Difference Between Jamboard And Slides

 

As teachers, we have access to so many different tools.  Some are better for one type of teaching while others work on a different assignment.  I've often wondered how Jamboard and Slides differ in their potential uses so I'm taking a closer look. 

One of the biggest differences is that google slides offers a choice of templates when you hit the + or new button but Jamboard doesn't.  This isn't something to worry about because it is possible to find Jamboard templates available on the internet with a quick search.

As far as the background goes, slides allows you to set the background for one or for all the slides but Jamboard requires that you set the background for each frame so you have to set it one at a time. This is fine if you want different backgrounds such as plain versus coordinate plane but if you want them all any color other than white, you have to go in and set them.  This being said, Jamboard does have the ability to duplicate slides so if you want several that are identical, you can do this.

On the other hand, Jamboard appears to be the better tool to have students interact because it has sticky notes, shapes, markers, etc, all available to the students immediately.  In slides, you have to preset everything you might need.  In addition, students who use Jamboard have learned it they are expected to interact but slides is more about creating one slide to present their thoughts.

Two things that make Jamboard stand out over slides is the marker and the sticky notes. The Marker does a much better job than the scribble feature in Slides and the sticky notes allows the teacher or students to make notes off to the side.  Sticky notes are possible in slides but it is more difficult to do.

When it comes to adding images, it is about the same for both whether you upload, grab something from your drive, etc. However, slides allows students to explore the internet, your drive, photos from slides itself but Jamboard does not allow that.  Now as far as general features, slides offers more features than Jamboard which makes Jamboard easier for students to learn to use. In addition, slides allows you to have more slides over Jamboard because Jamboard seems to limit the number of frames to 20.  So if you have more than 20 students in your class, you would have to pair up students to work so everyone participates.

In addition, slides allows you to establish hyperlinks where as Jamboard does not. This makes it harder to send students to websites, documents, or other material. Slides allows the creator to link to a shared resource so much better than Jamboard.  Furthermore, in Jamboard, you can upload photos, use a URL, do a google image search, find something in your drive, or use your camera but it does not appear that you can import a video. It is possible to import videos into slides and the same goes for audio files. 

This is a quick look at the differences between Jamboard and slides.  I suggest you go to play with each one to see which you want to use and to get a better of idea of when to each one.  Have a great day and let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.