Google Meet and Jamboard Updates.

I just heard the other day that Google meet has released it's new version including breakout rooms but it is not available to everyone quite yet.  Google did announce the release but it will be for people who use Enterprise for Education and those who use G Suite will see the feature offered later in the year.  The breakout room feature is good news but I'd like to know why used of G Suite have to wait so long.

According to what I've read, Google Meet will allow hosts to divide attendees up into 100 smaller rooms for collaboration.  When the smaller groups are done, they can easily return to the mail room. Google is also giving moderators the ability to visit breakout rooms to check on things which is great and allows teachers to monitor the work in each room.  Moderators will also have the ability to place people in groups manually or randomly, based on need.  Although anyone with a google account can attend the meet, only the meet organizer can establish breakout rooms.  I haven't heard when the breakout room will be released for the general G-suite users but it is on the horizon.

Now for Google's Jamboard.  If you haven't seen it yet, Jamboard is a google product that allows real time collaboration of participates attending a meeting or working in the classroom.  With the distance classes in use or the required distancing in class, it allows more collaboration and interaction.  Jamboard is accessible by Chrome via an app, via an app for the iPads, or via the web based version directly at Jamboard.google.com.  

One can set up Jamboard to use in Google meet by having your admin person set things up so you can pair the two up and then use it during the class meeting.  There are several videos out there to help you get this set up.  In addition, Jamboard can be used with Google classroom since they both access material in google drive which means teachers can assign a jam to students in classroom as needed.  Furthermore, if you chrome, you can arrange for Equatio to be used with Jam by getting the extension.  In addition, Jam works with Screencastify which is another Chrome extension. 

So how do you effectively use Jam in your math classroom?  What can you do with it so it's not just the same old same old? On way which can be done either in class or by distance is to assign students to work in pairs to solve certain problems.  They could be asked to explain how to solve the problem by recording themselves and offering the product to others to see how to do the problem.

I saw Holly Clark of the Infused classroom books posted some suggestions on using Jamboard in different ways on Wakelet. There are a few for math to use on specific topics.  There were suggestions from early elementary to high school which could be used easily.  I especially liked the middle school ones.  Since I ended up on Wakelet and checked various collections on Jamboard.  I found some really nice ones with some great information.

Joanna Garza has a collection of instructional items including ones on explaining how to play live partner games on Jamboard, or running a live collaborative whiteboard session with audio using google classroom, meet, and jam board.  The one that caught my attention was the one on turning worksheets into interactive digital pages.  It provides a nice start.

This link takes you to the page filled with collections of ideas for Jamboard on wavelet. It provides a great list of collections to help you become the master of Jamboard.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  I can tell you , I'll be exploring these in more details to make the class more interactive.  Have a great day.