Working with Figjam was like trying to have a serious conversation in the middle of a loud carnival. I understand how to lock down elements on the page, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to lock down features. Students can mess with them nonstop. And even if they don’t mess with them, trying to figure out where to look with a million little hands all swiping everywhere was a massive distraction. It just had too many attractive nuisance elements.

I really like some of the features, like the polls and voting systems as well as the ability to give ideas feedback in real time on the board. The timer is super useful. The ability to customize and change things around is cool. But I have to be able to lock down how students use it. The number one benefit of Jamboard is that it’s a little bit boring. You need the interface to be a bit more limited so students can focus on the actual learning task at hand.