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Review by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Education | Updated April 2017

Scoodle Jam

Interactive whiteboard inspires learning beyond the blank page

Subjects & skills
Subjects
  • English Language Arts
Skills
  • Communication & Collaboration
  • Creativity
Grades This grade range is based on learning appropriateness and doesn't take into account privacy. It's determined by Common Sense Education, not the product's publisher.
3–8
Great for:
Common Sense says (See details)
Teachers say (2 Reviews)
Privacy rating (How we rate)
Not yet rated
Platforms:  iPad

Take a look inside

5 images
In addition to two CCSS-aligned projects, built-in templates inspire creativity and imagination.
The graphic organizer template is an especially powerful tool for guiding student writing.
Playful visual style and open-ended questions make the templates appealing and engaging.
Sticker options include music notes, math symbols, animals, stick figures, and speech bubbles.
Useful help text alerts users to helpful features.

Pros: Whimsical visual style and thoughtfully designed templates make for a rich space for guided exploration and creativity.

Cons: Facebook-linked sharing options work unevenly and feel a little intrusive. Saving to the photo library can be cumbersome and a little uneven.

Bottom Line: Scoodle Jam offers kids just enough guidance to inspire and plenty of open space to create. Its best bet for learning comes with consistent guidance and feedback from teachers and parents.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Teachers can use the projects in Scoodle Jam to teach a wide range of ELA, science, and math concepts. Math teachers might use Scoodle Jam as a go-to app for illustrating equations and graphing. ELA and social studies teachers might use the graphic organizer templates to help students organize their formal writing and brainstorm for creative writing projects.

Scoodle Jam allows two users to collaborate on the same whiteboard space in real time via Facebook, which might give some teachers pause. Luckily, a more educator-friendly partner will host this sharing capability starting in June 2014, which will make this feature appropriate for kids under 13 who can't use Facebook. Most importantly, it's worth noting that the collaboration features are nice but not critical to the app's success: Scoodle Jam has enough rich content and features built in that working in "solo creation mode" offers ample opportunities for deep learning.

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Standards:

Scoodle Jam is an interactive whiteboard app built for the classroom. All the features of other great whiteboard apps are here: Kids can choose to draw in a variety of colors, type unlimited text, and place built-in “stickers” on their creations, and their work is conveniently saved to the device’s photo library. Kids can log into Facebook through the app and use their profile image as the face of their on-screen avatar, and (with a strong Wi-Fi signal, the developers insist) two kids can draw on the same image at once from their own devices. 

What makes Scoodle Jam stand out is its array of templates and stickers. Kids can choose templates from the two classroom-ready projects or select a template that offers a more open-ended invitation to imagine and create. 

What’s most impressive about Scoodle Jam is the learning potential of its built-in features. The Blocks, Solids, and Math stickers could all help kids illustrate and explore key math concepts; the graphic organizers offer multiple useful templates for brainstorming and organizing ideas. This is more than a blank space for kids to write: It’s a space that explicitly, elegantly supports student learning and imagination. 

The two projects also have great learning potential. In Wild Things, students create a new animal and design and describe its life, its habitat, and its needs. In Mobile Feast, students create their own food truck, examining issues of persuasive writing and design in the process. Each project is appropriate for students as young as second grade, and both projects are open-ended enough to be scaled up for older students. 

Overall Rating
Engagement Would it motivate students and hold their interest? Is it visually appealing? Would it inspire teachers to try something new or change their instruction?

Whimsical visual style and provocative leading questions invite kids to imagine, create, and explore.

Pedagogy Does the tool help teachers promote a more student-centered experience? Will students gain conceptual understanding or think critically? Does it deepen teachers’ pedagogical thinking?

Built-in projects, graphic organizer, and graph paper templates, in particular, offer thoughtful invitations to organized, creative, original thinking across the curriculum. All templates are best used with teacher guidance.

Support Can students and teachers get assistance when they need it? Is it created with people of different abilities and backgrounds in mind? Is learning reinforced and extended beyond the digital experience?

Built-in help text overlay is easy to access and offers succinct guidance. Developer website includes helpful free PDFs for educators with lesson plans for built-in projects and further ideas for classroom use.

Common Sense Reviewer
Patricia Monticello Kievlan Foundation/nonprofit member
About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

Key Standards Supported

Writing

  • W.3.4

    With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.3.5

    With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.

  • W.3.6

    With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

  • W.4.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.4.5

    With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.

  • W.4.6

    With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.

  • W.5.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.5.5

    With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

  • W.5.6

    With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.

  • W.6.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.6.5

    With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

  • W.6.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.

  • W.7.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.7.5

    With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

  • W.7.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.

  • W.8.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.8.5

    With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

  • W.8.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Writing HS/S/T

  • WHST.6-8.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

  • WHST.6-8.5

    With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

  • WHST.6-8.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.

  • WHST.9-10.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

  • WHST.9-10.5

    Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

  • WHST.9-10.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

  • WHST.11-12.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

  • WHST.11-12.5

    Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

  • WHST.11-12.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

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Teacher Reviews

(See all 2 reviews) (2 reviews)
Featured review by
Jennifer A. , Classroom teacher
Classroom teacher
Montclaire Elementary School
Los Altos, United States
Creative Project App
The students absolutely love these projects, even students who don't consider themselves artistic or creative. The topics are fun and engaging. I can't wait for Scoodle Jam to develop more topics. I like the options for drawing, stickers, photos, and typing because it gives students plenty of flexibility. A suggestion would be to develop further topics that tie into NGSS. Even though the app is rated grade 3-8 my 2nd graders had no trouble being successful with it.
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