I wanted to share a resource I created for educators who are interested in using Freeform for teaching, learning, brainstorming, planning, and collaboration. At St. John Fisher University, we have a 1:1 iPad initiative, and we’ve found Freeform useful for organizing ideas and supporting more interactive educational experiences.
My goal with this Freeform Guide was to design something that could be useful for both K–12 and higher education educators. This is a great resource whether you’re just getting started with Freeform or looking for new ways to use it with students, faculty, or colleagues.
The Freeform Guide breaks down the essential functions:
- Creation Essentials: Learn how to search for and customize Shapes, use Sticky Notes for quick ideation, and build Tables to organize data with ease.
- Dynamic Media: See how to use the Paperclip tool to insert PDFs that an entire class can annotate together. You can also insert links and documents to turn your board into a resource springboard.
- Connecting Ideas: Use the Connector tool to visually link shapes and notes, helping students map out relationships between concepts.
- Advanced Navigation: I’ve included a section on Scenes, which allows you to save specific views of your board. This is a game-changer for organizing a large canvas into a guided presentation that you can even export as a PDF.
- Fostering Collaboration: The guide includes directions for sharing your board via Invite with Link. Once your students are in, you can use the Follow Along feature to see exactly where they are on the board, ensuring everyone stays on the same page (without the actual pages!).
Explore my Freeform Guide in View Only Mode using one of the hyperlinks in this post.
- Begin in the top left with the Start Here! in the green shape.
- Follow the arrows to learn about the different features in a Freeform board.
- If you get lost, click on the rectangle with a star in the bottom left and hit the right arrow.
- Feel free to open a new board to play with the different functions.
- I've also attached a PDF version of my scenes in case you would rather view that way. But using the Freeform app is the best experience to capture all the board has to offer.
I would love to hear how you are using Freeform to spark teaching, learning, brainstorming, planning, and collaboration in your K-12 or higher-ed classrooms!
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