This month I have been sharing all about creativity and the ways that technology integration can help us to provide additional opportunities for our students to be creative in the classroom. At the start of the month I shared 4 different ways that you can use Google Slides to help promote creativity within your students. If you missed that information it can be viewed here. This week I want to provide some additional ways that we can help to spark creativity within our students by using Jamboard. If you are unfamiliar, Jamboard is an online digital whiteboard that has many of the same features as a Google Slide. It is housed within your Google Drive, and allows for great opportunities for collaboration, critical thinking, and so much more! In fact all four of the activities that I share about using Google Slides, can also be replicated using a Google Jamboard.

With that said, this week I would like to provide two additional ideas that can help you to promote student creativity in the classroom. These ideas I am sharing will be specific to Jamboard, as they will use tools and features that can not be found within another tool previously mentioned.

Text by Dmitriy Ivanov from NounProject.comText by rivercon from NounProject.comHighlighter by Syafrulreiza from NounProject.com

Annotations & Real-Time Thinking

One of the best features about Jamboard is the ability for students to annotate right on the screen. Within Jamboard students have access to a pen tool. This allows students to write, diagram, highlight, or even draw on different images or graphics that you can insert right into the Jam. This provides students the opportunity to solve different math problems, annotate a given text, label different diagrams, or even add their own drawings to a given prompt. Using this tool we are giving students the opportunity to show their thinking and make connections to learning taking place. As a teacher one of the greatest features of this activity is it very low prep. All you need to do is simply add a photo by selecting the photo icon located in the Toolbar, or create an image as a background by clicking on the "set background" option at the top of the screen. Once your image is inserted you can assign to students directly through Google Classroom by "making a copy for each student" so they can complete independently, or possibly by giving students editing rights so that it can be a tool for a class discussion or small group work.

What makes this opportunity even better is it is can be paired with Screencastify to record student thinking in real time. Using the Screencastify extension students can screen record their annotations and verbally provide their thinking as they are annotating in real time. This is an amazing opportunity for you to be able to hear from each student individually without being pulled in a bunch of different directions at one time. By hearing from each student and seeing their thinking in real time you are able to determine where misconceptions may be happening as well as what other support would be beneficial to help each individual student move forward in their learning.

Doodle by nareerat jaikaew from NounProject.com

Sketchnoting

For some students thoughts and new learning is better captured through images. That is where the idea of Sketchnoting could be very beneficial for some students. Sketchnoting is a visual note-taking strategy that allows students to doodle their notes which in turn helps them to deepen their understanding of a concept. Rather than writing words to capture notes during a lecture, students can doodle images that support the concepts and ideas that are being presented within a lecture. The pen feature within Jamboard provides students with a virtual opportunity to be able to capture those sketches as well as their learning. The best part is they can then share those sketches with you directly through Google. This again, provides another opportunity for you to be able to get a look at student understanding and connections, while still providing students an opportunity to have fun and get creative with new information that is being presented to them.