Figjam

While I didn't attend ISTE 2023 in person last month, I watched the social media about it from afar.  One tool that came up repeatedly was Figjam.  The enthusiasm I read about it encouraged me to try it out for myself.  The result was endless grinning and multiple Keanu Reeves-like "Whoa's" as I played around with it.  Figjam is basically a browser-based collaborative whiteboard tool, but considering the possibilities and the joy it sparked for me, that somehow feels reductive.  My hope today is to convey that joy of possibilities to you.

First, a clarification.  Figjam is technically a program that has emerged fairly recently, but it's actually part of Figma, a popular industry-standard design tool that's been around for years and used by the world's top corporations and designers.  In order to use Figjam, you must create a Figma account, and that ends up giving you access to both tools.  Figma is a powerful program with some features that overlap with Figjam.  Figma is certainly worthy of its own blog entry -- and there are teachers and students who are definitely using it! -- but in my limited time of playing with it, I found the learning curve to be a bit steeper, and its application seems limited to product-oriented projects that may require designing and prototyping.  On the other hand, Figjam feels user-friendly right out of the box, and has the potential to be used by educators and students for learning on a much more frequent basis.

Strap yourselves in, because I'm about to make a new Edtech Elixirs world record for most screenshots in a single blog entry!

How does it work?

As you sign up (using your Google account is my recommended option), there is a process where you verify your educator status.  This takes a minute, but totally worth it, as you will get the full enterprise edition of Figjam (and Figma!) for free.  Let me repeat that: even if you were willing to pay something, there are no other premium features, because as a teacher or student you get the whole ball of wax at no charge.  A round of well-deserved applause for Figma's patronage to education!

Once you are logged in, your home screen will present you with several options, including opening up a previous Figjam board, making a board from scratch, or starting with a template.

This is what your home screen looks like if you're looking at your "Recent" files (see the upper left).

Let's jump right away to discussing Figjam's templates.  The bench is deep on this one.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a web tool that has so many useful pre-made models.  Within sixty seconds you could conceivably launch a learning activity with students.  While there is a whole template category "for the classroom," the other categories give you an idea of how versatile Figjam can be for brainstorming, having a meeting, planning a project, and more.

You will likely find value in using a Figjam by yourself, but why be lonely?  It really comes alive when collaborating with others.  While you could create Teams with students or colleagues for ongoing work on particular Figjam boards, I love how you can also open up a board to anyone for 24 hours and they don't even need a Figma account.  If you can give someone the URL, they can join you and work on the board in real time.  (Here's a timecoded link to a video showing how sharing works; it's at the 17:25 mark.)

By simply hitting "Start" and "Copy link," your students, colleagues or PD attendees could be seconds away from joining you in a "jam session." Note that similar to Google Docs, you can also limit a board's viewing or editing to specific people.

The interactivity of Figjam is user-friendly and straightforward, mainly centered around its toolbar at the bottom of the screen.  You can participate in multiple ways, such as drawing, inserting shapes or sticky notes, making line connectors between elements, using stamps and emotes, and more.  There are also some clever "widgets" available to use.  You are even able to have an audio chat with others in the Figjam board, which can make it an alternative teleconference-style meeting.

An annotated Figjam toolbar, slightly edited from the original found in the "Figjam 101 Overview for Education" Template...yet another aspect of Figjam that I appreciate, which is how many Templates they have that also function as tutorials.

Voice Memo (allowing you to record your voice for up to 30 seconds) and Photo Booth (which uses your webcam to take a selfie) are two particularly useful (and fun!) widgets to put on a board.

As a facilitator of the board, you'll enjoy the built-in timer in the upper left of the screen, as well as the opportunity to play some ambient music.  This can be particularly useful when participants have some work time for a portion of your live session before coming back as a whole group.

Here are some helpful shortcuts and tips that participants can use inside Figjam:

• E for Emotes/Stamps.  
• Tip: While in the Emotes/Stamp wheel, click once on a stamp choice so you can stamp with it multiple times.  You can also hold down you mouse to grow the stamp bigger and bigger until you release it on the whiteboard.
• S for a sticky note.
• X for connectors, and drag cursor to where you want arrow to stop.
• / to open a cursor chat for live interaction (not to be confused with making a more permanent text comment).
• Tip: be mindful when you are in "pointer mode" (which means you can select and move elements around on your board -- perhaps unintentionally!) and when you are in "hand" mode, which allows you to move the entire board around in order to navigate.  Until you get used to this, you may be using Edit>Undo a lot.
• Hold H and move cursor for waving your hand at other participants.  Then they can give you a high five!
• Tip: Copy and paste a URL into a Figjam to create an embedded website or YouTube link.  (This works for Google Docs too!)
• Tip: If logged into the platform on your browser, go to figjam.new in a new tab to quickly make a brand new board with some simple template options on the left side.

The landing page when you go to figjam.new. Note the quick template options on your left.

What if you want to share your board with others outside the platform, or want to save a "snapshot" of the Figjam for archiving your current progress?  You can export the board as a PNG, JPG, or a PDF, either in its entirety or just a selected portion.

