In their study on online collaboration for professional development, van Oostveen, Dejardins, and Bullock (2019), investigated the possibility of learning as meaning-making through collaboration. The authors’ premise was that our current online strategies conflict with educational theories that stress the social constructivist nature of learning, and that teachers and educational systems are slow to change their practices to align with educational theory. With this in mind, I’d like to reflect on the last two afternoons of this week at school, engaged with a diverse group of teachers in a professional development workshop through Zoom. Zoom and platforms like it have become important online conferencing and mobile collaborative tools for many educational settings and workplaces over recent months, but the novel part of these workshops was that our collaboration used Jamboard as well as Zoom.
Jamboard is an online whiteboard that can be shared and used by many people at once. I have used others such as Microsoft Whiteboard, mainly to screen record chemistry lessons, but hadn’t experienced the combination of Zoom and a shared whiteboard in order to learn collaboratively, nor had I experienced online collaboration from the perspective of a student. A few technical issues were quickly and easily resolved by a knowledgeable and patient instructor. We learned as a whole group then broke out into smaller work groups with the instructor entering our discussions with timely suggestions and observations, and then returned to the whole group to debrief. I can imagine that without some training, there might be more technical difficulties with students, but once this learning curve is conquered, this is a very powerful tool combination. My cohort was actively engaged, discussing and trying math problems and teaching strategies for over two hours each day, using a tool none of us had previously encountered. Of importance for considering online learning and collaboration, many of the valuable pedagogical aspects of in-person learning were possible in this setting, and it is fully accessible on mobile devices, making this a choice that our students may embrace.
Ways to Use Google Jamboard for Teaching with Zoom:
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Hi Lori,
Great post. I am impressed by how the combination of Jamboard and Zoom platforms can increase interaction between classmates, collaboration, and teacher presence. It is almost impossible not to feel excited about this tool. A point of concern is about the engagement of unmotivated and uninvolved students in this online setting. However, unmotivated and uninvolved students are a matter of concern even in presential activities, and the solution for this issue relies on the teacher’s experience and skills.
Thank you for this post! Our informal hands-on activities have been pivoted to online classes and this is a handy to for teaching.