Create your own Jamboard Backgrounds

A new feature that was released for Google Jamboard is the ability to add a custom background! I used this feature to create boardgames (see post here) as backgrounds cannot be erased or moved with the select tool. This feature can be used as well for instruction where you can add your own graphic organizer (placemat, Venn digram, etc), image to be labelled, or an animated image (Gif) to create a scene to tell a story! 

There are some templates out there but aren't exactly what you are looking for or sometimes you see something on social media that inspires you want to create your own version. In this post, I hope to show you how you can easier create your own background for Jamboard that will fit the background perfectly without any white boarder showing!

Google Slides as your Background Creation Tool

All you can do in Jamboard is upload the background image from your device, image search, Google Photos or Google Drive. Editing an image needs to be done in a separate program. I'm using Google Slides as the image editor for a couple of reasons. First and most importantly is access! If you are looking to make Jamboard backgrounds, most likely you have access to Jamboard and the other Google for Educations tools like Google Slides. Next, it's a great entry to begin to create backgrounds as you may be familiar with some of the editing features in Slides. If you want to add text prompts, shapes, etc, you will be able to add those quite easily in Slides. Finally, getting the right sized image and downloading the image file is a pretty straightforward process!

Adjust and Crop - Full-sized image

To add a full size image, open a new Google slide file. The default page side should be widescreen 16:9.

To check this, go to file, page setup.

Add your image. Click on the image and use the blue squares on the outside of the image to drag the image to cover the slide.

Use the crop tool (double click on the image) and use the black lines to adjust the image size to cover the entire slide.

To download an image file, click file --> download and select JPEG. The file will download to you computer and you can upload this as your Jamboard background.

To fill the entire Jamboard, images need to be in a widescreen format. Images taken from phone can be set to 16:9 so they fill the screen. Note that some of the image has been cropped out as the image I started with was square shaped.

Adding Shapes 

Using the shapes tool in slides, you can create your own graphic organizer. Something I often use in the Science when comparing two concepts is a Venn diagram. Creating the shapes (two circles) can be down in Jamboard, but it will allow them to be moved with the select tool and it can lead to frustration if using textbooks or images in Jamboard. Making them part of the background prevents the graphic organizer from being moved! Create your graphic organizer with the necessary shapes and customized the shapes as needed. Download the slide as an image and upload as the Jamboard background to complete the process!

What else could you create?

Using Google Slides as your Jamboard background creator can give you the ability to make other things! Here is an example of creating a simple fill in the blank task created in Slides but used as a Jamboard background. Add a labelled image to your Google Slides just like you added your background image. Using the shapes tool, you can block off part of the labels you would like your students to identify.

Download the image from slides and upload to Jamboard as a background. Now you have created an interactive digital task where students can use the text box or the drawing tools to demonstrate their thinking! The image of the cell and the white rectangle cannot be moved to reveal the answer, which is a definite win in my books for creating a task to capture the student's thinking!

What will you create? Please share in the comments! Feel free to leave any questions in the comments! Please subscribe to the blog for email updates! Finally thank you to @mrbarkersclass  for the inspiration for this post!