LDT 505 – Lesson 5, App 4

Details: developed by Google, released May 2017, available on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

Cost: Free

Review: 

Jamboard is a simple, interactive whiteboard with collaborative capacity. Users can share and organize pictures, write text boxes, and post sticky-notes. As a collaborative and constructive tool, students can work together in groups or as a whole class to create shared visual projects.  By capturing or collecting images and creating artefacts, learners are able to construct and extend their vocabulary knowledge as related to a particular content area of focus (Churchill et al., 2016). The visual nature of Jamboard allows learners to work creatively with others as they develop critical innovation skills (Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2009). Because of its simplicity, Jamboard is also useful for developing digital literacy skills with lower level language learners who can easily be overwhelmed by too many bells and whistles.  On the downside, if multiple students are collaborating on a single board, images and text may be quite small and difficult to see and read on a mobile device. From an iPhone, pictures can only be uploaded from the phone’s image library therefore if a learner wants to use a photo from the internet on the board, he/she must first save to the phone adding a step to the overall process. Overall, functionality and usability of Jamboard is superior on a device with a larger screen such as a tablet, laptop or desktop computer. 

References:

Churchill, D., Fox, B., & King, M. (2016). Framework for designing mobile learning environments. In D. Churchill, J. Lu, T. Chiu, & B. Fox (Eds.), Mobile learning design: Theories and applications (pp. 3–25). Springer.

Institute of Museum and Library Services. (2009). Museums, libraries, and 21st century skills.