assignments live.

Learn more about Jamboard in the Google for Education Teacher Center.

Why Jamboard?

There are a number of awesome interactive tools available that work well with young learners. One perk of Jamboard is that it's a part of the Google Suite, which means that if your Google administrator has switched Jamboard on, your students already have it! No new programs or accounts or logins necessary.

In reality, many of the activities below could also be created in Google Slides. I'm finding that objects on a Jamboard seem to slide around easier. Sometimes young learners struggle with the process of "click-and-drag" in some Google tools. And while they CAN be trained to move those items around a Google Slide, moving objects on a Jamboard is just easy!

Also, Jamboard is simple. Slides are fabulous, but they have a lot of extra buttons! I am really enjoying exploring Google Jamboard as a simple interactive tool for young learners.

Check out some K-2 uses of Google's Jamboard:

Word Families

Silent E

Sorting Numbers

Pattern Building

Math Modeling

Text Annotation

Writing Prompt

So much potential!

Jamboards can be a single frame (page), or additional frames can be added.

To kick it up a notch, you can pair Jamboard with Screencastify or another screen-recording tool to have students record and explain their thinking while completing their Jamboard tasks.

Jamboard can be used in the Chrome browser, Chromebooks, and can also be used on tables or iPads as an app. The app versions of Jamboard have additional features that aren't available in the Google Chrome version.

Jamboards can exported as a PDF or image.