Online whiteboard tools

A few months ago, I offered a handful of options for students reporting out in the classroom, and it is time to add a few more to the list.  I've spent some time trying out various online whiteboard tools this week, and since Richard Byrne at FreeTech4Teachers offers a great summary of several of these tools in this blog post, my focus here will be on some potential uses for online whiteboard tools.

Quick, informal activities

• Underline or highlight key text in a short excerpt from an article or other reading
• Draw a diagram (e.g., structural formula in chemistry, consumer surplus in economics)
• Annotate an image

Keep in mind that an image can be of just about anything - a photograph, political cartoon, map, screenshot of text from a webpage or an article, foundation for a concept/mind map, etc.  This is where an online whiteboard tool may be preferred to the physical whiteboard surfaces available in the classrooms; the physical whiteboard is a blank slate but an online whiteboard tool offers more options for using a "pen" to markup or add to an existing object.

Online whiteboard tools that may be best suited for quick, informal activities include: Stoodle, Web Whiteboard, and PixiClip.  Why?  No need to sign up for an account to use Stoodle and Web Whiteboard even for those interested in collaboration - just send your class/teammates the URL.  PixiClip offers some different features, but the online whiteboard tools can be used without signing up for an account.  You may want to consider creating an account if interested in sharing online; however, if the goal is to share in the active learning classrooms, it may be easiest to use the teacher station controls to send a group's screen to the rest of the monitors in the room for discussion.

The online whiteboard tool available from Stoodle.

Activities that are more formal and/or might need additional features

• Annotating or commenting on anything more than a brief excerpt from a script, article, case study, etc. (e.g., each team member is assigned a section from an article but the team has to collaborate to identify strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to the discipline)
• Building a comprehensive concept/mind map
• Creating visual maps of a timeline of events or a process

A tool like RealtimeBoard might be a better choice for an activity that is more formal either in its level of collaboration or the tasks it involves.  Premium features are available for free with an educational account which applies to both instructors and students (note that the verification process takes up to 24 hours).  In addition to features that you might expect from an online whiteboard tool, RealtimeBoard makes collaboration from a distance easier with a live chat feature and the ability to start a conversation within the whiteboard through the "Comments" tool.  The ability to zoom in and out and move freely around the whiteboard space seems like a good fit for building and organizing a visual map of any kind; the whiteboard doesn't appear to be restricted in size or by where the first stuff is added (you can still move up and/or left from where you start on the board).  You can check out more of RealtimeBoard's features in one or more of these video tutorials.

RealtimeBoard's interface and available tools.