Another excerpt from the "Figjam 101 Overview for Education" Template.

Here's a short overview video of some of the basic collaborative features of a Figjam board (2:48):

How could you use it?

I've threaded some examples of use throughout the narrative above; if you're stuck for ideas, check out the massive list of different templates available!  But I'll add a few more.  Figjam can be a powerful way of making thinking visible for learners, as well as providing a wonderful digital space for collaboration and planning.  Additionally, a person could use Figjam as an alternative presentation tool, either in person or as a shared screen in a teleconference -- you could set up its sections in advance and zoom in, out and move as appropriate to highlight the next part, as well as explore an image, play a video, or visit a website.  Lastly, because of its export feature, both teachers and students might use Figjam as a designer tool for handouts, logos, and other graphics. 

Downsides?

You know you're struggling to find fault when the worst thing you can come up with as a downside is the number of questions you have to answer when signing up in order to validate that you are an educator. It's really remarkable how much Figjam can do, and all at the cost of zero point zero zero dollars.

I hope that you try out Figjam with your students soon.   If you do, leave your story on how you used it in the Comments below.  Now go out there and get Figjamming!

I've joined Threads!

It's not every day that a new social media explodes into the mainstream -- but here we are, and I have just joined Threads, part of the Meta family (Instagram, Facebook, etc.).  In fact, in your app store, you'll see Threads labeled as "an Instagram app," which gives it some great advantages while also creating some nagging issues to overcome; more on that in a moment.

https://www.threads.net/@watsonedtech

Over the last year, In the wake of some turbulence in the land of the bluebird app, I have briefly flirted with some other social media tools.  But Threads is by far the only one that I have liked right out of the gate. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and signing up takes seconds (assuming you have an Instagram account). There's a lot of potential in the tool and I can understand why it's gotten so popular within just a few days of its launch -- over 70 million subscribers and counting! There seems to be a lot of positive energy in Threads, especially among educators. Another bonus in a new social media like Threads is the chance to clear your feed -- things look a lot different when following dozens of people as opposed to thousands. You might use Threads to follow key individuals and friends instead of all the companies and celebrities you may have accumulated over the years on other platforms.

Besides the typical Like, Comment and Repost buttons, Share has a few features including....Tweeting your post.  Threads, you have swagger. 

Here are some of my quick observations about Threads. (Fair warning: such a new app is likely beta testing new features as we speak, so it's highly likely it will look different even a month from now.)

• You need an Instagram account to sign up.  There's no way to get Threads without one. I find that strange, since you could conceivably, say, make a Facebook account without an Instagram account. From Meta's perspective, I suppose this is a shrewd way to keep you deeper in its family.
• The New York Times reported on Threads in their 7/9/23 morning email newsletter, and among other things, pointed out that you cannot delete your Threads account without deleting your connected Instagram account. I did see where you can "deactivate profile" in the app's settings, but NYT is correct about true account deletion.
• Once you create a Threads account, your Instagram profile will show a "button" allowing you to go to the person's Threads account. (Your Threads profile also has a button that leads back to your IG.) That is both convenient and likely some savvy tool cross-promotion. Interestingly, this button indicates what number subscriber you are -- I signed up as Threads apparently crossed the 73 million mark.
• If you want multiple Threads accounts, you'll need multiple IG accounts, which is a bit trickier than it sounds. The Threads app currently has no way to easily switch between accounts, like you can on Instagram, nor can you see that you may have notifications on one account while logged in as another.  However, on Threads, you can sign out of your current profile and sign in as another one.  (After creating my initial Threads profile, signing out/signing in is also how I created a second Threads profile, but this assumes you are logged into your device's Instagram app with two or more IG accounts.)
• While you can look at a Threads profile online (such as my link above shows), you can only view the person's posts. You can't log into your own account or post via a browser or see any notifications -- you can only do those things via your mobile app.
• You can Like a post, but as of yet there is no way to look at all the posts you Liked or make a Bookmark list like you can on Twitter. To be fair, however, this is similar to how Instagram currently works.
• You can attach a picture from your device's photo gallery to your post, but there is no other media functions built into Threads. Apparently if a video is in your gallery you could conceivably post it, although I haven't yet tried nor have I seen others do so yet. The only way to insert something like an animated GIF is through your device's keyboard.
• There is no (hash)tagging system in Threads, or any other structure that allows you to only follow or look up certain topics. My gut tells me this will be the next big upgrade for Threads, but for now, you are basically stuck just watching your feed based on who you follow, with your only search ability in looking up other people's accounts.
• I need to know the verbs. Are we Threading on Threads? Do I post a Thread on Threads? Is it a repost or a Rethread? If I tweet on Twitter, do I Threed on Threads?

I'm not giving up on Twitter yet, but I definitely will keep playing around on Threads and hope to bump into you over there!

Edit 7/9/23: A whole whirlwind of findings meant I needed to already update this post. I added new info about your options for deactivating or deleting your Threads account, what it takes to switch or add additional Threads profiles, the current limit of looking up your Liked posts, and a better understanding of posting videos.