What is an Online Whiteboard and Why is it Useful for Education?

Online whiteboards are a great way to collaborate with others on projects and assignments. They are also a great tool for teachers to use in the classroom. Online whiteboards allow students and teachers to collaborate with one another from anywhere in the world. This is especially helpful for those who can’t be in the same room at the same time.

An online whiteboard is a virtual space where people can work together on projects and assignments from anywhere in the world. It’s also a great tool for teachers to use in classrooms, as it allows them to share their screens with students, draw on their screens, and more easily communicate with students who might not be able to be physically present during class time.

Online Collaboration Tools for Better Learning Outcomes

Online collaboration tools are a great way to share ideas and work on projects with others. They can be used for both personal and professional purposes.

The main advantage of these tools is that they allow people to work together from different locations. This means that people can collaborate without having to be in the same room or even in the same country.

Some of the most popular online collaboration tools are Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Slack.

How to Select the Appropriate Online Whiteboard Software for Your Needs

Due to the covid epidemic, the usage of online whiteboards has exploded in popularity over the last year. Individuals must recreate the experience of visual collaboration at a whiteboard in a new digital format. There are various solutions available on the market today, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Here are a handful that are market leaders in their respective segments:

Dojoit – excellent for use as a freeform canvas and for creating user narrative maps

Google’s Jamboard — an excellent free choice with few features

Microsoft Whiteboard – an excellent choice for Windows hardware and surface hub devices

Miro – ideal for presentations and user experience teams

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the most critical factors to consider when choosing an online or virtual whiteboard. Several of them offer free trials, so take advantage of them before deciding on the best option for you.

Which sorts of material are you planning to include in your online whiteboards?

Consider the sort of information you intend to publish to your digital whiteboard. While the majority of them allow for the addition of photographs, text, and post-it notes, what else are you planning to upload? Consider the following sorts of material for your digital whiteboard:

Post-it or sticky notes — for brainstorming, creating narrative boards/maps and jotting down ideas

Images – swiftly demonstrate concepts or screen images

Connectors/Arrows – used to depict flowcharts or linkages

Voting – to select retrospective themes

PDFs and papers — to display more material

Shapes — for use in flowcharts and illustrations

Text — to jot down significant ideas on the board

Do you require an export of your online whiteboard in a different format?

When you’re finished creating your masterpiece and want to preserve it, does the program provide a mechanism to export it? You’ll want to find an app that lets you save your whiteboard as a PNG or, better yet, a vector graphics file (PDF, SVG). The vector graphics file format is critical to ensure that your material remains crisp when zoomed in. Vector formats store data along pathways, allowing them to be extended indefinitely without sacrificing quality.

Consider whether you’ll require your data in a textual format (e.g. TXT or CSV) so that you may deal with it in other applications such as excel. If you have developers that wish to access or store data on a digital whiteboard via a programmatic interface, you should ensure that the app you chose offers an API. The term API refers to the Application Programming Interface. In a nutshell, it enables software developers to extract data from or communicate it to your whiteboard. Thus, This may be quite beneficial for automating tasks or integrating other technologies.

What are the scenarios in which I might utilize an online or virtual whiteboard?

Finally, you should evaluate how you want to utilize the online whiteboard. There are several application scenarios, and you should absolutely sign up for free trials and ensure that the solutions you demo match your requirements. So, Here are some common use examples to assist you in properly identifying those requirements:

Brainstorming and Ideation – Techniques to Assemble Your Team’s Ideas

Taking notes during meetings – keep track of significant decisions and action items

User narrative mapping — create a blueprint for your product’s customer experience.

Agile planning – planning program increments, sprints, and retrospectives

UX research and design – using personas and empathy maps, gain a deeper understanding of your users

Collaborative work – use icebreakers to bring your teams together and ensure that everyone’s opinion is heard.

Workshops for product discovery – bringing together a large number of individuals to create or develop a product