Move over Jamboard FigJam is moving in.

 Google has announced that they will not be having Jamboard as one of their tools as of the end of next year. I am not a prolific user of Jamboard but I do model and use it as a collaboration tool in lots of my in class facilitation and in toolkits and presentations. 

It has been interesting to look at what is being promoted as an alternative to Jamboard. I watched an interesting presentation be Alice Keller, Laureen McCann and David Curran on Move Over Jamboard-Meet Figjam. I was very impressed with Figjam it can do so much more than Jamboard could do and it is free. You can also upgrade to the Education version for free and it was quick. You can add video and links, you can drag and drop images, google docs, slides, sheets. It has an infinite canvas which was the hardest thing to get my head around, it has no pages but you can add sections to your canvas and group them so they appear next to each other in a nice order. Even better and more helpful you can right click and get a copy link to the sections. There is also so many templates available for you to use. It had lots of fun with the extras like stamps that you can personalise, sticky notes and extra widgets and Plugins. A great tool that is easy to share with students and collaborate. A great easy to use tool. Now to investigate some of the other collaborative tools that are being suggested as an alternative to jamboard. Mural, Whimsical and Canva.

Bay of Islands Summit 2023

 This year the summit was held in the Bay of Islands and the venue was the Bay of Islands college at kawakawa. With a focus on inovation with tech, effective teaching practice and cultural capability. Unfortunaly we did not have the nice warmth of the Cook Islands. Also this year was the first 2 days of the holidays 25 and 26 September. I booked into the bay of islands accomodation and the hilghlight for me was Zana my daughter who is a teacher at Levin Intermediate was comming again and this time bringing most of her staff from her school. Monday started of with a very nice powhiri and the key note speaker was Edith the principal of BOI College. Then lots of great sessions to choose from and it was nice to choose on the day and not have to register before the event. My first presentation was creativity in Maths which was very popular and they where turning away educators as numbers where capped at 25 and the door was closed when numbers reached their limit. With lots of great feedback and thanks it was nice to have the first one over and done but also good to hear the relevance of the ideas and resources shared. The sun came out and the afternoon was beautiful as Zana and I headed off to the Waitangi treaty grounds to do the tour. Having been there many times to the education center and for eduction TOD I had not done a tour or had a good look around in many years. It was so special, the place has a very peaceful feel about it and so much Wairua. It was very suprising the amount of teachers that have never been there before. The Levin teachers loved it and where real tourists. The next day was another great day of wonderfull workshops and my other workshop Google Earth was also packed and well recieved by teachers. The panel disscussion was interesting with the big common factor being AI. Unfortunately no prizes won this year, after lots of good byes and hugs we headed home to Coopers beach in the pouring rain and very cold tempertures.  Lots of positive talk from teachers saying how good the 2 days where and how much they had got out of the 2 days I would say it was another very successful summit.