When Collaborative Whiteboards Are Your Jam

Alternatives To Jamboard

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS 

A colleague reminded me the other day of a phrase I used to say often when I started working as the Director of Instructional Technology. I definitely did not make it up but I can't remember who said it first. 

You date the device, but you marry the capabilities.

What is this meant to mean? The devices and the software will come and go. Think about all of the different devices and applications you have used over the years. When we get too attached, it can feel devastating when that particular tool is no longer available. What we need to realize is that while we may have loved that device or that particular piece of software, what we really mean to say is that we love what it does or gives us the ability to do. To that end, we then need to go searching for something similar and while we often wax poetic about the original that we felt such loyalty to, there are generally many options to choose from. 

Last week, Google announced that they would be winding down the Jamboard application in 2024 so if you are a Jamboard user this is your official notice that you have been broken up with and need to find a new collaborative whiteboard space. While I know that to some of you this is very, very bad news, I have done this enough times to know that this is very likely an opportunity to find something new and potentially even better.  Think about what it is about Jamboard that you love? What are the capabilities that you and your students benefit from?

In their announcement, Google also suggests some alternatives so let's take a look.

FigJam, LucidSpark, and Miro will now have Google Workspace integration to help us manage the transition. I am also a big fan of Kami, which also has interactive whiteboard templates. 

Below we will look at FigJam and Kami as some great alternatives to Jamboard. 

FigJam: FigJam has partnered with Google to provide their tools FREE to educators and students. FigJam is an advanced collaborative whiteboarding tool with features including stamps, emotes, stickies, shapes, connectors, drawing tools, plugins, interactive widgets, and much more.

You and your students can use FigJam to:

• Brainstorm ideas for projects and assignments with sticky notes, shapes, and freehand drawing.
• Organize thoughts and research with decision trees, diagrams, and mind maps.
• Collaborate with classmates and teachers in real time with feedback and comments.
• Plan and run group projects, presentations, and more.

Figma has lots of templates that are easy to use. 

Here is what the brainstorming template looks like:

I found this collection of voting templates to be super interesting:

Ok. Check out FigJam here.

Kami

The next option that I really really love is Kami.

Kami is a chrome extension and it connects seamlessly with Google drive. Kami started out as a tool to use with PDFs. You and your students can annotate on any PDFs using Kami BUT there is so much more to this tool. Kami has tons and tons of incredible templates, accessibility features, as well as whiteboard and collaboration tools. 

The template library is what really makes Kami stand out in my view as a superior option. If you want part of one template and part of another, you can also use Kami's split and merge feature.  Here is an example of a digital notebook from the Kami template library. You can see below that it shows you exactly what you can do with this template and you have the option to open it in Kami or just download it.

The Kami library also lets you filter and search by subject, item type, and grade level.

It's definitely worth taking a look.

While I know that there were so many things about Jamboard that we loved. The good news is that collaborative whiteboards are here to stay. Check out these two alternatives and let me know what you think. Want some help getting started? You can always reach out and I'm happy to work with you to make sure it's a success for your students.