I have been obsessed with Canva lately. It is free for educators. Contact Scott Nunes to set your school up with free accounts. In the past, I have made backgrounds with Google Slides, and I still use SlidesMania for this! But I have been designing backgrounds in Canva.
Canva.com
Go to canva.com with your school account. You can use personal accounts for free, but you want all the pro features the education account gives you access to.
In the search box, I type in Jamboard. This brings up all the Jamboard designs. Note that these are NOT Jams. They are designs for Jamboard. You will need to manually add the images to the Jam.
Create a Jam
My favorite way to make a Jam is to use jam.new. You can also go to jamboard.google.com or create one in Google Drive.
Download Your Design
Whatever you design on Canva will be LOCKED DOWN on the background of your Jam, so keep that in mind. Click on the Download button. Download as a PNG.
TIP: Canva allows you to share your designs as TEMPLATES.
Add Background to Google Jamboard
To add a Canva Jamboard Background click on “Set background” in the Jam toolbar at the top. The last option is to upload your own Jam background.
Duplicate the Frame
Each page of a Google Jamboard Jam is called a FRAME. Click on the frame bar, the rectangle at the top center. Use the 3 dots on the frame thumbnail to duplicate the frame if you want multiple pages of the same graphic organizer.
Click here to make a copy of my DOK Google Jamboard with the custom Canva Jamboard Background.
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